It is hard to believe the garden season is nearly over! We have been harvesting the garden since August. We have had lots of frost warnings, so we have been picking the garden goodies, cleaning the garden out and helping my folks clean out their garden too. I love harvesting the garden! It is one of my favorite times of the year!
Growing a garden in the city is not difficult and depending upon the size of your yard, it may need a bit of planning to make the most of your space, but it is well worth the effort! If you do not have a backyard, you can still garden in various pots — I do that even though we have mini gardens and the community garden plot too. I find herbs, potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes do so well in gardening pots!
“Happiness is… harvesting vegetables from your own garden.”
– unknown
Here are the gooseberries we planted. We had planted 2 varieties of gooseberries. I am glad to see they are doing well. They are very tart but as canned fruit, jam or in a pie they are delicious. When I was a kid, my gramma had green gooseberries and the berries were huge and the plants were nearly as tall as I was! I would go up to the bushes, grab a few berries and eat them. Gooseberries were one of my favorites. They were a bit tart but not like today’s varieties!
We helped my folks harvest a bit of their garden as well. We have been helping out a this summer and I am so glad they are sharing some of their harvest with us too! There are pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, corn, peas, carrots and beets. With all the frost warnings, we decided to pick what the frost will ruin the most first. Root vegetables can stay in the ground for a while, even with frost. By mid-October though it will all get picked and the garden cleaned out since it can sometimes snow in October!
Pumpkins are doing great. They may not turn orange on the vine, but that is totally fine — they will cure in the warm sun but will be taken in at night.
I have a post here on how to cure pumpkins — it has lots of great info from pumpkin farmers!
Peas can be left on the plant until they turn brown. The pods will feel papery and the peas will be shriveled. They can then be collected for seed. Remove them from the pods and place the dried peas in a jar. The peas can then be planted next spring. I like saving peas like this and this is how peas were saved in the “old days.”
The corn did really well this year! You can see all the cobs on the plants. Once the corn silk turns brown, the cobs are ready to pick. They snap easily off of the plant when they are ready to be harvested. This corn is absolutely delicious!
The garden at my folks’ always grows so well. The beets and carrots are humongous!! This will make great pickles, soup and veggie side dishes!
In our backyard, the herbs and lettuce my girls planted did great!
Here is the flat leaf parsley. I will wash it, and lay it out on the counter to dry. Once dried, I will crumble it up and place in a jar to use. My gramma combined dried dill and parsley together, and I like doing the same.
Here is the regular parsley. I will wash it, chop it up and place it in a jar in the freezer. I then add it to anything like mashed potatoes, salads or soups and stews, just as I would fresh parsley. It works just lovely!
Here are our herbs and carrots we picked. I am looking forward to drying and freezing and of course eating our garden goodies!
At our community garden plot, the spinach that went to seed has grown again. We picked it and it is absolutely delicious! We enjoy it in salads, omelets and pasta.
We are digging up the last of our garden since it is nearly October. We will pick the weeds and the garden will be ready for winter!
After a few hours, this plot is ready for winter.
And this plot is ready for winter too. I cannot believe that the gardening season is done!
And that’s it for another gardening year!
How did your garden do?
enjoy from Our City Homestead to yours