Early Fall Garden Harvest

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With cold weather approaching, I took some last days of t-shirt weather and did some tidying up in the garden.

I completely advocate being a ‘lazy’ gardener when it comes fall time to create winter wildlife habitat.

There are some things I do before winter gets here though and it mainly has to do with the edible landscaping around the house.

One is to harvesting any produce one last time.

I picked green beans from the bush beans I planted later in the season. And a bunch of tomatoes. I’ve been waiting for fried green tomatoes all season! I used the recipe  below and they turned out great.

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I enjoyed growing these bush beans. I planted the seeds late August
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A nice summer’s end harvest

Fried Green Tomatoes

  • 4 Large green tomatoes
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1/2 C Milk
  • 1 C Flour
  • 1/2 C Cornmeal
  • 1/2 C Breadcrumbs
  • 2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper

Put flour in one bowl, mix eggs and milk in another bowl, and mix cornmeal and breadcrumbs in another. Slice tomatoes. Drench in flour, egg/milk, then in cornmeal/crumbs. Fry until browned in 1/4″ of oil.

I picked a rogue pumpkin that popped up in the garden bed mid summer. The pumpkin is still mostly green, but I like it cause I grew it! Actually it just grew itself because I didn’t touch it once.

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Roxie is sleepy from watching me do all this hard work

I harvested all my annual herbs, and trimmed back some perennial herbs which was a huge task. This included

  • Parsley
  • Lovage
  • Nasturtium
  • Lemon Balm
  • Pineapple Sage
  • Rue
  • Dill
  • Catmint
  • Tulsi
  • Peppermint and Spearmint
  • Sage
  • Winter Savory
  • Lemongrass
  • Horehound
  • Echinacea
  • Yarrow

I still have to harvest

  • Rosemary

I’ve been drying the herbs on newspaper and in the dehydrator. It’s been no small task and quite overwhelming. I hope to make some products with them to have in my EARTHeim Etsy shop over winter.

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I harvested a full lawn bag of lemon balm

I pulled some annual flowers I had in pots and dumped the soil in the vegetable garden.

Then arranged some cut flowers since they won’t be lasting outside much longer. It was mentally hard for me to cut some of the flowers because the bees were still loving them!

There’s still lots to do in the garden. How do you prep your garden as winter approaches?

Orangy Dahlias
Pink Cosmos, Zinnias, Basil
Dahlia and Geraniums
White Dahlias
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