harvest moonfest, fall veggies and jack frost carnage

 the first frost hit thursday the 4th of this month. there was about a week of cool weather with temperatures right around freezing every night, and eventually all my non-hardy garden plants died, except for the ones i brought inside and the ones i covered with blankets. all my tomatoes, basils, and both naranjilla plants are still alive. now it's warmer again, but very fall-like.

 the last saturday of september, right before the weather turned chilly, i hosted a harvest moon celebration. homegrown veggie cookout, tomato tasting, vegan potluck, and so much beer. it was a fabulous time and the weather was perfect--low 80s/upper 70s to start, and stayed in the 60s late into the night.

 this is the tomato tasting table. i put out samples of all the varieties i had ripe at the time. the crowd favorite was chocolate stripe, a strikingly beautiful, salty, super-flavorful beefsteak (my favorite too):

 i made wild rice, homegrown veggie salsa, and grilled squash and potatoes. victoria and kim brought a very tasty and complex savory pineapple salad, jeanne and kyle brought some huge, fancy homegrown eggplants for the grill, andrea brought a fantastic vegan huckleberry crumble made with berries she picked herself. there was way too much delicious food.

 unfortunately i didn't get photos while guests were here. it was a challenging day, i'd had a cold for a few days in the week leading up--so instead of cleaning house/yard and prepping as planned, all week i was letting dishes pile up and being tired and unmotivated. i ended up having to do everything on saturday, starting at 7 in the morning and finishing minutes before people began arriving. it put me in such a surprisingly good mood though, since i'd already gone past the point of exhaustion, i was deliriously happy the whole evening.

 poor little potato was stung by a wasp during the party! i hadn't noticed there's a wasp nest at the base of the apple tree, and he stuck his head right in there and got stung on the ear. it was the saddest thing. he didn't yelp or cry, but he ran around like he was on fire, shaking his head and looking horrified. after a while he calmed down and was just deeply, deeply sad the rest of the night. he sulked around the yard throwing himself at peoples' feet for sympathy. he was fine the next morning, and the swelling went away after just a few days. but he's still afraid of the apple tree.

 recent harvests and garden photos:

 nepalese bell peppers have elegant flowers. the peppers themselves are crazy looking:

 my giant pot of basil is taking up more than its share of space in the mudroom. i was planning on keeping it into the winter, but now i think i'll harvest and preserve it or try to use it up fast.

 corno de toro gaillo and sweet bell peppers. they started turning ripe colors after i brought them inside. best bell peppers i've ever grown--heavy, thick walls, delicious.

 anatomically correct japanese black trifele tomato.

 udumalpet eggplant.

 tomatillos are so very pretty.

 my apple harvest this year was completely non-existent. the squirrels stole every single apple.

 i didn't even know squirrels liked apples that much. i'm at peace with the lack of apples, because the squirrels left all my other plants alone. didn't take a single tomato. i'd much rather have tomatoes than apples.

 i can't believe summer is over and it's almost halloween. has frost hit yet where you are?

early september harvests

 my garden is in full swing now. yeah, it's late. it's always late. this year it's partly because i got everything planted so late in the season, and partly because i'm growing a lot of long-season heirlooms.

 first pair of lemon cukes. i always have bad luck with cucumbers. this year i planted them three or four times, and almost every time the seedlings were taken down by either slugs or earwigs, no matter how hard i tried to protect them. finally got them properly started in early july.

 lots of green left on the branches. hurry up and ripen!

 wall o'maters. i put up a row of about 15 tomato cages all attached to the wire fence that separates the garden from the rest of the yard. that way they wouldn't topple over. and it made a neat little tomato hedgerow.

 these gourds had the same problem as the cukes, getting eaten over and over as seedlings. now they're huge! you can't quite tell from the photo, but the vines have climbed all the way to the very top of that lilac tree behind them. most of the gourds are high up. harvesting could be tricky.

 squashes got a kinda slow start too, but now they're rolling.

 i juiced a big batch of cukes and tomatoes, and the chickens LOVED eating the leftover pulp. i haven't needed to compost anything all summer thanks to the chickens.

 mega-egg! someone laid a double-yolker last week.

 i picked up a couple little tiny egg pans. it really is a handy size. very easy to wash. also very easy to leave in the sink and not wash for a few days, which is part of the reason i got two.

 and they make for a very round meal. this almost looks like some kind of bland future-food from a dystopian film.

 i'm all about eggs over easy, but i've finally started branching out a little bit. i made stir fried rice, and hard boiled eggs:

 they were pretty impossible to peel nicely though.

 a few fun tomato specimens!

 it's my second year growing reisetomate, a.k.a. clusterfuck tomatoes, one of my all-time favorites in both looks and taste. they're like fused clusters of grape tomatoes.

late august harvests

 these days i'm mostly getting lots of tomatoes, squash, some peppers, eggplants, and ground cherries.

 the long red peppers are choriceros, a basque heirloom pepper brought here and grown for the last 50 years by a gentleman i met at a seed swap a couple years ago. the purple/green peppers are black hungarian, the eggplants are fairy tale and shoya long, and the squash are ronde de nice and yellow straightneck.

 the yellow-ish green tomatoes on the far right are lime green salad--when you cut them open they're brilliant emerald green inside. also pictured are ground cherries (in the dish), and an assortment of tomatoes: white currants, cream sausage, lemon drop, chocolate cherry, brown berry, gartenperle, tiny tim, and a mystery tomato i grew from OSU blue seed i saved last year. the mystery appears to be an accidental cross with a larger, striped tomato (in this picture they just look like generic medium-size red tomatoes, but the ones ripening now have some blue in them, and more pronounced stripes.) thankfully i planted one pure OSU blue plant from the original seed.

 casper eggplant, tomatoes and squash, including a couple "peter pan" squashes. i planted these extremely late so they're just now starting to pump out the fruit. when you let them age off the plant for a few days the coloring turns really cool, kinda green/yellow tie-dye.

 my first two japanese black trifele tomatoes (top right) and zapotec pleated tomatoes (bottom). i tried to grow both of these last year but they died as seedlings before transplant. the zapotec pleated at front/right weighs 3/4lb.

 snow white cherry tomato, with an outie belly button!

 mixed basil pot, with (clockwise from bottom right) opal, sweet, thai and dwarf greek basil. i discovered last year (or maybe the year before? i can't remember) that basil does really well planted in a container, planted late in the season, and grown in partial shade. some of that goes against traditional growing practices for basil, but that's what has worked by far the best for me here in boise.

 this is red and green holy basil, a.k.a. krishna tulsi, grown in a separate container. the stems turned a beautiful deep purple.

 the dozen-or-so volunteer tomatillo plants took over a huge portion of the garden bed. they're all loaded with fruit, but nothing ripe yet.

 nikki and i went blackberry picking yesterday. the berries were super sour, nothing like the ones i picked a couple weeks ago. luckily i picked just the right amount for a pie. it still turned out nice and tart, but not as unbearably mouth-puckering as the raw berries.

 the calendula in my front bed is in full bloom, and the bees are loving it.