Late Summer Harvest

This past weekend I canned our first batch of tomatoes.  Last summer I made three batches of salsa, marinara sauce, and attempted catsup, in addition to canning diced tomatoes.  This summer we still have some salsa left, and I am limited on time since the tomatoes took longer to ripen due to the cool summer.  So I'm setting my sights lower and only planning to can diced tomatoes.  I do want to can more than I did last summer, however, since I didn't have enough to last the year.  I use them in so many recipes that I want to have lots on hand.

I got a good start this weekend, canning a total of 21 pints (10 of orange tomatoes, 11 of red tomatoes).  I'm hoping to do several more batches to have at least 50 pints stored away for the winter.

We also harvested all our winter squash this weekend, since the vines had died away about a week or two ago.  I'm not sure what happened to them, and it's unfortunate that not all the squash got to fully mature and ripen.  We collected what was there, however.  Charles also pulled out all the summer squash and cucumber plants since they were pretty much done producing.

We debated about where to store all this, since you're supposed to keep them in a place that's dark, cool, and dry.  Our basement has been very damp this summer, and we had pumpkins rot down there last year, so we ruled that out.  We settled on a closet in the laundry room, where they will be dark and dry.  Two out of three ain't bad!

We harvested around 15 spaghetti squash and 6-8 each of butternut, delicata, acorn squash, and pumpkins.  Not a bad haul given that the plants died out about a month early!

For the fall I've planted some kale and more lettuce.  We're still waiting on a few pumpkins to finish maturing, and we still have some watermelon as well.  Plus there are the tomato plants and some remaining corn that will soon be ready.  (Have I mentioned that we've eaten corn on the cob for every meal the past week?)  We decided to plant a cover crop of buckwheat this year, to nourish the soil and to help control the weeks.  Charles spread a bunch of seed in the areas of the garden where he pulled squash and cucumber plants this weekend, so I'll be anxious to see that start coming up.

And, just for fun before I wrap up this post, here's a selfie of me and my awesome Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance mug that Charles picked up for me last week.  Did I mention it was free?  Yeah, baby!