An Afternoon's Harvest

With heavy rain forecast for several days, I decided I better get started on harvesting some of the autumn bounty from my garden. Here's what I picked in the couple of hours I had before it got dark one day last week:

The cucumbers in the roasting dish are from the Marketmore vine in my greenhouse which is still producing merrily. The tomatoes are also from my greenhouse - I decided that I wanted my greenhouse back for other things, so have harvested the last of the tomatoes on the remaining plants from my Tomato Experiment. All of the tomatoes in the roasting dish at the back left are from ONE Moneymaker vine. The other tomatoes were from the other 5 plants together.

The squash in the green crate are the first of my Spaghetti Squash. Picked when the fruit is yellow and the stalk is a hard brown, they will keep well if wiped over with a mild vinegar solution (1 TBSP vinegar to 2 litres of water) and air dried and cured before storing. (I do this with all my long keeping pumpkins and squash - the vinegar kills any fungal spores on the skin and prevents rot). I've never had spaghetti squash before, and am looking forward to our first meal with home-grown spaghetti! By the way, I have 6 of these crates, which stack on top of each other well. I acquired them when I had the local supermarket order in 62kg of tomatoes for me last year - they were to be returned or paid for. I decided that the $11 each charge was well worth it, as they're excellent for harvesting and storing a lot of produce items! I often see crates like these stacked up out the back of supermarkets, waiting to be collected by the companies they are returned to. If you would like some, approach the supermarket manager, and see if you can pay the surcharge they would be charged for them, and get a few.

Do you like my new harvesting basket? I picked it up at the local Salvation Army family store for $3. :-) Inside it are 3 kinds of watermelons - Sugar Baby (large and dark green), Golden Midget (small and yellow) and Crimson Sweet (the stripey one) - as well as some Sweet Banana Peppers, Eggplants and a stray Telegraph Cucumber I found hiding near the spaghetti squash.

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Since I picked these things, I've been busily trying out new recipes and preserving. So far I have made:
Green Tomato Quiche (Sooo good!)
Green Tomato Chutney
Green Tomato Relish
Garden Tomato Sauce
Spaghetti squash with Roasted Tomato Sauce
Harvest Sauce
Vegetarian Moussaka (oh my! - incredible!)
I also cut up one of the Sugar Baby watermelons to serve a gardening group that visited. Delicious! I forgot, though, to keep the rinds to make Pickled Watermelon Rind, something I decided last year I would try this year, but have forgotten until today. Will save the rinds from the next ones and give this a go!

I also plan to make:
Cucumber and Beetroot Salad
Reduced Sugar Pickled Cucumbers
and try out some more spaghetti squash recipes - spaghetti squash pizza perhaps?

Recipes for all of the above coming soon!
There are more of all of the items I picked still in the garden, except for Golden Midget watermelon, and tomatoes (well, there are tomatoes, but not ones I can be bothered picking as they're Tiny Tim's and psyllid infections have made them taste less than terrific). As soon as the weather improves, I better get picking again!