Tag: harvest

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10/30/2023 last peppers

The last peppers of the season piled on the gray ceramic kitchen table. There are long curly skinny yellow corbaci, big red bell, green bells, and brown-purple bells, and two little triangular apple peppers.
Before the hard freeze I cut down all the pepper plants (plus a few stray and unfortunately sized okra) and put them in the garage. The next day when I had time, I sorted and weighed them. we got a good last bunch of all our pepper varieties for this year! Paula notes of the sweet peppers, the apple peppers were sweetest when both red and green. The California wonder bell and chocolate bell were both more bitter when young/green. The Chef likes the thin and easy to cut corbaci peppers.
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10/29/2023 first freeze forecast tonight

Piles of vegetable greenery on a concrete front poor with a black double door in the background
So, in spite of rain all day and temperatures in the 30s F, I went out and cut all the plants. That’s the giant pile of cut basil on an overflowing Rubbermaid tub and assorted cut off pepper plants nearby. The rest of the day was getting basil leaves off the stems.
An inch thick basil stem cut off, with my hand nearby for scale.
The basil stems were so big I had to use the loppers to cut them at the base.
A blue-gray rubber made plastic tub almost full of bright green basil leaves
3608 grams of basil leaves. This is 7.95 pounds. Yes, we did tare the tub weight. Yes, it is a lot of basil. No, I don’t even know what’s going to happen.
Close up view of a red and blue striped leaf hopper. Its legs and tip of snoot grade to yellow. It has tiny hair like antennae.
Leafhopper
A small true bug nymph on my fingers. It’s small enough that you don’t see around my whole finger. The brown colors are speckled
True bug nymph
A brownish jumping spider with iridescent green pedipalps peeks out from its web, which holds a bright green basil leaf folded over as shelter.
Jumping spider
Close up of the face of a praying mantis. It is watching me.
Praying mantis
We had several little friends come in on the basil. All were released back into the shelter of adjacent plants outside.
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08/08/2023 belated friend melon

A very long faced wire coated white and tan dog looks with suspicion upon a hand holding a small striped melon.
Friend of the garden Ziggy the dog found this very smelly round thing on a plant that his human planted!
A hand holds a small melon. It has green stripes on its rinds going from the attachment point to the other end. The background color is a very pale orange-yellow.
It is a Madhu Ras melon from seeds that I gave Ziggy’s human from last year’s harvest. Apparently the first one didn’t taste great (maybe due to sudden rain?) but the second was properly sweet. Our vines have flowered but not fruited this year and I suspect I haven’t put them in a sunny enough spot.
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07/10/2023 bouquet before and after

The Chef had a professional lunch at colleagues’ house yesterday and requested something to take since they didn’t need any additional food brought. I snipped an assortment of garden flowers and herbs and put them in a jar.
The Chef did his arrangement magic and trimmed the various stems to a pleasing length. Rudbeckia, an orange zinnia, and a tall smartweed are at the top. Mealy blue sage and Salvia greggii hug the middle. Three winecups and a pink zinnia edge the rim of the jar over a peachy orange raffia bow.
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Williams’ Pride Apples harvest year 2

Last summer we waited too long to harvest our first Williams’ pride apple. This year as soon as they started turning red, I went reading to figure out when they ripen. We have been looking to see the background color go from green to yellow, and several sites said the apple should easily fall off the tree with a tug. This has been working well! I think at first we were tugging too gently as one apple was still rotting on the tree but all the rest have been good since.

This is the only tree I bought from Raintree nursery but I would try them again if I have to replace any trees. It has had the most enthusiastic start of all our young fruit trees. You can see there are still multiple apples left ripening plus a few more in the house.
Good job, Professor Williams! They are sweet and tart and crispy!
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06/22/2023 garlic business

The garlic, picked on the solstice (accidentally). Almost every one was very large. I have been growing these for years from the same cloves and they were never this big.
The biggest and smallest creatures in the house for scale.
Shackleton thought the garlic smelled of Outside and Dust and was very intrigued. Tuqu was interested as well but not as comically.
This is probably the most accurate size comparison photo. Tuqu is small. Garlic is large.
On the 22nd Paula moved the garlic to a mostly shaded area in the backyard where it can dry for a while warm before we bring it in the house. She did a good job!