Category: harvesting

Only tomatoes and green peppers left in the garden. I managed to find several red onions now that the weeds are chopped down to a few inches. Nearly all the tomatoes are green and the few red ones that remain are rotten. The peppers show several flowers and have a few tiny peppers growing but now it is the race to the freeze. Temperatures are getting to the low 40s at night.
Our neighbor had a good pepper year; we did not.
The popcorn harvest was a dud. Most of the ears did not fill out and the ones that did had small kernels.
Like the Cubs fans always say: wait until next year!

Doug

Ahh, the first zucchini from the garden. I pick it when it is about 8 inches long though we have eaten much larger ones. The large ones tend to taste woody. Our favorite recipe is zucchini bread which has gone over well every time I make it. A delicious variation on this recipe is to add 1/2 cup of pineapple and reduce the zucchini to 1 1/2 cups (thanks to Angie, our wonderful neighbor).
I’ll post my recipe for minestrone soup which uses zucchini later.
Zucchini on the grill is excellent! Cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes, thread on a skewer, brush with olive oil and grill on the rack about 1 1/2 minutes per side.
I use a small shears to cut the zucchini from the plant – tearing it off sometimes breaks the stem off the zucchini. Leave one inch of stem. Wrap in paper towels and refrigerate asap.
I have frozen zucchini successfully but when it unfreezes it has a lot of moisture and its resilience is lost but it is still good in zucchini bread.
DtG – Doug the Gardener