Normally, I end my harvest week on Saturday, but this week I’ve added the extra day to fit in all of the final harvest of my summer crops. And it was a doozy! This past week, I harvested 2 pounds of beans, 1.5 pounds of tomatoes, a quarter pound of eggplant, 4 pounds of watermelon (yes, you read that correctly), almost 3 pounds of pumpkin, and a whopping 15 pounds of peppers! That’s almost 26 pounds of produce in one week. Holy cow, am I going to be busy in the kitchen this week!
Produce identification is listed from the top, clockwise.
HARVEST NOVEMBER 14:
Much of the chili peppers I harvested were unripe, but I believe they may still have some heat. I know the lemon drop peppers are quite hot when green; they just don’t have the lemon aftertaste until they turn yellow. If my other chilis are hot when unripe, they’ll go into my hot pepper jam. If not, I’ll make pepper relish with them. (Hot or sweet, pepper relish is yummy!) I’m hoping my tomatoes will ripen on the windowsill. If not, there’s always fried green tomatoes.
Pepperoncini, Black Krim tomatoes, mini yellow stuffing peppers, Wisconsin tomatoes, jalapenos, fish peppers, my mystery hot peppers
Most of these sweet peppers are destined for the freezer.
Emerald giant green bell peppers, mini red bell peppers, red bell peppers
Many of the cubanelles are going to be stuffed; the rest will be frozen. Hopefully, the green cayenne peppers have some heat. Either way, they’ll make pepper jam or pepper relish.
Cubanelle peppers & cayenne peppers
You’re looking at almost 700 lemon drop peppers here! The ripe ones will go into my pepper jam and relish. The unripe ones will be dehydrated for cooking.
Lemon drop peppers
Now here’s a weird harvest picture – pumpkin and watermelon harvested on the same autumn day. I’m not sure the watermelon is ripe enough to eat, but I’m going to find out when I cut into it.
Seminole pumpkin & early moonbeam (yellow) watermelon
The last of my butter peas.
Dixie speckled butter peas
HARVEST NOVEMBER 16:
The last of my lima beans. They produced from frost to frost.
Henderson lima beans
When I pulled all my plants, I harvested my rocoto peppers and any veggies I missed earlier. I was surprised to find a few snap beans on my plants though.
Rocoto peppers, cubanelle peppers, Beurre de Rocquencourt wax beans, cayenne peppers, Black Valentine green beans, fish peppers. In the center: Wisconsin tomato & Black Beauty eggplant
Now, I can concentrate solely on my fall crops that are growing nicely. This week, I will be planting more fall crops under my hoop tunnels so I can get a harvest through the winter.
What are you harvesting from your garden?
Sanctuary Gardener 