The final harvest

On Saturday, I pulled a couple of turnip, a few thinned carrots, and I checked one of my potato planters.

Thank you to everyone who expressed concern over my being in the Dumps. It happens from time to time. It goes away. I am not worried, so you shouldn't be. But thank you anyways.

 I made a few cards (Birthday and Hallowe'en). I weeded my front flower bed for 2 hours one morning. I made bread crumbs and I froze bread cubes in 5 cup measures for the freezer, so I can make bread pudding, or stuffing, or overnight breakfast casserole whenever the mood strikes. 

I picked up a few grocery specials at Freshco on Friday. Pork loin roasts were $1.44 a pound. I cut the loins to make pork chops and roasts for the freezer. I picked up some other loss leaders, like red seedless grapes for 97 cents a pound, sugar for $1.44 a 2 kg bag (I bought 4 bags for the pantry), 2 cases of Del Monte veggies for 79 cents a tin, yogurt, and 3 liters of canola oil for $3.97. 

On Saturday, I decided to pull some turnip to see if it was ready, never having grown turnip before. I thinned a few carrots from one end of the row, and because my husband thought that my potato planters had not yielded any potatoes, I decided to check out one of them. The results can be seen in the above photo. There were about 5 pounds of red potatoes in the planter I checked. For dinner that night, we ate mashed turnip, carrots, boiled new potatoes and mince and gravy. 

Sunday we drove to Cobourg to visit with my mom and her husband in the Retirement Home. We ate the midday dinner in the dining room as their guests and had a lovely time. 

Then yesterday I decided that I would pull all the turnip. I must have picked the two best vegetables on Saturday, because these remaining turnips were riddled with brown spots inside. So many times I was tempted to just throw all of them out. But I persevered. Something was eating my root vegetables. I peeled and chopped and threw out so much of the damaged vegetable, that I thought there would be nothing left. In fact, I was able to boil two pots of cubed turnip which I mashed and froze into six meal servings. There certainly wasn't the amount I expected to get, but better than nothing. I left them in the ground too long. Apparently I should have harvested after two months. I will remember that for next year. In fact, I will plant them as a Fall crop in August and harvest after the first frost. After the turnip fiasco, I decided to pick any remaining beans. I never expected the numbers that I got. This was easily the biggest harvest of beans this summer. I washed and trimmed and left them to dry overnight. Dinner was  simply fried hot dogs, chopped potato and onion in garlic butter with a side of tender young beans. 

The bean plants that just keep on giving and giving. 

I began the morning by sorting out the very young and tender beans into the freezer bag on the far right, and the very large and woody beans to dry on the coffee filter in the centre. They will dry out to be used as bean seeds for next season. The rest of the beans were cut and placed in four freezer bags.

 And because of the turnip situation, I decided I would harvest all my carrots since they were planted right next to the turnips and are also a root crop. I am so glad I did. Some of the carrots had to be thrown away. Something had started eating these as well. These are the ones I managed to save. Tomorrow I will sort them by size and chop up the larger ones for the freezer. I will also be harvesting the rest of the potato planters tomorrow. I obviously neglected my garden much more this summer than last. Next year, I will apply myself more. We have been eating from the garden pretty much throughout the past couple of months, and with what I have put away in the freezer, we should be eating well for a couple of more months. We could have had a few corn on the cob, but I let them dry on the stalk. I will use those to decorate my front porch, but next summer I will be planting more corn. I didn't think they would actually grow, but they did. I just ignored them. Before I started in the garden this morning, I put a pork loin in the crock pot (no fried potatoes and hot dogs tonight). Now I will boil up some of those new red potatoes and some baby carrots for dinner. Have a great evening. Isn't it nice that the new Fall lineup has started this week on television?