Harvest season

So it is harvest season here and things are a touch frantic. The apples tree had a huge crop this year and we're eating them and dehydrating rings. 

We're also working at keeping up with the tomatoes (the tomatoes below went into tomato sauce that I froze).  I rolled the dice on Sunday and left the tomatoes out despite the low temperatures and everything seemed to turn out okay! We should have a bumper crop of eating tomatoes. A few weeks of warm temperatures would be helpful in this regard!

We dug the potatoes Monday night. These are Caribe Blues and the harvest was good. Maybe 50 or more pounds and some huge potatoes (big potatoes seem to last longer in storage). We need to clean them up and then get them into the basement tonight.

We had a mystery squash plant volunteer this year (some sort of cross between a yellow zucchini and something else is my guess). Need to figure out what to do with it.

I am starting to put the beds behind the garage down for the year except for one last set of zucchini that I'm waiting to bulk up some.

We're also eating our way down one of the front beds, harvesting carrots and beets to add to the potatoes for roasted roots. I am hopeful we'll soon have space to plant next year's garlic crop.

The beans are also starting to mature and dry out. I've been concentrating on the white pole beans out front (which are closer to finished) but have also started grabbing scarlet runner beans from the back as I see the pod turn brown.  Need to let these guys dry out a bit before putting into a jar.

The raspberry canes are on my to-do list this week. With the potatoes out, I will also move the soil around a bit in the back bed to get ready for next year's crop of beans and peas.