Garden Bounty ~ Week Ending 10/4/14

The weather is cooler, the rain has fallen, and my plants are starting to rebound. I’m still not harvesting what I normally would be this time of year, but I’m grateful I’m getting a second chance with my peppers and eggplant. My raspberries are still producing, too. Soon, I’ll be harvesting string beans again, as well as lima beans and more butter peas. And maybe a tomato or two on the couple of tomato plants I have left. (And that’s not counting the harvest I’ll be getting from the fall crops I just planted.) So, all in all, I didn’t have too bad of a week as harvests are concerned. This past week, I harvested a half-pound eggplant, a half pound of Dixie speckled butter peas (my first harvest of those), 3/4 pound of raspberries, and over 2 pounds of peppers.

Produce identification is listed from the top, clockwise.

HARVEST SEPTEMBER 28:

My raspberries are slowing down, but I still have berries ripening and some more flowers blooming.

Caroline raspberries

HARVEST OCTOBER 1:

The raspberry canes I have now are a bit unlike the variety I grew before. Sometimes, I have clusters of fruit on side branches that get caught underneath the main canes. This day, I found some berries that I hadn’t seen, and several were a bit overripe. But that was okay because they were destined for the freezer anyway (to make preserves when the harvest is over). Look at the juicy droplets in the freezer container. Yum.

Caroline raspberries – ready for the freezer

HARVEST OCTOBER 3:

I finally picked my first harvest of Dixie speckled butter peas. (The grasshoppers got the first round of pods, but they have moved on to the end of their cycle of life and the butter peas are all mine now!)

Dixie speckled butter peas

I got a decent pepper harvest this day. Again, not like I got last fall when the weather cooled (when my basket was overflowing with peppers), but something!

Emerald Giant green bell peppers, pepperoncini, my mystery hot peppers, mini yellow stuffing peppers, jalapenos, fish peppers, cubanelle peppers, cayenne peppers, mini red bell peppers. In the center: lemon drop peppers

I found a few listada de gandia eggplants that split for some reason, but this one looked okay to eat. And, more raspberries!