Still Harvesting

Usually around this time of year I start to feel like visiting my garden less and less. Perhaps I'm exhausted from perpetual weeding or perhaps I long to hunker down and knit or perhaps I start to forget that I still have many things growing out there. Whatever the reason, neglect tends to set in as the days grow shorter. After a week long break from the garden, I walked out there and came back with a large basket of veggies.

That basket was full of zucchini, cucumber, tomatoes (of all kinds), delicata squash, chilies and pumpkins. There are still many tomatoes still ripening, not a single fairy squash is ready, pumpkins still on the vine, butternut, cabbage, kale, carrots, zucchini, chilies and grapes. I'm still holding out hope that I might get a few edible stalks of brussel sprouts. They have been in since April so it's been a tough year for them. The grapes are slowly ripening but sadly recent rains have caused many to split. Those that do make it off the vine seem to go directly into April's mouth.

All the pears were harvested and shared as well as the blackberries (though none of us could really keep up with them). All our apples were harvested and juiced. We have frozen 40L of organic juice for the winter. It wasn't a great year for our apples. We had a bad problem with blight, many were unusable so they were trashed. Thankfully my parents shared their apple harvest to complete our juicing order.

It looks as though I will not have a winter garden this year. I simply was not prepared and planned my space poorly for winter planting. I will plant some radishes and green onions and I hope that my kale will over winter as it did last year. I will also be planting several rows of garlic. We were so pleased with our garlic harvest this year that I think we will try to duplicate it's success next year. Thankfully we have a freezer (or two) full of garden goodies and a pantry of canned treats to get us through the winter.