Ripening Green Tomatoes

Due to a frost warning, I had to pick my all my tomatoes.  Most of them are still quite green.  I use the box/newspaper/banana method to ripen them.

I layer newspaper and green tomatoes.

Then for the last layer, I add a ripe banana.

I'll check the tomatoes every few days and remove the ripe ones.  I'll change out the banana every now and then, too, when it gets too ripe.

Frost Warning harvest

We had a frost warning last night so I pulled the frost sensitive produce.  Here are the last of rhubarb, peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce.

More from my garden

The nights are getting colder and my garden is definitely showing its reaction.  The beans and peas have stopped producing.  I took the last of the beans and peas from the garden and pulled the plants.  I picked some tomatoes and peppers but I still have some on the plants.  I'm hoping I'll get a few more ripened before I have to pick them and ripen them inside.  My cucumbers were a bust.  I have 2 cukes.  Weird-looking ones at that, too. The pattypan squash and acorn squash were duds.  I think I have to have larger transplants.

Lettuce, on the other hand, is doing really well.  I harvested a bunch and I still have quite a lot still growing nicely.  I think I'm going to try an old French recipe for lettuce soup.  It is supposed to resemble cream of broccoli soup.  We'll see, I guess.

When I picked my cherry trees, there were some that weren't ripe so I left them.  I picked those now and froze them on a baking sheet.  I also picked the last of my raspberries.  I really have to read up on raspberry bushes because they weren't very good producers last year and this year.  I also froze the raspberries.  Today, I took the frozen fruit and put them into Ziploc bags.

What's still left?  For fruit, I have apples, chokeberries, and one small harvest of rhubarb.  For vegetables, I have more beets, more lettuce, some tomatoes, some peppers, carrots, and parsnips.

The Garden is a Time Vacuum

I went to the garden early this afternoon with the intention of just thinning the beets.  HA!  Then I noticed that the second planting of lettuce needing thinning, too.  Plus, the beans needed staking because the wind storm from a couple of days ago knocked them over some.  Then, the peas needed weeding and the rhubarb needed cutting back because the young pea plants weren't getting the sun because of the rhubarb plants.

I had every intention of processing the Saskatoon berries today, but it wasn't going to happen.  I had all this garden stuff that needed my attention.

So, I ended up with:

• 3/4 of a large Ziploc bag of trimmed frozen green beans
• 5 ice-cube trays of Beet/Pecan Pesto
• 1 extra-large container of cleaned lettuce greens
• 1 extra-large container of cleaned beets
• 5 litres of rhubarb juice (making it into syrup tomorrow)

 All that's left to do now is to clean up the kitchen.  My least favourite part.

I'll try an remember to take a picture after the clean-up.