Saturday, September 18, 2010

September State of the Garden Report

Just like August, September has been full of cooking and preserving. It took a while to get through all of the tomatoes my dad gave me and then he brought me more! For this batch, I roasted some, I made Carrot Tomato soup for eating and freezing and I dried the cherry, pear and roma tomatoes. So basically, more of the same!

I like to toss the dried tomatoes with a bit of fancy sea salt. They are delicious by themselves, on pizza, in pasta and a billion other ways. We will have no trouble eating these up by next year.

I've also started to pull some of up some of our root crops. Check out this warty carrot!


Our apple harvest was terrible. They are the sorriest, ugliest apples I have ever seen. There were not very many apples left on the tree to begin with. A few of them had started to rot on the tree. A bunch more of them had ants living inside of them. All of them looked like they were full of cellulite. Yuck.

I also dug up our onion bed. If you have been reading, you might remember that we planted over 300 onion bulbs. And then we watered the garden enough that the slightly recessed onion bed lost all of its tops. So, these small onions were all that we got from the onion bed. A lot of them are not much bigger than the sets we planted!

I also harvested the peas that I had let "go to seed" on the plants. I shelled them, let them dry out some more and they are now in the freezer waiting to be planted next year. Something about saving my own seed made me feel very resourceful and grown-up.


3 comments:

  1. oh dear, those apples are a sight! however, the t'maters more than make up for the apples' shortcomings. i am interested to know what kind of dehydrator you have, and whether you like it...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Amanda. I got a NESCO dehydrator as a gift 2 years ago. This one:
    http://www.nesco.com/category_449f7f01f1ea/subcategory_39febe0b9343/product_91d5b1c5e8a9/session_7a504163300a/
    I have used it quite a bit, so it has started to make funny noises when the fan first starts up. Other than that, it has been a good little workhorse. I think it is one of the most basic, starter models, but it has served me well thus far. You can buy inserts for this model that allow you to make fruit leathers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love seeing your produce! Some of our apples/pears look similar (sigh).

    I'm trying to do as much seed saving as I can as well. Doesn't it feel empowering?

    Thanks for stopping by at Tea & Cookies.

    ReplyDelete

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