Happy September!! It’s hard to believe that fall is soon upon us!
This month has been busy with harvesting the garden and preserving our harvest. Not only did we do Harvest Week again this year in which we harvested the majority of our garden on our city homestead, but we also had to harvest our garden at my folks’. Let me show you around the garden throughout September and show you what we have harvested.
Let’s get started!
“A garden is a friend you can visit any time.”
— Unknown
September 2
We started harvesting our garden at my folks’ so my dad can work up the dirt before winter. The zucchini did not do well, but we got a few small zucchini which is alright! The patty pan squash did good too and we got a few to eat and pickle. The corn is absolutely beautiful! We picked it and are eating some, saving some for seed and I’ll freeze the rest.
September 6
Time to harvest potatoes!! There’s a lot here and the ground is very hard to dig in, so this will be a bit of work! We also harvested a bunch of corn too.
September 8
The peas actually did pretty good. We picked them today – the ones that are dry we left for seed peas, and the rest we picked, shelled and ate some fresh and froze the rest.
The dill we have been picking the fronds to freeze and dry.
The celery has not grown much this summer and the sunflower will soon open. The beets and carrots are starting to grow though it’s a bit late in the season. Unfortunately potatoes overgrew so these beets and carrots did not get the sun or the space to grow.
We got a good amount of beans which we will wash, trim, chop and freeze.
Here are the pumpkins. The pumpkins did so well! The plants are starting to dry up so we will be picking them soon. We want to leave them as long as possible – the more they ripen on the vine, the better for long term storage.
Here’s the potatoes in our backyard. The plants have dried up. Once dry, they no longer need to be watered. It is recommended from this point to wait two weeks before harvesting so the potatoes can cure and the skins will toughen up. Most of these have been dry for nearly two weeks.
Here’s the spaghetti squash.
You can hardly see the gooseberry for the pumpkins! The jostaberry is growing well – no berries yet, but we just planted it this year so it’ll need time to take root before yielding berries.
The back corner gets terribly hot! The cucumbers love it as did the tomatoes but the peppers, not so much. We picked a bunch of cucumbers. Some we didn’t notice so they turned a bit yellow. We’ll eat some and pickle some. If the cucumbers get too yellow, they can become bitter.
The cantaloupe and watermelon are doing well, but I do not think they’ll grow in time. We have a short growing season, but we’re amazed they’ve done as well as they have!
Here’s the backyard. It’s all showing signs of frosty nights and harvest time!
September 9
We did not get much of the garden done today. We had canning we needed to do – I made jelly from the strawberries we bought at the farmers market, strawberry juice so we can make jelly in the winter, crabapple juice and we made some dill pickles as well.
We harvested 44.5 pounds of potatoes from our potato patch at my folks’.
September 10
We were hoping to leave the squash as long as possible. The vole has been causing some issues in our garden, so today we decided to harvest the spaghetti squash since the vole has his home in our squash patch! We got a fair amount of squash off just one plant!
We started to pick the potatoes from our backyard. The potato plants are dried up which is good because that tells us it’s ready to harvest. The Warba potatoes did not produce well and were mostly rotten. We just got a handful – enough for a meal or a big pot of soup! The Queen Anne did quite well and we picked 31 pounds.
We picked 54.25 pounds at my folks’ this evening — 23.25 pounds were an assortment of white potatoes and 31 pounds were Cerisa. Cerisa is a high yielding potato.
This evening it cooled off, so we picked Red Apple potatoes in the backyard and got 18 pounds.
September 11
This section of the garden is complete. It feels good to see some progress.
We harvested 20 pounds of Cerisa. These are such a good producing potato! We harvested 57.5 pounds from our potato patch at my folks’.
Here are the herbs. They’re doing so well. We will trim them again and dry them as well as freeze them.
The peppers have done pretty good – some better than others but that’s totally ok!! Homegrown peppers are amazing – they have such a nice flavor compared to store bought.
The tomatoes in the front yard have done much better than those in the back. And they’re much more flavorful and sweeter. I’m guessing perhaps the front gets some evening shade whereas the back gets some morning shade.
September 12
The fruit trees are starting to turn color! Days are hot and nights are chilly.
The strawberries are still producing berries which is awesome!
We put the squash out during the day in the sunshine to cure and bring them in at night.
Look at all the dill we picked! Now to wash it, spin it dry and chop it up. Some will be set to dry and some frozen.
Potatoes are officially done!! I share more about harvesting potatoes for the winter here.
