Garden in September

Our gardening season is slowly coming to the end, and now we're in the full harvesting phase. There is still enough vegetables to feed an entire army, so we need to change our strategy for next year and plant a bit less. I can preserve a lot of food, but it takes so much time that I can't do anything else. On one hand I do enjoy gardening a lot, but on the other hand some personal time off would be nice too, and I don't like to come to a point when it will become a chore.

There are some plants that are higher maintenance, such broccoli and cauliflower with little to no yield which we won't plant anymore. Then there are those such as tomatoes, peppers, chillies and eggplants which require a lot of work, but they also reward us with more than we need, so we'll definitely include those in our plan. And then there us those that don't need so much time from our side and simply live their lives, such as snap peas, beans, carrots, leeks, beets, corn and zucchinis, so we will continue planting those. We might try one or two experiments too, but generally we'll stay with what we know as we're coming into our house renovation phase that will need my attention too.

Today, I went to the garden to pick some vegetables for lunch, and I was surprised that our beans are still producing. I had to plant the seeds three times and I only have about 10 plants, but every other day I'm able to harvest a handful of green pods which I consider a success. I think that the seeds in the package were too old. Next time, I will mix various packages to see if it will get better.

I have also took out a few carrots for nasi goreng. This year they are not as good as last year, but considering that they're less than 3 months old I'm happy with what we got. I planted them way too late, and I must admit that I was in a hurry, so I didn't prepare the soil with as much care as I usually would, so in this case any harvest is a good harvest.

Beets are probably the easiest vegetable for me to grow. You put some seeds in the soil with compost and they just grow until you take them out. From my experience they don't need so much water, so this year they only got the water when it rained and they are happy with it.

I wanted to make patty pan/beetroot soup for lunch, but then I decided to mix it with kohlrabi instead of beetroot, and it was so good! It's a simple soup with garlic, onion, salt, pepper, and some cumin, and now I have my beets for some oven chips.

Basil just doesn't stop growing, and it looks like we'll be eating pesto all winter. When I see those beautiful plants I can't let them get old even though we have enough pesto already. I might sterilize some pesto too and it add to my Christmas gift collection.

Look how cute is patty pan when it's so tiny...

It took them ages to take off, but now they are appearing all over the plants...

My Hungarian paprika is such a huge success. The fruit is gigantic and it tastes so good too. We let our neighbours taste it too, and now I have a task of collecting the seeds for them for next year.

And yes, our tomatoes are going strong...

We're eating them literally every day in one form or another. It's good that I'm creative in the kitchen as otherwise we would feel like they're coming out of our ears already.

I have also found an old cucumber which was hidden in the back. I thought it would be bitter, but it was still good. I wonder if I'll find another surprises this season.

Have you ever seen a sweet potato plant flowering? I haven't, well until today. It is so pretty. There are many more buds on my four plants, and it will be so beautiful when they will all pop up at the same time. However, I wonder what is growing under the ground.

Today, I have picked our first two fennels for fennel/orange slices salad. It's the best combination ever. They are a bit on the smaller side, but this is how we like them as they are tender and not so chewy.

Lunch fresh from the garden!

I found some raspberries too. There were not so many, but I didn't expect to find anything so late in the season.

This is our perennial Margaret plant. I cut it down to the ground last autumn, and now it's as tall as me again. It blooms late in the year, and I like to have some colour around when other flowers are dying off.

It's full of beautiful purple flowers now.

I thought that this was a volunteer plant, but apparently it is a perennial anemone, and we didn't have it last year because we thought it was some sort of weed, so we removed it. Luckily, it came back and I will know to leave it alone next year. I guess, I will have to prune it a bit as it seems to be spreading rapidly, but I will definitely not remove all of it like I did last year. The flowers are growing on large stems, and the plants build pretty corners in our garden.

We had a busy visitor this morning. I was observing this bumble bee for a while as it seemed to be so happy even though it was working hard. It was covered in pollen from head to toe 😊

Our quince is doing well, and we have quite a few fruits this year. They seem to be healthier than last year, so we will pick them up earlier before they get the rust disease again.

Even when I feel like not going to the garden in the morning, I always feel happy when I come home. It's funny how priorities change. I hated going to the garden when I was a child, and now it's bringing me so much pleasure.

See you next time!