Garden Harvest Winding Down

It is now September and with the fall season just around the corner my garden harvest is coming to a close for this year.  Cooler weather is in the near future and most of my plants have reached their peak or are calling it quits for the year.

Five out of six of the pumpkins I am growing have ripened to the point that I could pick them very soon.  I like to pick them later usually closer to the month of October rather than now.  Tomatoes are done for the most part with only a couple of plants that have a few tomatoes left to pick.

Today I picked probably one of the last harvests of pole beans for the year, but with them continuing to flower I might be able to get some more.  They will not be as large as the ones harvested during the summertime, but nevertheless any pole bean is a good bean.

Three zucchinis were also harvested today as well.  I will probably not get any more of them, but I am still happy that I had a very productive season with them.

Bush beans have stopped producing flowers and I can easily pull them out of the ground any time this month.  I usually wait for the first frost and then rake up all the debris and take down my bean trellis, nets, and even the fence if needed.

I already took down the blueberry net because they are finished for this year and I will have to make sure to get them ready for the next season.  I will probably weed them one more time before the fall season in order to keep weeds away from them while they are dormant.

Right now the only plants that are growing would include carrots, eggplant, and celery.  I only have two more plants of eggplants left and each of them has at least one fruit on it.  One of the plants has five of them that will most likely reach maturity at the same time very soon.

Carrots will be fine when the first frost comes because the leaves are not affected by a frost like everything else is.  I keep them stored in the ground until November when I use them for Thanksgiving.  They always taste better fresh when they are first picked out of the ground.

Celery was a test plant this season and they lasted the entire summer and might be able to get some for the fall.  I am not expecting much, but anything would be good since they didn’t work out like they were supposed to.  I will try them again next year until I can grow them consistently.

There are a few more corn stalks that are producing corn while all the older ones are starting to turn brown and die.  I will take out all the corn stalks once the season comes to an end in a month or so.

All my sunflowers are producing seeds after they were pollinated by the bees during the summer.  Some are being eaten by birds and other pests, but some of them I have covered in order to save as many as possible.  You can cook them in order to eat them during the winter if that is something you like.  I will take out the sunflower stalks as well once the season ends.

I also mentioned that I planted a small row of cabbage as well for the fall.  I took some pictures of them recently and they are small right now, but will get much bigger down the road.