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

Tomatoes and peppers with zinnias in the background

Saturday, October 11, 2025

The garden continues to produce well; more than we can eat fresh.  We are harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, onions, sweet and hot peppers, lettuce, sprouting broccoli, Red Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, eggplant, Trombetta zucchini, sorrel, chard, yard long beans and many herbs.  I am freezing tomatoes, peppers, okra, yard long beans, Tamarillo fruits, Goji berries and Husk cherries each week as well as drying the herbs we need for the winter.

Our cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, Trombetta zucchini, and yard long beans are still yielding well.  All the large fruit tomato vines except Better boy have died back.  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 well into early September;  I am getting very few now but more than I eat fresh.  Cucumber info and tips for growing  My Trombetta zucchini is loaded, but it started producing late this year.  Probably because it was a new bed that I didn't have enough compost to cover it last fall.  We put compost on it last month and then they really picked up growth and fruits.  

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 disease 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 few California bell peppers planted in the garden bed.  The rest of my peppers were in pots.  The sweet chocolate pepper that I saved from seed was loaded this year.  The Tricked You sweet Jalapeño did well.  The hot Tunisian Baklouti pepper plants just kept produced peppers all season long and are covered in baby fruits and lavender flowers now. The only pepper plant that didn't do well was a sweet yellow banana pepper plant.  It produced just a few small peppers.  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 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, sage 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.

I am going to try leaving the rosemary in the garden bed again this year.  Typically they survive until February after we get a warm up and then another blast of frigid weather spells doom for them.

The greens are doing well that I seeded in mid-September that sprouted.  Less than half of the seeds I planted sprouted likely because it was in the upper 90's in September and cool season crops have a difficult time germinating in heat.  They love this time of year, cool with plenty of rain.  As soon as they are a bit bigger, I will put in the permanent spot for the winter that I cover with a portable greenhouse.

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