What we're harvesting in the mid-October edible garden

Tomatoes and peppers with zinnias in the background

Saturday, October 12, 2024

The garden continues to produce well; more than we can eat fresh.  We are harvesting tomatoes, onions, sweet and hot peppers, lettuce, sprouting broccoli, Red Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, eggplant, chard, sorrel, mustard greens, tatsoi, yard long beans and many herbs.  I am freezing about a half pint of peppers, 6 eggplant, and up to 4 quarts of tomatoes a week as well as drying the herbs we need for the winter.

Our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and yard long beans are still yielding well.  For tomatoes, be sure to take all the tomatoes off the vine before it frosts.  You can either wrap the green tomatoes in newspaper and store in a cool place to ripen, make them into relish, or eat them as fried.  For fried green tomatoes, we like a Cajun batter.  Gives them a nice, spicy flavor.  A late fall tradition-fried green tomatoes!

The year, my cucumbers produced until the end of September; the chickens scratched the garden bed where they were at, covering the vines up.  My Trombetta zucchini is only giving an occasional fruit now.  In years past, it would produce well until the first hard freeze.  The 6 week drought and late heat wave we had along with the chickens were hard on the vines this year.  Cucumber info and tips for growing

As you straighten up your garden beds as the summer crops wind down, be sure to compost!  Any plant that has a disease, do not add to your compost pile.  Throw away.  Composting may not kill all spores and you could be spreading the disease next season wherever you use the compost.  For more tips on composting (even indoors), Composting is possible in small spaces or even indoors.

Peppers love this time of year.  They are native to the mountains so October is perfect for them.  They will continue to produce even after frost.  My peppers did well this year.  I had a couple of California bell pepper volunteers come up in pots and they did very well.  The sweet chocolate pepper that I saved from seed was loaded this year.  The hot Jigsaw pepper plants just kept producing their pretty purple peppers all season long. I harvest my peppers when they start to get some color in them and let them finish ripening on the counter.  Removing the fruits encourages the plant to replace them, giving you more peppers.  Peppers get sweeter when they ripen, but are good to eat even when green.  

I will bring in the Jigsaw pepper plant, the Chipetlin pepper plant and maybe the Baklouti Tunisian pepper plant for the winter.  It seems like the hot peppers overwinter well inside.

Basil is doing pretty decent right now.  Basil are very tender annuals and will turn black with the first frost.  Make sure to harvest all the leaves prior to the first frost.  You can dry basil, make it into pesto or freeze it in water.  My favorite is to make pesto.  I will probably harvest all the leaves in the next week as they are calling for the 30's here.

Stevia in bloom, covered in butterflies

You can also dig them up and bring them in for the winter.  Place them in a full sun spot.  You can put them back outside again in the spring after all danger of frost has passed.

Bay, chives, thyme, marjoram, oregano and tarragon are all robust.  The tarragon maybe a little too robust!  Tarragon smells wonderful.  Even if you can't eat all that you can harvest fresh and dried, it makes a wonderful potpourri.  I just use dried, whole stems in a vase to freshen an entire room.  I bring the bay tree in for the winter every year.

The greens are doing very well that I seeded in mid-September.  They love this time of year, cool with plenty of rain.  Every type of lettuce I sowed have sprouted.  As soon as they are a bit bigger, I will put in the permanent spot for the winter.

Fall is a bountiful time for gardening.  I have planted many winter hardy varieties of lettuce, broccoli, mustards, and cabbage to keep the garden producing into December and hopefully beyond.  With the portable greenhouse, we should have greens all winter.