The Garden is Finished

The garden is finally finished for the year. A couple of days ago I picked the remaining bell peppers and Cayenne peppers off the plants. We've only had two or three light frost so far but the impact was already evident on the plants.

The bell peppers have all been diced and frozen. They'll end up in spaghetti sauce or something similar before the end of winter.

Overall, it was a pretty good year for the garden. Nine tomato plants returned well over 200 tomatoes that ended up preserved either as diced tomatoes or tomato sauce. The tomato sauce was discussed in the post Making Tomato Sauce. Partially I was encouraged by @codingdefined to try making the sauce after an indication that in India most of the tomatoes were preserved as sauce. The other reason I tried this was because I had planted to plants of paste tomatoes which when ripe were often hollow and wouldn't make good diced tomatoes. Hollow enough they would float in water, maybe I could have made life preservers out of them. The sauce turned out great and some has already been used in a large pot of chili to share with friends.

Besides the bell peppers, I had a plant of Cayenne pepper and one of Tabasco peppers. After eating some of these fresh, the remainder ended up as hot sauce which you may have read about in the post Making Hot Sauce. This post was from the first batch of peppers I picked where all the peppers were fully ripe and the sauce turned out a bright red color. The second batch, later in the season included some peppers that were still green giving the sauce more of a reddish brown color. Both batches tasted great with the first being slightly hotter with the ripper peppers. It went great with the chili by the way.

The cucumbers produced like crazy. My wife loves to eat the raw but the smell to me is almost unbearable. Besides those freshly consumed we have a supply of pickles and relish that will probably last for several years, even after sharing some with family and friends. You can read more about the pickles and relish in the posts Bread and Butter Pickles, Want to Start a Garden?, and Making Sweet Pickle Relish.

The other thing I grew in the garden was pink eyed purple hulled peas, similar to black eyed peas. Growing up in Alabama this type of legume was a staple, but here in Indiana no one knows what they are except for those of us that are transplants. This particular variety of pea originated in Mississippi with a tendency to produce heavily initially for a period of two to three weeks. Later in the season all that is needed is some rain for them to start blooming and producing again. I picked peas from early August through most of September resulting in over 30 pints of peas that were preserved. Each pint reflects a meal side dish for my wife and I but they also go well in vegetable soup. The peas were chronicled in the post Pink Eyed, Purple Hulled Peas.

This all resulted from a very small garden and without the aid of artificial fertilizer. The posts Spring in Indiana - Prepping the Garden and My Small Garden tell you more about my garden and how the soil is enriched. I don't think I could ever make a great deal of money growing produce but the garden provides us fresh produce all summer and for me a lot of satisfaction. No, I'm sure a garden will never make me rich with money, but money isn't the only thing that makes one's life rich.