This year’s garden is starting to wind down. Our growing season is not typically very long. I’m hoping we’ll hold off on getting a frost for another month, but a lot of plants are done producing anyway. I pulled out our yellow squash, and picked most of the tomatoes. There are a few straggler tomatoes left on the vines. My son harvested about 8 ears of corn from his 10 or so plants. We still have a few things waiting to be picked, like beets, kale, chard, eggplants, and zucchini. Take a peek at our recent harvest:
I grew five varieties of tomatoes this year: Early Girl, Druzba, a Blue type, Cherry (very tiny) and some Romas. We got a good crop of them this year.My first attempt at canning tomatoes! I think it went alright. The half pint jars were a little small, I have realized. I will do pint jars for the next batch I can.My canning book talks about picking tomatoes green and letting them ripen on the counter, maybe so they all ripen at the same time? We picked most of what was left. I keep worrying about frost anyway, so this way I don’t have to rush out and cover anything.One of the last yellow squash we picked. We got a whole lot of these. I had three plants, which was too many for us this year. We froze a lot of this.One of my sunflowers from our back yard. This was several days ago, when it was still standing tall, before we got days and days of rain…Here it is today… looking very sad.The watermelon has not grown a whole lot. I think it’s supposed to have stripes as well. It’s still hanging in there. I will let it sit as long as possible and see if we get an edible melon.Our tiny pumpkins. The plants are done for this year. I really like these, and will grown them again next year, along with a little bit bigger variety.A tiny eggplant. These plants grew wonderfully, but didn’t flower until late August. Now they have tiny fruits on them. They are not ripe yet. Hopefully they will get bigger and ripen before we get a freeze.Our Kale, still going strong. I’m going to attempt to leave these, and see if they will come back in spring. I have heard that Kale (and Chard!) will grow as perennials. We will see if they come back in spring. I have been cutting, using/freezing, and then waiting for more to grow, like cut-and-come-again style. We have a lot of kale frozen for winter.Here’s my garden today. It’s still very green but there is not much in terms of vegetables left.
You can cut it up, blanch it in boiling water for a couple minutes, and then put it in an icebath (to stop the cooking). Then put it in freezer bags. (I usually squeeze out as much water as I can). I put it in all sorts of stuff in the winter. Stir fry, fried rice, soups, etc. I attempted this with chard this year as well and it seems to have worked. I froze some and a week later took a bag of chard out to use, and it was really good.
Oh, thank you! 🙂 we just moved into a bigger house with an actual yard we can garden in so next spring my brother and I plan on getting a whole bunch of raised beds in. I never thought of freezing greens! We have lots of freezer and cellar space here for lots of food. I’m very excited. He is a chef and has maintained large garden grounds for previous restaurants so he is very experienced in this kind of stuff, Thankfully I won’t be getting overwhelmed doing it all alone!
My tiny u.p. farm 
How do you freeze kale?
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You can cut it up, blanch it in boiling water for a couple minutes, and then put it in an icebath (to stop the cooking). Then put it in freezer bags. (I usually squeeze out as much water as I can). I put it in all sorts of stuff in the winter. Stir fry, fried rice, soups, etc. I attempted this with chard this year as well and it seems to have worked. I froze some and a week later took a bag of chard out to use, and it was really good.
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Oh, thank you! 🙂 we just moved into a bigger house with an actual yard we can garden in so next spring my brother and I plan on getting a whole bunch of raised beds in. I never thought of freezing greens! We have lots of freezer and cellar space here for lots of food. I’m very excited. He is a chef and has maintained large garden grounds for previous restaurants so he is very experienced in this kind of stuff, Thankfully I won’t be getting overwhelmed doing it all alone!
Thank you for the great idea 🙂
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