October was amazing. I'm still pulling tons of food out of the garden and putting it up for winter. We've been going full force for the last month making pickles, jelly and jam. Tons of cleaning, chopping and freezing, dehydrating and canning have made sure we'll be enjoying this year's harvest throughout our cold New Brunswick winter.
Our first big harvest this month was the peppers. Peppers are very susceptible to frost so we pulled them as soon as it was clear that colder night temperatures were here to stay. This year was the most amazing pepper harvest we have ever had. Peppers love heat and water, but we really didn't have a lot of either this summer. It was sunny almost every day, but fairly temperate and a very dry summer. Despite the lack of rain, I can honestly say I watered maybe two or three times, though I did reach an inch or two into the beds often to check if the soil was moist underneath. I grew a number of pepper varieties this year, both sweet and spicy. The sweet varieties grown included Big Red, Sweet Sunrise, Sunbright, Chocolate Beauty, Lipstick, Golden Marconi, and Jimmy Nardello. On the spicier side there were Anaheim, Poblano, Jalapeno, and Thai Chili peppers.
The Thai Chili peppers were dried. This is the second year we've grown them and we haven't had to buy chili flakes since. Jalapenos were pickled, Poblanos dried and Anaheims roasted for use in various recipes down the road.
Tomatoes were next up on the list to harvest before the frost. My tomatoes usually struggle due to our
humid, often rainy summers. Blight is pretty much a given, it's just a matter of holding it off until you can get the harvest in. This year was unusually dry, so I even had tomatoes ripen on the vine. Most were still pulled off green and left in cardboard boxes and on the table until they ripen. We've used a few fresh in sandwiches, but most have been quartered and frozen to use throughout the winter. We harvested over 35 lbs of tomatoes in our final harvest. I wasn't all that pleased with the new variety, Defiant, that is supposed to be blight resistant. They did hold off a bit longer than the others, but did still get it. The tomatoes were quite perfect and round, but small and nothing stellar about the taste. We enjoyed the Black Cherry and Gardener's Delight cherry tomatoes as well as the Cherokee Purple. I had a few Solar Flare and Pineapple tomatoes as well.
This was the largest tomato I harvested, the variety is Solar Flare, a hybrid. Their skin is a marbled red/orange/yellow when you look closely and they are very pretty, but the taste is average.
This is what the average tomato of the Defiant variety looked like. Round, blemish-free, no cat-facing or cracks. This variety is a hybrid and is supposed to be blight resistant. They did hold on for quite awhile, but did get blight in the end. I don't know if I'll grow these again though as the size was small and the taste just average. The seed was also $6.95 a packet, which is insane to me.
We also grew Black Cherry and Gardener's Delight cherry tomatoes, along with Cherokee Purple and Pineapple heirloom tomatoes. Overall, very happy with the tomato harvest and we have a pile of freezer bags filled with them to use throughout the winter for sauces, salsa and other recipes. I've had a lot of people ask what we do with all the green tomatoes. Erin makes a green tomato chow she enjoys, but mostly we just let them ripen on the table. They do so quickly and we just chop and toss them in freezer bags as they ripen.
In the middle of all the harvesting, my garlic seed came. I had already prepped the beds where the potatoes had been for next year's garlic. I ordered 12 pounds of Music, Rocambole and Marbled Purple Stripe garlic, which filled two beds. I'm really hoping I'll have enough to start keeping my own seed next year as it costs around $250 for this much seed, though I take advantage of a yearly discount at that time so it's $150, but still a big chunk of change for seed. Better than not having homegrown garlic though!
The squashes were all harvested as well, though it didn't take long. It was a terrible year for squash as I got them planted very late, from seed, and they just didn't have time to mature. Add that to the dreadful weeding job I did in the in-ground garden, and we had a very small yield. That said, we did get two tiny pumpkins, like the one to the right, as well one Delicata and a few tiny acorn squash.
Next on the docket, sweet potatoes! I said when I planted them this year, that I would likely not grow them next year. That said, despite planting quite late, like everything else, they grew very well this year. The greens were vibrantly green, quite gorgeous, and grew quite thick. The varieties I grew this year were Georgia Jet, Carver and Japanese Yam. The harvest was pretty decent this year, totalling 23.5 lbs and there were some fatter sweet potatoes harvested than previous years. They are quite delicious compared to grocery store sweet potatoes, so I will likely break down and order more next year, or perhaps I may even try to grow my own slips from these ones, we'll see!
I planted an enormous number of carrots this year, mostly because it seems we never get enough. So, I ordered a number of varieties to plant and filled one of the 4' x 20' cinder block beds with them. Well, we had enough this year. In total, around 200 lbs. Some were sold, most were put up. I froze several bags with diced, sliced and grated carrot, for various purposes including stir fries, stews and carrot cake.
Along with harvesting we've also been trying to save as much seed as possible to both increase our self-reliance, and to save money. So far, I've saved marigold, leek, chive, parsley and dill seeds. Since several plants self-seed very easily (meaning they mature and drop seed and grow again the next year), I think I will make a permanent space for things like ground cherries, parsley, cilantro and dill. My hope is that having these in their own space to reseed themselves will save me the work and space of having to plant them every year.
A decent year for cauliflower. I really liked this Violetta Italia variety. A stunning vegetable and it was quite tasty as well. They seemed to mature faster than the Snowball variety I also planted. Most of the cauliflower did head up and there are still a couple in the garden sizing up.
Eggplant. We do not have the proper climate for eggplant. I've grown it for four or five years now and this was the first time I ever got fruit. Mind you, they are tiny and too late for them to mature, but an improvement over past years. I think the key for next year is likely getting the plants into a greenhouse environment as they like the heat. Planting them as early as possible would help as well.
We're still harvesting beets. I leave them in the ground as long as possible since there are other things to harvest immediately. Beets can take a few frosts and actually become sweeter after one or two. I grew three types of beets this year as you can see in the image to the right. Top to bottom, the varieties are Early Wonder, Chioggia, and Touchstone Yellow. The Early Wonder didn't perform well, germination was poor. The other two I will likely grow every year as they are stunning visually, as well as utterly delicious. I hope to find a more reliable early beet for greens next year.
Last, a couple nice surprises. Like last year, the raspberries started to flower again at the end of September. I looked up the varieties I purchased and apparently, they fruit twice a year, in summer and late fall. We've had such warm temperatures that we were able to harvest a few here and there. The second image shows a dahlia that I planted from seed, not knowing you usually plant from tubers, that actually grew enough to blossom.
