We had perfect fall weather this past week and I spent some time cleaning up the garden. What I really need to do is start digging up all the sweet potatoes. The coming week is predicted to be warmer and the first frost is nowhere is sight for the next ten days, which means I will procrastinate digging up sweet potatoes!
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| Late fall garden with abundant sweet potato vines |
With such nice weather, I spent time just being in the garden while procrastinating hard work like digging up sweet potatoes! It won't be long until all the green will be gone, so it is time to savory the garden and all the critters that enjoy it as much as I do.
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| A bee enjoying marigolds |
Some critters that enjoy my garden are not on the guest list, including this giant grasshopper. I'm suspecting that he may be responsible for my disappearing fall seedlings!
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| Giant grasshopper on chard |
As for harvests, the eggplants continue to produce well. The plants have bent over with the weight of fruits. I'm getting tired of eating eggplants, so these were passed on to a coworker.
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| Florida Market Eggplants |
I spotted another giant grasshopper in the green beans. Luckily the beans continue to provide harvests even though the leaves are looking munched and sad. This week I roasted
green beans with potatoes with a creamy tarragon dressing. Delicious! I have tarragon growing in the herb bed, but it is something I don't use often. This dressing recipe may change that.
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| Garden of Eden and Blue Coco Beans |
I harvested another little Seminole pumpkin at about 2 1/2 pounds. I counted at least a dozen more little pumpkins growing on the same vine. They may not all ripen before our first frost, but it has definitely been my best pumpkin year ever.
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| Seminole Pumpkin |
The okra plant that toppled over from all the rain ended up toppling over in the opposite direction. I attempted to right it again and broke a major part of the stem. I decided to just leave it toppled over. Despite all its troubles, I did harvest a bit of okra this week. The tomatoes are slowly trying to make a comeback. I will take all I can get!
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| A few tomatoes and okra |
Peppers were the most abundant harvest this week at 3.9 lbs. I have now harvested more peppers this year than last year. I've been roasting and eating them with plans of freezing the extra. However, for some reason I never seem to have extras.
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| Basket full of Peppers |
Last week I harvested sweet potato leaves and this week I cooked them into these
greens and cheese hand pies. I really like these although I did change the recipe a bit to use whole wheat flour and coconut oil. I froze a bunch of them before baking. I hope they taste good after being frozen. If so, I may be using a lot of sweet potato leaves to make hand pies to keep in the freezer.
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| Sweet Potato Greens and Cheese Hand Pies |
Weekly Harvests (lbs):
Peppers
3.9
Okra
0.3
Green beans
1.6
Tomatoes
0.3
Eggplant
2.4
Winter squash
2.6
Yearly Harvests: 906.1 lbs
That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week. To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on
Our Happy Acres.
Oh wow, your sweet potato vines look so lush, I imagine that there's a lot of beautiful potatoes waiting for you there. That's a fat and happy looking grasshopper too. Lovely harvests, I especially like those beans.
ReplyDeleteImagine having so many eggplant that you get tired of eating them! I agree that the sweet potato vines are so lush. I didn't know you can eat their greens.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first year I've eaten sweet potato leaves and they are now my favorite summer green.
DeleteThat okra plant sounds like it's a tough cookie! And those sweet potato vines are truly lush. I've been procrastinating digging mine too. I dug a few hills to see how they are doing, and I had no trouble finding taters. My excuse is it's hot here, and I would rather wait for a cooler day since it is hard work digging them!
ReplyDeleteThat's my excuse too. We're in the upper 80's this week, so perhaps the following week will be better sweet potato harvesting weather.
DeleteWow - those sweet potato vines are crazy!! Can't wait to see what's hiding under all those leaves! And another Seminole pumpkin...lucky you! I will have to wait for next year to (hopefully) get a taste of that variety. And those hand pies look delicious - a great idea to make them and then freeze them. I had not heard of that term before (hand pie) so learned something new there as well.
ReplyDeleteThe Seminole pumpkins were very slow to mature for me. This is the first time I've grown them, so I'm not sure if that is normal. I planted them around the end of April and I don't think I harvested the first pumpkin until August. They've been prolific since then, but they definitely took a long time.
DeleteDitto, those sweet potato vines are AMAAAZING! And I love the sound of those hand pies. I wasn't able to cook with the leaves as I just had so little foliage on my few weak little plants. :)
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of the bee on the marigold - beautiful.
You have a lot of sweet potatoes there you will have your work cut out digging up that lot. I didn't know that you could eat sweet potato leaves.
ReplyDeleteThere should be a haul of potatoes under those vines. I can see why you are putting off the work of digging and curing them. Your whole garden still looks lush. Everything here is crispy.
ReplyDeleteYou sure have your work cut out for you digging that patch of sweet potatoes. Do you plant different varieties? Looking forward to learning the freezing results of your pies with the sweet potato leaves filling.
ReplyDeleteI normally grow Beauregard sweet potatoes just because they are common and available here. I had plans to start my own slips this year, but I wasn't very successful so I have a few Beauregard planted this year. When I went to get more slips, they only had Hernandez sweet potatoes, which I've never grown before. I'm interested to see how they did.
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