Fall Harvest

At the end of every garden season we are faced with a difficult choice. Do we continue to let the garden grow and produce, or do we pull the plug, open the gates to the chickens, and start to cut down plants. This year, we have been doing a slow roll to closing out the garden. While we could have probably gotten a couple of more summer squash, most of the plants had died back so that section of the garden got pulled. Maggie has been gathering up the sandbags we used to weigh down the landscape fabric and placing them into piles. The corn is long done, so we harvested some stalks for harvest decorations.

One crop that we will try and hold off on pulling is the winter squash. Some of the vines continue to be very green and many of the pumpkins are still transitioning from green to orange. We seem to have lots of pumpkins, including Jack Be Little gourds from seeds my mom gave us. but not a lot of butternut squash. We have harvested a few Delacata, Buttercup, and Table Queen Acorn squash, making for a colorful basket.

Maggie harvested nearly all our peppers this weekend, and made a pepper ferment. I made a batch of pepper jelly, and will probably have enough for a second batch. We are leaving those plants for another week or two to see if any of the peppers turn color as I am trying to make a red-colored hot pepper sauce.

Having peppers has also been nice as we continue to get tomatoes. We have been making fresh salsa for several weeks, and should be able to get more for another week or two. We also made another batch of grilled pizza with fresh tomato sauce, peppers, and summer squash. We have gotten much better at pizza as compared to the first ones we made. It won't be too long before the garden is done, so now is the time to use fresh produce while we can.