Fall Harvest

With the pending cool weather, the plants know it is time to get off the vine before the first frost hits.
Unfortunately this means they all seem to ripen at the same time!

After procrastinating a few days (that's an understatement), I finally got around to picking all the ripe fruit off my giant tomato plants and wilting squash vines. Here is the result:
My first ever artichoke! And it actually tasted like a real artichoke!

Quite a few squash from just four plants.  The squash just needed a quick rinse in the sink, then they can be stored in the cool, dry basement through the winter. I think acorn squash soup may be in our future!

A lot of tomatoes (left) from my ginormous tomato plats (below) that ran out of room to climb so the started to fall over, along with Eva posing nicely.

There are still a few left on the vines ripening, but this is the majority of the harvest.

The tomatoes need to be frozen or canned. Since I am not yet experienced at canning, I chose to freeze. The longest and most painstaking process is peeling them. While you can freeze them with the skin on (cleaned first), I want to use these for marinara and don't want the skins turning it bitter.
Here is a good explanation of blanching, it involves dunking them in boiling water which also helps to kill a lot of bad bacteria.
Two hours later, after they were all blanched and peeled, DH (Dear Husband) helped me put them in plastic baggies to freeze. Three, gallon-size baggies, what a haul! You want them sitting in a single layer so the freeze quicker, with as little air in the bag as possible. I close the baggies, then open them up just enough to fit a drinking straw into. Flatten out the tomatoes and press out as much air as you can with your hands. Then you suck out as much of the remaining air as you can. Kind of the inverse of blowing up a balloon. Just keep an eye on the end of your straw that is in the bag, or you will be sucking up tomato juice... ahem, not that I know from personal experience or anything (cough, cough).

Now when I have the inkling to make marinara, I can set them out to thaw then smash them right in their baggies before dumping into the sauce!

The other crop that ripened was our first ever harvest of hops. No, not like a bunny hops... beer hops! Since it is the first year for most of the rhizomes (hop plants), we didn't think we would get anything usable... we were wrong. While most of them are not full size, I think they will still be usable but that is ultimately up to FIL (Father In Law) who is the brewer. Here is a hop from one of the older plants, it's huge!











After picking them all off the prickly bines (yes, Bines, not Vines) we spread them out on screens under a ceiling fan to speed the drying process along. Think of them like herbs... you can use them either fresh or dried, but they are more potent when dried.

Hopefully they will meet the master brewer's standards so he can use them!



Eva was helping... or at least she thought so.



Or maybe she just thought it was funny...