Vegetables winding down for the year

I'm looking forward to a peaceful day today. A walk around the garden, looking in on Mary and her eggs, a few emails and two summer hats for the babies and that will be it for me. I even slept in!  That was a good start to a quiet day and what made me think I should relax instead of work today.  It's the ideal time of year to start taking it easy.  The weather is hot again and everything is starting to wind down towards the summer holidays.

Our vegetable garden is starting to slow down too. There comes a time every year when Hanno and I ask each other: Will we keep planting? The answer now, is no. We'll keep harvesting and watering but own main growing year is almost over now and by late January most of the vegies will be gone, we'll rely on our freezer more and start planting again in March. There is still a lot of food there waiting to be harvested and much more that will keep producing like pumpkins and watermelons, but the planting is over for the year.

Let me introduce Lulubelle and Martha, our buff Orpington and Plymouth Rock chooks. Soon they'll be joined by some more of their type. The eggs under Mary are buff Orpingtons and Plymouth Rocks.

There are still a few gardening chores to carry out. This flower spike is just starting and when it flowers and turns into seeds, we'll collect them for our next planting. 

The beans have grow like wild fire this year. There are still a lot of the climbing green beans to eat fresh and to freeze and the butter beans below, a bush variety, still have another couple of weeks left in them.

The tomatoes have done well this year too. These are the French heirloom St Pierre that I grew in a pot at the garden entrance. We'll be collecting seeds from these so we can continue with them next year.

Over near the bok choy, we planted more mixed heirloom tomatoes about two weeks ago. I don't know what they'll be yet because they were mixed seeds given to me but this one above is a potato leaf variety so if might be a Brandywine or a Prudens Purple, or any number of delicious old fashioned tomatoes. Hopefully the weather won't be too hot for them to produce. Tomatoes stop setting flowers to fruit when the temperature is too high.

 This orange tree is full of small fruit that will be juicy and ripe next winter.

We have a few chilli bushes left from last year that have produced very well. These above are Firecracker - you can see them ripe red, and in the kitchen, below. The capsicums (peppers) and chillis aren't bothered at all by the hot weather. If we keep the water up to them, they'll keep growing happily all through summer. Then we'll cut them back and they'll come on again next year.

These are jalapeno chillis, a great one for spicy cooking or for making chilli jam.

 

 We always grow a lot of cucumbers. This is one of two Lebanese cucumber vines. They're picked small and crisp and are excellent in salads or for bread and butter pickles. Now that the hot humid weather is here, these vines will soon get powdery mildew and we'll pull them out.

And of course we always have flowers and herbs too. Here are some calendulas inviting the bees into the garden and parsley.

And what do we have here? The quiet gardener working on his compost. Shhhh, he doesn't know we're here. Let's walk away quietly.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. I hope you all have a wonderful day.