Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Snow in October.... Or Just an Excuse to Harvest the Garden

I heard a rumor that it may snow in the next week. 

It has been getting COLD at night and I had to harvest my garden. I have NEVER covered up my plants with a blanket before but I only had one tomato plant that actually produced so I picked what I could off of it and covered it with a blanket as it was full of little tomatoes in green! 

I had LOTS of herbs that needed to be harvested as well and once frozen, they wouldn't be useful so I cut them all down in the dark with a head flashlight. 

I also found a few summer squash but they are HARD and we won't probably eat them. We did get a few pumpkins as I showed in yesterday's pumpkin carving post.

We got carrots and we planted three types. The coolest was a purple brown outside with orange inside and I thought we still had more of those type so I didn't take pictures when we were eating them so you missed out on seeing those cute things but we planted round carrots that look like balls which are interesting but not very useful so I probably won't be planting those again. 

We got two or three of these "Chocolate" peppers that look black in the picture but are kinda brown and purple in color. 

They are similar to the carrots we planted. I try to find "different" plants that may be fun to grow. They taste just like other similar veggies but look different in color.


 I also got two long Armenian cucumbers which I thought were going to be bitter as they were left so long on the vine but we ate one for dinner tonight and it was good. I guess I didn't get a picture of them. 
 
We got lots of beets and have enjoyed eating beet greens and beets the past few days and Princess Five decided she doesn't like beets. I guess she is used to eating them pickled and not warm with butter and seasonings so I have been enjoying eating them myself and did have enough to freeze for later.


Today, I finished drying all the apples from my tree and a bucket of red apples a neighbor brought over. I have one dehydrator going and I can't tell you how happy I am to have the other two off my kitchen counter! I washed them up and put them away as I really don't want to dehydrate another thing for awhile as I have been standing in the kitchen for at least four hours a day for two weeks or more just washing, peeling and coring apples! 

I did about 50 gallon bags of dried apples. I have no hesitation in saying that this year was our biggest year ever for apples. I have two bags still to eat in the fridge and I ran out of Tupperware. I filled every Tupperware I could find and think the company should use me for advertising as I LOVE their product for dried fruits as it keeps moths out! 

Here is a link about the Tupperware and why I like it. 

My garden did well considering how little time I spent out there but really, I probably could have purchased all the vegetables I got out of the garden for the price of the plants and when you add the extra watering in, it was for sure not worth what I got but I am trying to learn to be a better gardener, it just may not be until I have Princess Five driving. It seems I get out working on a project to have to leave to drop her off somewhere or pick her up. Makes me grateful I have a car. :-) 

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