Tearing Out the Vegetable Garden and Harvesting - by Sunscape

Practically all the tomato plants are done with blight and yellowing leaves. It's time to harvest what is left on the plants and pull them out.

You can see that they are dying down for the season. I really like this zebra stripe variety for a paste tomato.

Only a few ribbed tomatoes left on this one. Time to pick them and let them ripen on the porch.

There are a few peppers left that have yet to turn red, so I left those in. Today, I will take down the stakes and tidy up the areas where I ripped out the plants.

I have one last eggplant that can wait for another week while I process a large amount of tomatoes.

These are the ripest ones that I will make into sauce for pasta. I may start them today if I have the energy, lol.

Here are some green tomatoes that will have to ripen before I process them.

It will be a while before they are ready to cook down. I will use many of them to make Rotel for the pantry.

Mika enjoying time on the porch while I picked tomatoes.

All the Jimmy Nardello peppers were ripe. I started cutting them up and deseeding them for the freezer.

I found some larger citrus jalapeno peppers that I got ready to freeze. I will use these for jalapeno poppers over the holidays for appetizers.

This is the extent of the butternut squash that grew along the front garden behind all the zinnias. It should be enough for the two of us to have over the winter. One last zucchini, what shall I do with that? I certainly have enough frozen. Ah, maybe a small cheesy casserole for dinner.

The last of the Basil for this season. All the plants were pulled except one that had gone to seed. I will save those once they dry naturally.

I let the basil dry overnight, then put it into the dehydrator. I have 2 1/2 quarts of dry basil from this year's crop. Plus, I had made basil salt with some that I dried earlier this summer.

Speaking of saving seeds, I've been doing that for over a month already, and have most of them packaged and labeled in the seed boxes. I still have these, which are almost dry, to catalog and put away. Almost done!

The large raised bed is full of sweet potato vines. I sure am hoping for a bumper crop this fall. I have to research again when it's the right time. I can't remember for the life of me off the top of my head. Thank goodness for YouTube.

Back in the butterfly garden, all the perennials were cut back, and most of the zinnias were pulled. Slowly but surely, all the gardens are getting cleaned up for fall.

That's it for my September update on gardening for today. I have tomatoes calling my name.