This Time of Year

Well, I am back to work, and that means there is less time to do everything I love to do in the garden and at home.  Including sleeping.  Sigh.  However, the weather is also cooling down a little, and that is nice.  The challenge now is finding time to go out and harvest everything in the garden, do canning projects, and write on my blog.  Since it is Labor Day weekend, I took a nap and then went out to gather.  I haven't been at the green beans for a few days, so there were a LOT.  My pattypan squash plant is just going nuts, so I picked four more today.  I could do a squash giveaway! My cucumber plants took a hit from powdery mildew and then no rain for quite a while, so the regular cukes are way down, but the lemon cukes are getting ready to explode again!

I also got lots and lots of hot peppers.  Some of the tabasco were ready, and lots of the chili and kung pao peppers.  You wouldn't even believe how hot these peppers are...two of those skinny red kung paos make a dish so hot I can hardly eat it. I think I am going to make some little jars of hot sauce out of them, since I am not making much salsa right now.  I also dug up a few shovelfuls of potatoes, and I left most of them in the garden, but the cut open ones came in to be used tomorrow.  No matter how careful I am, I always manage to slice a few of them in half.

These are all the tomatoes I got. It may seem like a lot, but compared to what I was getting, this is almost nothing.  Almost all of the initial flood of tomatoes are gone, they have turned red and been picked.  Now, the funniest thing is happening.  The plants looked like total doo-doo all summer from the early blight fungal stuff, because it rained every few days.  Then, it doesn't rain but once or twice in 3 weeks and the tomato plants have never been so happy.  They are as lush and green as they were in early June.  I'm hoping they will set more fruit and I'll have another flood of tomatoes before the frost in October. 

I also have tons of these golden pippen squash.  The watermelons are just starting to come in.  After cutting into one not ripe one earlier in the summer, I decided to wait until they fell off the vine.  I found these melons laying on the ground next to the vine, so I decided they were probably ready to come in. 

My porch in my new house has served as a wonderful storage, staging, and curing area for much of my produce.  The squash is living out here until it gets close to freezing, then it will go into the root cellar room in the basement.  The beans come out here until I shell them, and then they dry nicely as I sort them into each type for soup beans this winter.  It is a wonderful porch.  Carpeted, electricity, windows all the way around on 3 sides, and huge.  It is almost like being outside, but it is protected from insects and rain.  The perfect place for things to dry out and cure.

These are the beans I have so far. The beans are coming ready at different times, so it seems like I have a lot of the october beans and the tiger's eye, but it will even out more by the time frost comes.  I am really surprised, I thought I lost most of my limas to blight earlier in the season, but the ones that are left have really gone crazy, and I will have tons of them by the time I'm done.

My garlic and some of my onions are also hanging out here until I take them down to the root cellar.  I love my new house...it is so useful in preserving my harvests!  Do you preserve a lot of food for the winter?  How do you store things in your house?