Went to the garden today to check on things. We had a terrible rain/sleet/snow storm yesterday, the first Nor’easter of the season. Still going strong is my lonely curly kale plant and my leeks. Surprisingly, I still have baby fall greens and baby arugula. I need to collect those very soon as hard frost is in the forecast.
I took advantage of the nearly 70 degree weather today (mind you it was snowing just a week ago) to clean out my plot. I harvested the last carrots and radishes, weeded and cleared all the plant debris. I also dug up the dahlia tubers. Currently, there are only leeks, kale and baby greens growing, plus some shallots. I planted garlic today, about 60 cloves – half of them hardneck garlic the other half softneck from my biggest heads saved from this summer’s harvest. I decided not to add hay or straw this winter (except to cover the garlic) because I am having a big pill bug problem and I am trying to get rid of them. I suspect they might feed on all the decaying mulch and hay.
There is rain and raw weather in the forecast for the next couple of days and hard frost for the two following nights, so I harvested all my tender veggies this afternoon – eggplant, three teeny zucchini, all the green tomatoes and a bunch of hot peppers plus a ton of chard. I also harvested my butternut squash (sadly only three this year, but weighing in at 7 lb. 7 oz. total). I cleaned up those plants and did some weeding and disconnected the hoses. The water was shut off a few days ago. Always a sure sign of the season ending. Still growing are fall greens (we will see how well they will take the frost), kale, carrots, radishes, chard and leeks. And a ton of flowers: dahlia, cosmos, marigold, nasturtium. I still have to plant garlic, which I plan to do this weekend.
The “fruits” are winding down, only a few more tomatoes on the vine, and a couple more eggplants. There are still carrots in the ground, leeks, fall greens, radishes, hot peppers and winter squash. And some beautiful dahlias. Still lots of kale and chard. Chorizo/kale frittata and a side salad for dinner tonight.
Not pictured: countless Caprese sandwiches, creamy cucumber salad (with sour cream dressing), Swiss chard frittata.
I roasted two sheets of tomatoes today. 250F convection oven (on bake) for 30 minutes. They were grape to cocktail size, and that was the right amount of time. I used them to top a tomato tart I made for dinner. So yummy!
Today’s harvest: Dr. Wyche’s Yellow and Pineapple tomatoes, Lacinato kale, two zucchinis and a gorgeous dahlia
Harvest from a couple of days ago: more yellow tomatoes, curly kale and two types of hot peppers, Thai hot pepper on the left, I do not remember what the one on the right is.
The Ping Tung eggplants will be roasted and turned into a salad with goat cheese and pine nuts, and the chard will be turned into sesame chard (a riff on sesame spinach) to accompany Korean steak, served with kimchi, quick-pickled carrots and rice tomorrow. The tomatoes (together with other previously harvested ones) will be used to make a simple sliced tomato salad with basil and parsley to complement Spanish tortilla with chorizo tonight.
