Eggplant, Cantaloupe, and Other Harvested Fruits and Vegetables

It has been busy week after all the harvests that I completed over the past few days.  This includes picking pole beans and canning all of them for Winter season storage.  Picking as many Roma tomatoes as possible and getting them to ripen in the windowsill.  When they ripe it is then time to make tomato sauce with them which takes pretty much all day to accomplish.

Now I have two new harvests to deal with including cantaloupe and eggplants.  Cantaloupe I picked a few days ago as well as the eggplant.  I had left the eggplant on the bush for as long as possible so that it would ripen correctly and once it reached its peak it was time to remove it.

The cantaloupe was much easier to determine if it was ripe or not.  I just gave the stem a nudge and it happened to get disconnected from the cantaloupe meaning that it was time to bring it in.  I like to leave it in the fridge for a couple of days in order to get the fruit nice and cool temperature wise.  This way when you cut into it you will be eating cold fruit instead of it being warm.

It was a good size and I can’t complain about it because I didn’t put that much effort into this particular melon.  The melons didn’t happen to do as good as last season, but I will have to make it up next year.  I still have one more cantaloupe that is growing right now and I hope to be picking that one in a few weeks.

It is not close to being harvested and hopefully it will keep growing until a bigger size, otherwise I might just chop it up and turn it into compost.  Either way it is going to be eaten.

I had seven eggplants growing at one point and now that I picked one of them it is down to six.  I have one bush that has five eggplants at one time.  This puts much strain on the plant and needs to be fed more regularly which is something that I am doing.

The first one I picked was a decent size and I think it is one of bigger ones of this season.  The others are also looking good and hopefully one of them will be the first one in size.

If I could get an eggplant this size all the time I will be a happy gardener.  I have grown them to be a little bit bigger, but this is a good average size.  With only two plants left and cooler weather coming they need to start growing and ripening fast before a frost kills the plant.

I also harvested many more Roma, cherry, and steakhouse tomatoes this week as well.  I am picking them early and ripening them in the window for now.  Since they are going to be used for sauce and cooked, it only seems obvious to put them in the window before they are eating by predators such as insects, caterpillars, and even rodents.

Here is a picture of some recent Roma tomatoes I picked this week.  As you can see not all of them are ripe, but they are starting to turn and that is when I begin to pick them of the plant.

A couple of steakhouse tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

A nice and perfect ripe steakhouse tomato.

I also was able to get a few more peppers harvested too this week.  Only five of them started to begin turning purple or a darker color which meant that they were done and ready to be picked.  That is what I did and  you can take a look at them below.

Now I think you are all caught up with my gardening efforts and I will make certain to post more frequent updates on my progress in the near future.