Vegetable Gardening and Me (#18)

This season is drawing to a close. There is a lot that needs to be done to prepare for next year; therefore, I don't think I will be doing an early fall planting

As I mentioned in my first post on gardening, I am not an expert gardener, and I have made plenty of mistakes, but my adventures may help others have more fun and success. 

Also, I now have a page dedicated to gardening, that will contain all past and future posts, as well as resources I have found useful.

I am exhausted. Most of today was spent processing this past week's harvest. The cucumber plants have provided a few more pounds of produce. That has allowed me to make more pickles. Five pint-size jars of bread & butter, and four of dill are sitting in my fridge. Tomorrow I will finish off the remaining three pounds of cucumbers, which should give me two quart-size containers (I have run out of the pints).  Those large jars of dill-flavored pickles should put a smile on someone's face! That batch will include some dill sprigs that appeared after the first cutting a few weeks ago.

In addition to the pickling process, I prepped my tomatoes for the freezer. That involves dropping scored tomatoes into a pot of boiling water for two minutes, removing them, and then placing them in a bowl of ice water until they cool. When they are cool, I am able to remove the skins easily, chop them up, and then separate them into freezer bags. Besides the bowl of tomatoes pictured below, I had two more from the week before that needed to be processed. Besides being a time consuming and tiring ordeal, it is also quite messy. Nothing like having to clean up splattered tomato seeds and flesh off the counter top, cabinet doors, and floor. But come the winter, it will be nice to use those diced tomatoes in soups and sauces. They hold up pretty well in the freezer.

Finally, the last of my summer squash plants succumbed to a trifecta of pests. But I was able to salvage at least three fruits from it. Those were sliced into half-inch thick round pieces, along with the eggplants, brushed with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing, and roasted in the oven. Some of the peppers were used in the bread & butter pickle recipe. The rest were diced up along with a red onion I bought from the store, and sauteed in some vegetable oil. And those pile of cucumbers and dill in the photo below were added to my pickle recipe.

Not much is left. I have three carrots growing, a few leafs of lettuce. My tomato plants are shriveling up, although they still have some green fruits on them. The eggplants are surviving, and I may be rewarded with a half dozen small pieces before they die off. The pepper plants, too, are hanging on, although I may harvest and freeze them while they are green, for the turkey chili I usually make when the holiday sales arrive in late fall. That leaves the pole beans. Damn those plants are still putting out vines and flowers, but not much is appearing underneath that I have notice. Though, with beans, they can suddenly appear overnight, so I will keep an on them. I could just let those plants go well into fall, and allow the pods to dry out. Then I could have dried beans for soups and chili. But that would be a first for me. So, we shall see.

After all, gardening is all about experimenting and learning lessons. 

Wait, did I mention the strawberries?

Maybe next week...