Fall Harvest Continued

Welcome back. It's been a month or so since I last posted. Time has been flying by as usual and the gardening season is coming to a close. Soon it will be time to pull the plants and till the soil.

In the meantime, we are still enjoying some veggies including tomatoes, peppers, onions, and beans. Even a few yellow and Zucchini squash remain.

Overall, it has been a good gardening season as most veggies have thrived. This was after a very wet Spring which I thought was going to ruin the entire gardening season.

This past weekend I started by picking a few pumpkins. There were 8 or 10 in the garden, however, some were chewed on the bottom side by what appeared to be some sort of beetle. The 6 good ones do look nice on the porch steps, however.

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Next, I dug the potatoes in the lower garden. As you may recall from posts earlier this season, it was a very difficult Spring to try to get the potatoes growing. I ended up re-planting 3 times as the wet conditions kept rotting the potato seeds. I first planted Yukon Gold, but by the third planting I could only find the Goldrush variety, which is a white potato. I only ended up with a few hills of the Yukon gold, the rest were Goldrush.

The overall yield was way down for the size of the potato patch, but we still have about 20 to 30 pounds of homegrown spuds to enjoy.

To properly store the potatoes, the first step is to dry them as shown in the photo above. I lay them out on newspaper and then cover them with an old bed sheet for a few days, preferably in a dark location such as a garage, with all the doors closed. Then I transfer them to a plastic milk crate and store them in my cellar, which stays a pretty constant temperature during the fall and winter. Since it is an old farmhouse, the cellar works great as a root cellar.

I cover the crates with a blanket or sheet just to ensure no light gets to them, which will turn them green and/or cause them to start to sprout. This storage method will ensure they keep throughout the winter.

Thanks for reading, stayed tuned for more fall harvest posts, including a great onion crop, more tomatoes, and much more.