We also harvested the corn. Some corn was excellent and so sweet to eat! Some corn was not quite ready with a lot of underdeveloped kernels, but that corn will be left to dry and it’ll become seed for next year.
September 13
Chives have been trimmed, washed and are ready to be chopped. They’ll be dried and frozen.
Pumpkins are starting to ripen! But, it’s time to pick them since the evenings are getting so cool. Pumpkins should not be out at night once it reaches +12C/53F and some of our evenings have been frosty!
We ended up with 28 pumpkins. This is my daughter ‘H’s pumpkin patch. She planted Spooky pumpkins which are a bit more square. She planted Jack ‘o Lanterns and Sugar Pie pumpkins. We think they may have cross pollinated and that’s why they’re all so small! That’s ok because the small sugar pie pumpkins are so sweet!
We will bring them out in the sunshine to cure and they’ll be brought in the garage at night.
We picked more cucumbers. Cucumbers can be so easy to miss under all the leaves!
Here’s the sunflower.
I finally got the chives chopped tonight.
And we decided to harvest some more potatoes in the backyard. We got about 6.5 pounds.
September 15
We harvested the Red Emmalie potatoes. We got about 25 pounds which is quite good. This variety produced a lot of potatoes and is quite large. We have not grown this variety before since I’m interested in how they taste.
September 16
My girls and I along with my mom took a little road trip to a nearby strawberry farm and stumbled upon a market store that supports local greenhouses. We picked up some lovely pears and veggies. The strawberries from the farm are amazing! They taste like a homegrown strawberry and exactly how it should taste! So flavorful! We also stopped at the lake…it’s end of the season but was still nice. And we found a quaint little fabric store and of course had to stop in to pick up fabric for some upcoming projects. It was such a nice break!
When we got back, we picked the tomatoes and pumpkins at my mom’s and then went home with a lot of it! I’m totally fine with that as we are trying to build up our winter pantry!
Farmers are combining everywhere! I love harvest time!
With all the fruit we bought and vegetables we harvested, we made Carrot Relish, Dill Pickles and Strawberry Jam and I’ll be making more Strawberry Jelly and Strawberry Juice too!
September 18
We finally finished the potato harvest today! Yukon Gold never seem to work in our dirt – they’re split, some have blight and an overall not very good. We got 8 pounds.
We got 4.25 pounds of the Melody potatoes – not bad from just two hills!
The sunflower is finally opening up!
The yard is slowly getting cleaned up. We do not have a compost pile, so we toss the vines into the organics bin. Maybe one day we’ll be making our own compost!
Now that the cucumbers have been harvested and the plants removed, we can tackle the tomatoes!
The pumpkins are turning orange quite quickly!
We decided to pick a few of the Kitchen Hot Lemon peppers. We will pick them green – some have ripened and turned yellow and some have not. There are a lot of these peppers! We never grew them before but these are super hot – hotter than cayenne!
We actually have a lot of peppers this year! We cooked with them (these peppers are especially good in scrambled eggs), added them to homemade Salsa, Candied Peppers (also known as cowboy candy) in dill pickles and the cayenne peppers we made Cayenne Pepper Sauce and homemade Ground Cayenne. There’s so many things to make with homegrown peppers! And of course eat them fresh!
September 20
Sunflower is beautiful! They’re such cheery flowers.
The corn looks great! And tastes amazing!
We picked the watermelon and cantaloupe because the frost got the plants even though we covered them and the plants completely dried up. So…we thought we’d slice into it and they are definitely not developed yet. It was a good try! They smell amazing. The cantaloupe tastes so sweet and good but the watermelon tastes like cucumber. It’s too bad, but we’ll try again next year and start then inside!
Time to pick these tomatoes. We were going to pick them earlier but I thought we’d try to let as many ripen on the vine as possible. This plant produced the best.
Such a beautiful sunset!
September 23
Raspberries are producing more and they’re so much larger than they were all summer. And they taste so good!!
September 25
The sunflower is starting to produce seed but I am not sure if there’s enough time for the seeds to fully grow. It’s neat to watch it grow!
Here is the sunflower up close.
September 29
There’s so many raspberries that the branch completely fell over! We picked them all. Yum!
September 30
We harvested the dill seed that was ready. The rest needs a few weeks.
I love the pretty colors of fall!
Another little sunflower has opened up now.
And that’s the garden for September! We got a lot done but have the herbs and few other things to clean up before winter. Guess that will be October’s job!
