End of September harvest

It's been very cold and rainy lately and definitely feel like fall time - trees flared up in colors and leafs are dropping down like a colorful rain shower. This weekend I cleaned out my tomato beds - which left me with quite a bit of green tomatoes on hands. Not quite sure what I'll be doing with them. Some of the large ones will probably turn color but others might do green tomato salsa.  I also picked a container of basil to dry for winter.
Some of the tomatoes were ripe or close to it so i separated them and put in the kitchen with some peppers, beans, first fall radishes, few carrots for snacking, one lonely eggplant, last two tiny cantaloupe and one small head of cabbage that I will use in soup.
I also finished cleaning up community garden - these sweet potatoes came from there. I'll get them cured and in couple of weeks they'll go back to the food kitchen.

33 comments:

  1. Two questions: I don't know if you already talked about this - but how big is your garden space? LIke how many garden beds, square footage, etc? And how big is your community garden plot? How many tomato plants do you plant? (Okay that was more than two questions) I'm just so curious because I looked at your harvest totals and wow! 850lbs!!!!

    Oh one more question - how do you "cure" a sweet potato? I didn't know you had to do that. Thanks for your reply!!

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    1. We have two garden areas - one small and one large that was build this spring. small has 5 beds - two 4x8, two 4x10 and one 4x12. Large garden has two long beds 4x21 and four beds that are L shaped - 15 feet long one side and 10 feet another - 4 feet wide. Many veggies were planted outside of the gardens like leeks, squash, some tomatoes, beets and all herbs. Fencing was used as supports for beans and peas and squashes. You can see layout here: http://simplegardenmadeeasy.blogspot.com/2012/04/just-in-time-for-easter.html

      the community plots are 14 feet by 28 feet and I had 2 of them. there were 25 tomato plants, 6 cucumbers, 12 peppers, watermelon, sweet potatoes, beets. And i also had small 14 by 20 that had squash in it. most of the items were given away without weighting but on ocasion I'd bring baskets home to weight them before giving them to the kitchen - it would depend on what day of the week I was picking as the kitchen is open only 2 days.

      to cure sweet potato I'm taking a lesson from Daphne as this is my first time growing them. Sounds like they need to be in hot and humid area for few weeks. She stores them in a plastic bin in sunny area so I'll do the same.

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  2. You are still getting a nice little bunch of things and so organized. I have to agree that 850 lbs is amazing to me. Sad to see the garden season close and wish it could last longer! Nancy

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    1. Thank you Nancy, with today's harvest it's actually just over 890 lbs. And the garden season for me will continue into the winter time. My hubby is making a hoophouse so the fall veggies will continue growing in the long bed. It will also have some greens, carrots, peppers in there as well. I also have planted some broccoli and additional carrots all over the new garden and two beds of in the small garden.

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  3. What great poundage you have gotten! Everything looks wonderful, especially the swee potatoes. I've never grown them but would sure like to try someday.

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    1. It's a first try for sweet potatoes for me. I also have 4 plants in the old garden but will leave them there until first frost - they were planted in July so not sure if I'll get anything out of them.

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  4. That's a nice big pile of green tomatoes! I will be doing the same thing soon, but so far the rains have not arrived so I am going to let them go as long as possible on the vine. I wish our growing region got warmer than it typically does, as I would dearly love to grow some sweet potatoes.

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    1. I wish we had a longer season too like they do in the south.

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  5. You have had an amazing garden this year! I don't know how you do it all!

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    1. Unfortunately it's been a bit too much for me. I will have to give up community garden next year as it was overwhelming. It takes couple of hours each day to keep up with everything.

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  6. Wow! What a haul of green tomatoes! We're not quite there yet, but I know it's coming very soon! I've never heard of green tomato salsa before, I will have to look that up!

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    1. I will keep some of the larger tomatoes so they'll ripen but the rest will try jam and salsa. Salsa is not bad, just a bit tart.

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  7. quite a haul of tomatoes you got. I bet most of them will turn eventually! Everything looks really nice! Great sweet potatoes! I am working on curing mine now too.

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    1. Some of them will turn but some are just too small. I'll try to make salsa and tomato jam with them.

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  8. Last year I went through the green tomatoes everywhere thing. I hope a good ammount of them ripen up for you!

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    1. What did you do with yours? I'm not sure what to do with 20 lbs of them. :(

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    2. As they ripened up I froze them a few at a time for sauce. It wasn't until Thanksgiving that the last of them that were going to ripen did, so I made a big bowl of salsa out of the remaining ones on Thansgiving day! I threw the green ones into the salsa too. We had a big crowd and it was all gone by the next day.

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  9. Fantastic harvest, 890+ pounds, a very productive year indeed. Hope ost of your tomatoes ripen for you.

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    1. thank you, there are still 2 months of possible harvest left - mostly greens. Let's hope it will be a mild winter.

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  10. Great harvest! I sure wish we had that many tomatoes this year! We've got sweet potatoes in for a late fall harvest.

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    1. I have 4 plants in the old garden that will remain until late fall but I had to pick these out as the community garden closes Oct 1.

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  11. Oh fabulous all those green tomatoes. I love green tomato pickles so it looks like heaven to me! The rest of the harvest is very impressive - those tine cantelope are so cute, perfect breakfast size! And the sweet potatoes are fabulous, we can't grow them in Melbourne (although I think Liz is giving them a try) so I'm very envious of them.

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    1. how do you make green tomato pickles? never heard of doing that

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  12. Your harvests always look wonderfully impressive - loving the green tomatoes.

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    1. Thank you, I wish I had more red and less green though.

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  13. As always your garden is very impressive!
    Lisa

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  14. Beautiful harvests! I bookmarked this link that has some ideas for green tomatoes: http://tipnut.com/green-tomato-recipes/ . I still have some tomatoes in the garden that I don't think will have a chance to ripen before frost. Also, there is a link at the bottom that has tips on getting green tomatoes to ripen.

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    1. Thank you! I will check that site for ideas tomorrow.

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  15. what a great looking harvest! Have had very few large tomatoes this year with the crazy weather. Hope next year will be better!

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    1. I hope your next year garden will be very good indeed.

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  16. What a great harvest! I wish we had such good looking sweet potatoes. Can't wait to see what you do with those green tomatoes.

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    1. Thank you, I haven't touched any of the green tomatoes yet. Hopefully this weekend will be good for cooking.

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