Late summer gardening

This has been the busiest summer ever, and I must say that we didn't spend a lot of time in our garden. We had visitors for two weeks and then we were travelling for another two. Luckily, our neighbours kept watering our greenhouses during those two weeks, and it looks like we created a good base as we are blessed with a wonderful harvest.

We only came back home a couple of days ago, and we went to the garden as soon as we could. I've been busy with processing our tomatoes ever since. I have dried quite a few in the dehydrator, then I placed them in a jar, and submerged them in olive oil. I keep the jar in the fridge, so we can use them as pasta topping for several months. I have also made 20 jars of tomato/pepper sauce for winter, and today I will make some passata too. There are still plenty of tomatoes left in the greenhouse, so I'm thinking of making some ketchup or relish. We'll see...

It took me ages to harvest those tomatoes, and I was so happy with the result. Look how colourful!

And yes, there is a tomato spam coming, so I hope that you're ready for it.

I've been waiting for ages for these heirlooms. They grew so big.

This is the biggest one, and we used it for a bruschetta yesterday. Honestly, I would have kept it if I could as it was way too pretty to eat 😊

I don't remember the name of this variety, but I will keep the seeds for next year as they are delicious, and the plants are producing like crazy.

Some of them have interesting shapes. What do you see here?

We had some twins too...

I love that each of them is so different...

This one is called green zebra, and we were not sure if we would get any tomatoes as these plants were destroyed with early blight. It turns out we were wrong, and there are quire a few of them.

We couldn't wait and ate this one in the garden. It's a meaty variety, so it's perfect to grill.

We have tomatoes of all sizes...

There are some traditional ones too...

This one is the result of cross-pollination. It's a red tomato plant, but the fruit is showing signs of our heirloom variety. Next year, we will do it differently as it turns out we have many cases of cross-pollination, so we will have to plant the varieties separately.

These yellow ones are gigantic too!

And yes, we are not the only ones who want to enjoy them 😊 Somebody was munching on this one before us.

Now let's move to the pepper spam!

Our peppers are so much better than last year. The fruit is big and nicely shaped, they almost look like we bought them in a store. Planting them in the greenhouse was a great idea.

I harvested these when my family was visiting us as my brother loves this variety. I didn't harvest many though as he would eat as many as I would bring 😊

This is how it looks like when I forget to bring a basket...

Our red Hungarian peppers are turning red! They are so big!

This is what I took for my tomato/pepper sauce because there are so many of them that we would never manage to eat them fresh before they would start to rot.

Beans are doing well too and they turned into a bean jungle.

We have some nice pods, and I'm waiting for them to dry before I will harvest them. Soon I will plant another badge for October harvest.

Our basil is producing too. I have our freezer full of pesto already.

This was a surprise cucumber, one of the few that we had.

I can't wait for our carrots, but they are still just babies...

Kohlrabies don't only come round shaped 😊

I was forced to take some baby kale too because out of my three plants one was already eaten by 'somebody' else, so I had to hurry if I wanted my share too.

There are so many chilli peppers, and I hope that they will have enough time to turn red. We had cold and rainy summer, so they are way too late.

This is our ninja beetroot as it looked so small, but...

And patty pan - I love those so much.

Yes, we still have zucchinis...

Big ones too...

Eggplants don't grow as big as I expected, but there are many, so it compensates for the size.

We have harvested some corn too. We don't have many, but it's enough for the two of us because we don't want to preserve it for later.

I always find it a bit scary to clean corn cobs as you have no idea what's hidden inside. A few times, I found a worm and automatically threw the cob on the ground. And honestly, I screamed too.

This one had no visitors and was perfect. It tasted great too!

This year was great for plums. I've dried a couple of kilos, we harvested 200 kilos which we gave to a distillery, and there are still many more left for pies 😊

And when I say many more, I do mean many more...

We also have some visitors which we protect. I have searched for this caterpillar, and I believe it will become a pinkish moth.

This one I have no idea...

And we had to transport our harvest with a wheelbarrow - we are so grateful for everything that we got 😊

We are back at home, and don't plan any travel other than HiveFest, so I will be posting my regular garden updates again.

See you next time!