Garlic, Egglplant, Zucchini, Sweet Peppers and Melons

The frost has finally come! Last night we had our weekly potluck outside around a campfire, while we used the wood burning stove to make a number of home-made pizzas, and talked about what still needed to be done on the farm. Apparently, until the frost arrived, it would be hard to gauge the timelines. So today, was like day one. Today the real clean up could commence.

First we removed all the rest of the melons out of their field, then pulled up the last of the plastic mulch, landscape cloth and drip lines. I am unsure how good the melons will be since most of them had visible frost damage, but we put them in the shop nonetheless to be dealt with later in the weekLater in the day we moved to the zucchini, eggplant and sweet pepper field. We had already cleaned most of the plants the previous week in fear of an imminent frost which did not come, and since then, the plants had been producing very slowly. We were able to salvage six more bins of eggplant before ripping the plants and mulch out of the ground. It is amazing how long it takes to set everything up in the spring and how quickly it can be destroyed.

The eggplant and peppers were harvested twice a week for market. We usually would decide on how many bins of a certain product could sell at the market and then take that amount. Toward the middle of September, we started harvesting everything that was ready to go. For both the eggplant and peppers that depends on size and/or colour. The other main job that we are doing right now is planting garlic for next season. After the garlic was hung to dry in the shop for six weeks, we then spent many hours cleaning the garlic. This means cleaning off the soiled outer shell and pruning the roots and top of the bulb. Much of this garlic is stored for the winter markets, but some of it was taken one step further and split. We split 1000 lbs of garlic (our garlic sells for 12$/lb at market fyi), which is now being planted in the ground to be harvested again next summer.

We still don't know what will happen with the tomatoes. I look forward to letting you know.