I was working in the garden picking the final soybeans for edamame and removing the plants since they were done for the season. I looked over to my tomato plants and caught a glimpse of red among all the green foliage. Lo and behold, there were 4 plum tomatoes ready for the picking on one plant and 2 on another. If we don't get a freeze like last year, I should have a bumper crop of tomatoes this fall/winter.
I'm thinking this will be one of my better producing winter gardens in a while since everything is growing so well. I've now picked 4 heads of broccoli, more collard greens than I can count, bags full of leaf lettuce and other salad greens and now tomatoes. I still have a week or so for chard and kale and a month or more to go with the brussells sprouts but they are forming nice heads on the stalks and the plants are very healthy.
I even turned over about 30 ft. of the row where the soybeans were growing by spade and didn't really break much of a sweat doing so. I LOVE fall gardening.
MG, my green beans are done but I did put in some sugar snaps on my 25' trellis but they are only about 18" tall now and no sign of flowers yet. I also put in 6 bell pepper plants and 6 banana pepper plants that are just flowering. I don't know if they will make much since they are still pretty small.
My summer bell pepper plants didn't do too well in productivity then the heat got to them in late July. Maybe I should have left a couple in to see what they would do when the weather cooled. Next year, I'll let a couple stay for the fall to see if they recover.
Your first planting of lettuce sounds like my first planting of carrots. Nothing happened so I opted to plant several dozen toes of garlic instead and they are doing fine. I use more garlic in cooking anyway, so it's a good thing.
As for an abundance of bell pepper, I dice them and freeze them to use for seasoning when cooking, but I'd rather use fresh if I have it. I didn't make enough bells to freeze this year but plenty of jalapenos, banana and Belgian peppers to pickle.
Sounds like your garden is going along just fine. I doubt we'll have the same freezing temps. for several days in a row again this year. That sort of thing is a real fluke down here. Once in a while we will get night time temps below freezing but only for a few hours and it will warm up into the 40's the following day.
My summer bell pepper plants didn't do too well in productivity then the heat got to them in late July. Maybe I should have left a couple in to see what they would do when the weather cooled. Next year, I'll let a couple stay for the fall to see if they recover.
Your first planting of lettuce sounds like my first planting of carrots. Nothing happened so I opted to plant several dozen toes of garlic instead and they are doing fine. I use more garlic in cooking anyway, so it's a good thing.
As for an abundance of bell pepper, I dice them and freeze them to use for seasoning when cooking, but I'd rather use fresh if I have it. I didn't make enough bells to freeze this year but plenty of jalapenos, banana and Belgian peppers to pickle.
Sounds like your garden is going along just fine. I doubt we'll have the same freezing temps. for several days in a row again this year. That sort of thing is a real fluke down here. Once in a while we will get night time temps below freezing but only for a few hours and it will warm up into the 40's the following day.