The Modern Victory Garden

Yesterday I wrapped up the sweet corn patch for the year and today I did the same with the squash patch.   All but one of the pumpkins were fully ripe, the zucchini was winding down (and we are all heartily tired of them at this point anyways), and the winter squash were either fully ripe or so small that there is no chance they would ripen before the cold killed them.   The forecast is calling for very warm temperatures for the next four days and I want to take advantage of that to cure the pumpkins and winter squash.   I had to use a small handsaw to cut the pumpkins from the vines, as their stems are extremely tough.   The final tally is 10 ripe Small Sugar pumpkins (plus the one I harvested previously) and 5 ripe Buttercup winter squash.   The pumpkins weighed in at 58 pounds and the winter squash weighed in at 26.5 pounds.                                                   

These were allowed to sit out in the warm dry air for the afternoon and were then later placed in the garage on Rubbermaid shelving.   At least one of the pumpkins will be sacrificed for a Halloween Jack O'Lantern and several more will be cooked, pureed and frozen over the coming weeks to provide convenient packages of pumpkin puree for making pies.   The winter squash will be stored as is and used to make baked squash and squash soup.         

Once the pumpkins and squash were all harvested, the vines were removed and composted, as the vegetation was very healthy.   While I was in "garden tidy up mode", I also removed the last three tomato plants and discarded the debris as they were moldering with late blight.   I also removed the less robust of the pepper plants from the greenhouse containers leaving the three large plants that are thriving and producing so well - two Early Jalapeno and one Mini Bell Pepper.   I harvested the peppers off of the plants that I pulled and chopped them up and froze them.   The remaining plants will keep providing us with fresh peppers for quite some time to come - if I am careful to start shutting the greenhouse down at night when the temps start dipping below 45.                       

It's a beautiful fall day here, perfect for the harvesting of pumpkins and winter squash.   Were you able to work in your gardens this weekend too?