2023 wrap-up

The garden is finally put to bed, although the weather continues to be pretty good and there is no snow in sight. I spent most of October processing the harvest and trying out new ideas with the dehydrator.

We had a tonne of tomatoes so I pureed them and then put them on a piece of parchment paper in the dehydrator. The result was very stiff fruit leather (did the same thing with some apple sauce but did not dry it as much). It took about 8 hours of drying time.

I then crumbed it into pieces and ran it through the coffee grinder to make tomato powder, which works as a substitute for tomato paste.

Four plus litres of tomato paste dehydrated to about 175ml of powder!

We also dried a bunch more peppers. 

Seven bell peppers turned into about 1.5 cups of dried peppers.

So far I have jammed four gallons of raspberries. There s one gallon left but I need a break.

We carved the giant pumpkins for Hallowe'en. They were thick! Lots of seeds to roast, though. And I saved a few seeds. Jess and Jenn have also been making pumpkin pie out of the eating pumpkins.

I think the decoration in the middle was supposed to be a pumpkin but it turned out a bit Eye of Sauron.

That pretty much wraps up this year and I'm turning my mind to Christmas baking. The fruitcakes (some doused with whiskey and some with malibu) turned out well.

Pumpkins, peppers, grapes, beans

The frost arrived on October 1 so we had a busy weekend of harvesting! The pumpkin crop was impressive this year and most have been distributed up and down the street.

The bigger ones ranged from 50 to 90 pounds.

Jess had to help me lift this one up so I could carry it!

On the other end of the spectrum, we got one tiny bunch of grapes!

The tomatoes went hard to the end, with insanely thick stems. We gave away flats and flats and still have window sills full. I'm going to sauce a bunch and then try to dehydrate the sauce.

I had to call out the reinforcements for the final push on the scarlet runner beans. I am still shucking and drying them.

We had a good year for peppers in the raised bed. This is about half the crop. I put a bunch on the dehydrator.

We also had a few good sun flowers that the birds have been at.

The next few weeks are about cleaning up the beds and putting things away for the winter. The garlic is in. We still have a few carrots, beets, and potatoes to dig. And the jamming season hasn't started! But whew!

Apples, tomatoes, watermelon

Harvest season is in full swing. Jess did most of the ladder work this year ("15 years since our last time-loss injury!") as we harvested the second apple tree. Need to prune the top a bit this fall, I think.

We got a goodly amount of apples and we baked and sauced most them the first week.

We ended up with four gallons of apple sauce and half gallon of apple butter. Plus pies and muffins and such.

The tomatoes continue to produce. The six of the black Russian tomatoes is crazy. The slice on the left covers the whole piece of bread! 

We've been saucing a lot. The different coloured tomatoes each give different coloured pulp!

I also harvested the first (of four, I expect) pumpkins. They are each the size of a five-pin bowling ball.

This one as one of the yellow fleshed ones and tasted pretty good. It was very juicy, moderately sweet and had a lot of seeds. We'll see what the next few are like.

There are still a lot of tomatoes on the vine. We can likely start the bean harvest tonight. The potatoes were disappointing this year (I came the heat and drought). The pumpkins are doing well and there are a lot of carrots left in the ground.
 

Pepper, Apples, Tomatoes, Pumpkins

I'm not sure how I forgot to update the gardening blog for three weeks but there you have it. Things have been busy! First up, I pulled in the three largest papers. I think we'll get 15 this year. These have since ripened and two are in the oven right now for fajitas!

The watermelons are also doing well. I think we'll get three watermelons and two cantaloupes this year.

 

We harvested the first apple tree and ended up with a goodly number of pretty big apples. Some of these have gone into crisps. 

The rest I canned as pie filling to make room for...

...endless tomatoes. I started pulling off the riper ones to help the plants make some progress on the greener ones.

The result was very crowded window skills.

The smaller stupice tomatoes, I mostly dehydrated for the winter.

The largest tomatoes, including some black Russian ones have been ether eaten fresh or crushed and canned.

I have another 40 tomatoes on the window sills ripening. These I'll run through the tomato mill and likely sauce. Finally, we have four (or maybe five) huge pumpkins (four litres ice cream pail for scale).

There are also about a dozen smaller pumpkins. I managed to process the garlic and most of it is in storage. Ditto the onions. The next big rush (other than the tomatoes) will be the scarlet runner beans But those are likely several weeks away yet.

Cantaloupe, watermelons, garlic and pumpkins

As we head into the last two months of the gardening season, we're seeing some progress in the melon patch. I see three cantaloupes so far, which is pretty good news. Not the number I was hoping for, but still better than zero!  

There are more watermelons (at least five). They are growing at a pretty good pace. The pictures below were snapped five days apart. I sent one to Jess and her co-workers were like "does your dad have giant Shaq hands or are those just tiny watermelons?"

We're also starting to harvest tomatoes. Mostly stupice at this point but the bigger tomatoes are starting to ripen.

I pulled the garlic and cached it in the garage to cure. So now everything in the garage, including the inside of the car, smells like garlic.

Things are going so-so on the trellis. I have a few more squash showing.

And a small number of cucumbers. I think the soil needed some amending so I'll work on that this fall.

The raspberries are basically done for the season. I managed to put 5 litres away in the freezer for jamming. The pumpkins are insane, though. The vine just keep spreading. Of the pumpkins I can easily get to, this is the largest so far (thumb to pinky is 9 inches) so I think we'll have a large number of pretty big pumpkins come fall.

The coronet front is probably a write off (not enough sun). And the potatoes have been a real mixed bag this year. Some good sized spuds but not a whole lot of potatoes per plant.