Harvest time

  

 It's harvest season and I'm excited! I love harvesting fresh food My tomato plant and zucchini plants are half done as with many others. But as the colder nights start arriving, it is important to either harvest the entire plants and bring the fuits indoors, or start covering up the plants each night. Many people have built greenhouse tunnels for the garden rows or greenhousecaps for their boxes. I do not do this, yet. I just have not gotten my food garden to that point yet. I keep expanding it each year and really need to plan some greenhouse fall ideas. But for now, I just harvest as the food becomes ready, and bring in the ones that need more time than they have been given if I were to let them stay outside.

    This year I planted pumpkins for making beer and pumpkins for making pie. I will cut up and bake the chunks. For the pumpkin pie pumpkins, I will then peel the baked chunks and can them in 8-ounce mason jars so that I can use them up as I wish. And for the beer pumpkin, I will bake up chunks, peels them, and store them in airtight freezer bags. 

    I planted beef steak tomatoes and boy did they do well! I have shared as many tomatoes as I have kept. I slice them on my meat slicer, seson them with italian herbs, garlic, and smoky salt. I then dehydrate them and freeze them for snacks, or to use on recipies. These are a very popular snack and do not often last very long. I use some to make marinara, tomato past and fresh salsa for bbq's. 

   

I planted zebra squash. This was new to me this year. I typically plant plain ol' green zucchini, but when I saw these beautiful yellow striped green bottomed squash, I knew I had to grow them. I mean, am I wrong? They are so beautiful! So, I ate them and share with my parents. I will most definately be growing these for years to come. When they are smaller than a pound they are only yellow. But I let this go a bit longer and then this green bottom should up!

    I always grow multiple varieties of hot peppers. I just wanted to showcase this beautiful habanero. It weighed 0.8 ounce! I typically grow habanero, serano, jalapeno, poblano, and chili peppers. I love making hot sauce witht hem.  make roasted and also a fermented pepper sauce. They are so delicious fermented, and I am so happy I discovered this way of making hot sauce. 

    We always have marionberry and raspberry bushes. I like to harvest every other day and freeze most of my berries for beer making later, or wine. But I do eat some along the way, because fresh berries!! 

    These are just a few things I am growing, but I wanted to showcase some of my favorites. I also harvest herbs and hang them in my pantry t dry, not just during garden harvest time. 

I find this to be a great way to dry my herbs. This is a long room, with our kegorator at the end, and my shelves for pantry on only one wall. I lay a white sheet down before removing the dried herbs from the wall. I then harvest each herb, one at a time, and put them into mason jars for the kitchen. This way I have a spice blend in my sheet that I then jus create a season salt with. Perfect! No rules, just harvest and enjoy.