Harvesting the Garden

its the beginning of fall and its about time to start the real harvesting, freezing, preserving and canning.

When we first moved to our home we started with a small plot and over the years added in more and more of our back and side gardens to the yielding plots. We rotate our crops every two years to prevent the pest from getting too used to one spot, we have pots of herbs, and raised beds with fruit trees, and a great patch for pumpkins and strawberries.

I wanted to show some of our yields this year so far, mind you i have many in the deep freezer already, and of course nothing beats the sweet taste of a fresh tomato or zucchini from your own garden.  Picking oregano, thyme, mint and Jamaican peppers just as you plan to use them is nothing short of amazing. We have enjoyed zucchini bread so many times this summer, my sister has the recipe down pat.

Here are some of my string beans that i picked earlier and froze(the bag hadn't sealed properly so a little ice on there means we use it now-in today's dinner actually)

My cayenne peppers are hot enough to smell the heat even before you cut them. And of course the Scotch Bonnet pepper bring the heat like nobody's business, other than the ghost chili pepper from South America, these Jamaican babies can make you cry just from the scent, when they are in any dish you are guaranteed to need some bread and water to cool your mouth.  I have bags upon bags of harvested callaloo (which is like collard greens) stored already in the deep freeze.

My mint which went to seed

There always seems like something is coming into its prime and needs to be picked.  At times this is great but sometimes things slip through the cracks like my mint which has gone to seed sooner than i meant for it to do so. In Jamaica you can use the seeds to make a great tea thats stronger than the regular leaves and is kinda spicy so i wanted the seeds just not the whole plant to go to seed, i meant to cut some and let it continue to bloom greatly. It slipped my mind and i went outside this morning a realized the whole plant was done. I mean ready for bed done, I planned to bring it in so i would have fresh mint tea all winter, but there goes that plan.

Anyway I wish to show you all of what has been picked this week. so here is my video:


I hope your harvest is going well also, as always my loves
Happy and Safe flights and Welcome Fall