Well its been full on non-stop ever since I got home, harvesting, preserving, storing, pickling, cooking ... sorting tons of food for the winter, despite all my worries early in the year, apart from peas and beets, we've had a massive crop.
The peppers are still a little behind but will keep on producing for weeks yet untill the frost puts an end to them, I may pull them soon though as they are so badly overshadowing the piri piri plants and they need sun to ripen..
The toms are more or less finished, we still have a lot of green ones, but just cannot manage any more, we've frozen them, eaten then, given tons away, Ive made soup, pasta sauce, tomtato sauce, roasted tomato puree... and we still have loads. So we have stopped watering them, and will try to make some green tom chutney this week, I also have a lot of overlarge marrows to make chutney with too... Jars are a real problem now... Ive almost run out ..
So much food everywhere, its wonderful, yesterday we had a roast pork, our roast potatoes, our cabbage, our yellow wax pod beans, our carrots, and a melon from our garden as desert... you just cant beat the flavour, picked straight from the garden...
Still to come are tons of cabbage, time to plant winter ones soon too, about 40 caulis looking good... still loads of carrots, Ive tried again with beets and maybe we'll get a few. The squashes are poor compared to last year but we'll have enough for winter, Ive plenty of jerusalem artichokes come up too, they'll make a nice change.
Yesterday we pulled all the runner bean plants and dealt with those, we leave them to fill out and then I pod them and freeze them as loose beans, instead of as sliced beans , as we have so many green bean type s we use the small hard beans in soup during winter as a substitute for dried beans. Ive also got enough to dry and save as next years seed, the same with the yellow waxy pods and french beans... next year I should halve my seed costs..
I brough back some packets of sweetcorn seed for next year as its hard to get here, you can get maize seed but its never as good for eating...
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