Fall crops up!

The radishes we planted early August are beautiful...picked a bunch for the luncheon today. And the red beets are about ready to harvest. Along with parsley and cilantro. The more recently planted radishes and red beets and zuchini are looking good, as are the bush beans, although all those are a gamble with the October weather. The newest plantings of lettuce, spinach, and chard are up, and will be covered by the cold frame when the first cold weather threatens.   The watermelon  cantaloupe, and pie pumpkin vines and leaves are dying quickly this week but the fruits are looking good.  I presume I should wait to harvest to let them mature in the garden a bit longer.  But the plot surely looks sad:  (note added in December:  when harvested cantaloupes tasted good, pumpkins made great pies, and watermelons were great looking but watery and tasteless--not sweet.

Salsa!

The tomato patch doesn't look great. Many of the cages have tilted due to the weight of the tomatoes, and there are some rotten and some imperfect tomatoes and some of the leaves have browned. But the number of beautiful tomatoes is astounding. Several hundred perfect plum tomatoes have come off of 7 plants. And the big boys, while not huge, are absolutely perfect! I made salsa yesterday--with plum tomatoes, a yellow heirloom tomato from Amy, cucumbers, onions, garlic, cilantro, and a dark red pepper from Amy from the garden, plus some black beans, cumin, chili powder, red wine vinegar, and salt. It was, still is, scrumptious!

Broccoli, finally!

Waiting for broccoli all summer. Finally developing small heads. Perhaps too crowded between chard and peppers. But yummy!

Raspberry Jelly!

Last week, I made raspberry jelly. I mashed and then cooked the raspberries a little, then left them hanging in the jelly bag a few hours. I haven't done this for about 30 years! Once you have the juice from the berries, the procedure is just like for making jam....easy! And beautiful...I love the transparency of jelly.

Sept 5: Raspberry Jam!

Made 6 jars of Raspberry Jam tonight. For the past 2 months, only a few raspberries have ripened each day. But this week they started to come in heavily. So I picked Tuesday and today, had 5 cups of berries, and made jam with Ball classic pectin, but used the low sugar recipe on the label. Looks and tastes yummy!