The Beginning Of Harvest

It doesn't quite feel like the middle of September yet, but it really is and I am having another one of those moments when I think: "Holy cow, it's the middle of September- where did the year go?" It makes my head hurt.

That may be from a bit of dehydration and sleep deprivation.

I did a little more harvesting in the sad garden today. That's probably what I should call this year if I ever make a scrapbook about my garden: The Year of Sadness. Here are some pictures I remembered to take!

The birds have recently ravaged three of the four Hogwarts of peppers. Usually they hone in on one at a time, but there hasn't been enough regrowth lately (I'm guessing) and there is an assault on multiple fronts now. No peppers since Gryffindor's early batch but now I'm very worried that soon there will not be enough leaves to sustain my pepper trees and that would make me so sad if they died now.

 

I have rotated the smaller pepper bushes. The Serranos are now in the back and I hope this helps them recover their burnt tender leaves. They are growing appropriately sized fruit for the past few weeks! We find that astonishing. The jalapeños that we've gotten are thick and super short when they are supposed to be the same length as the Serranos.

 

Tucked away and behind the leafier plants in this corner on the patio away from the main garden area is my new strawberry plant. Have I talked about it yet? I got it about two weeks ago, it's a different type, and was already fruiting but continues to do so even if the fruits are small and oddly shaped.

 Back to the main area of the garden, these are my tomato plants this year. Big Boy #1 - Cherry - Big Boy #2. Big Boy #1 is huge but had yet to have any fruit. Flowers, sure. Fruit? Not so much. Cherry is going nuts with appropriate-sized fruits and it's awesome. Big Boy #2 is super bushy and working on some fruits that are a bit on the small side but there are now two candidates for becoming huge.

 

 I love seeing the different ripening colors of the cherry tomatoes together. You know, right before I cut them apart.

 

This is the biggest Big Boy we've had so far. Crossing our fingers that it keeps going!

  

 I didn't mean to, but this is a pretty cool picture I took of that bug being very interested in the single Basil flower stalk I missed when I trimmed them off last weekend.

This was the modest little harvest this week of ripening fruits. Cherry tomatoes on the left, a Serrano pepper (two inches), tiny strawberries, the tiny Big Boy tomato, and some chubby jalapeños.

 

Thinking about it in terms of being a mini harvest haul made it feel much more like autumn around here. For that, I am grateful.