Saturday, 1 October 2016

Autumn harvest in the vegetable garden

My entire squash crop this year: Thelma Sanders squash (the yellow ones) and Winter Squash Sweet Dumpling (the green and cream ones)
I looked out at the garden this week and decided it was time for a bit of a harvest and a tidy up. This is largely because most things looked like their leaves were most of the way through dying, with the exception of my runner beans, which are still producing a regular crop.
In particular, the leaves on the squashes had gone from just being mildewy, but otherwise green, to increasingly brown and yellow and curled up.
The tomatoes also look like they've pretty much had it.
A lot of the tomatoes you see there are not in a state I'd consider edible (they probably would be if I were starving, but actually, I've already harvested kilo upon kilo of healthy tomatoes, so I'm choosing to leave the ones that are old, split and partially eaten, I suspect I'm going to get a lot of self-seeding tomatoes next year).
I've discovered that the tomatoes I grew (Moneymaker and Gardener's Delight) work well as a substitute for tinned tomatoes. The food I cook with them looks less red and more orange, but it tastes divine. I simply wash them, then pop them whole into the recipe and give them a good squish with a spoon after they've cooked for a while. You end up with a lot of fairly large tomato skins in the food that way, but the texture doesn't bother me and I'm pretty sure the skins are good for me. If you're fussier about this than me, chop them up first so that the pieces of skin are smaller. If you're really, really fussy, remove the skins first.
I've also gathered in the sweet corn.
I don't fancy eating them in that state. I think theoretically I could use them in a recipe that calls for dried corn, but my plan is instead to use them in some sort of autumnal wreath and then to see if I can grow fresh sweet corn from them next year.
I also gathered in some of my coriander seeds. Not all of them were ripe yet. I simply gave them a rinse and then left them to dry before putting them in a jar. If there's any moisture left on them I think they'd probably go mouldy in the jar.
Finally, I also harvested my mooli mino radish. I had thought that they hadn't made it, given my complete lack of attention to the brassica bed after about early June, but then I noticed one sticking up through the soil. The problem is, that it was supposed to be harvested over a month ago, so I just ended up staring at it for a bit thinking "that looks like it would be unpleasantly tough", then chucked it on the compost heap. I wish I'd noticed them earlier.

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