Garden in autumn

It's been two weeks since we came back home from HiveFest, and I haven't even made a post about it yet as I spent those two weeks in bed. I can't even remember when (if ever) I was so sick for the last time. I've been thinking about sharing my impressions from HiveFest every day, but I couldn't make myself get out of the bed and actually do it.

Yesterday was the first time in those two weeks that I left home. We went to the garden as I couldn't abandon it for any longer and I was hoping that the fresh air would do me good. Well, it didn't, but I still managed to harvest some vegetables before going to bed again. Today, I decided to push myself and make a post. Well, my HiveFest post will have to wait, but I find it so easy to write about my garden that I will give it a go.

The first thing I noticed were these beautiful long red chillies. They have such a radiant colour that I could see them from afar. My husband was so happy as he was worried that they wouldn't have a chance to ripen because it's getting cold. Well, I harvested these 7, but there are more than 200 of them that are still green, so fingers crossed that they will turn red in time. I guess you wonder how I came with the number 200, right? I counted them a couple of weeks ago and when I reached 200 I lost my patience, and stopped counting. So much work!

These are surprise chillies as my husband collected seeds from chillies that he liked over the year, and I just planted them. Some of them should be sweeter, but most of them should be really hot.

When we left to Croatia I saw a baby patty pan. I thought it might get too old by the time we come back, but almost a month later it still has a good size and doesn't look old. They are delicious when they are old too, but it's difficult to peel them as their skin becomes thick and hard.

As you can see it was growing on the ground...

Turn it around and it looks perfect...

Before we left I planted endive lettuce which is perfect in winter. It grows up to -5 degrees and stays fresh even under snow. It's still small, but in a few weeks we will be able to harvest. It's my favourite kind of lettuce as it's crunchy and not too bitter. And the biggest advantage of planting it is that slugs don't like to eat it.

And now I present you my amazing broccoli harvest! 😊

This is all we got from 9 plants, and I have no idea what happened. They simply grew without creating any flowering heads. Economically, this was not the best investment, and time wise it wasn't good either, so I decided that this was the last time we planted broccoli, and next year we will replace it with kale or other plants from the brassica family.

Here I wondered what I will do with it...

Tomatoes are still growing strong, and I must admit that I don't know what to do with them anymore. I preserved as much as I could, and we keep eating them everyday too. I even shared many tomatoes with our neighbours. I'm so grateful for such bountiful harvest, but I'm already short of ideas...

Yesterday, we also took out our sweet potatoes. We got 4 plants from our friend, so why not plant them? I haven't planted sweet potatoes before, but after a short research I was ready to give it a go. I would have let them grow for a few more weeks, but the weather is getting worse, so we couldn't wait any longer. They look nothing like what you can buy at the store, but I'm so happy with them.

We didn't know which colours we would get and it turned out that we have 2 different ones. This one is more purple/pink.

And this one is more red/orange...

I had no idea how they would grow, and I was surprised to see that they were all entangled in one place. It took me some time to separate them, and I loved the result. This is the only straight one.

Most of them look like this...

I was expecting a disaster when I opened the greenhouse as we didn't water the plants for 2 weeks, but it turns out that our neighbours understood that something was wrong when they didn't see us for such a long time and watered our plants. They are flourishing!

There are still many peppers, and plenty of flowers. It's quite warm in the greenhouse, so we will let them grow and see if some flowers will still turn into peppers.

The red peppers will be turned into muhammara. I can't wait to finally feel better and start cooking.

I harvested all peppers before going to Croatia, and there are so many that grew in less than 1 month.

We have plenty of these baby eggplants that we took yesterday. They are much less bitter when they are young.

A few months ago, one of our neighbours gave me some leek seedlings, or so I thought. She kept saying that it's 'Lauch' which means leek in German. In the beginning they looked like leek seedlings, but very soon they started to look like onions. I asked her if she was sure that those are leeks, and she told me she meant to say Lauchzwiebeln which are scallions. Quite a difference, right? Obviously, I planted them deep like I would plant leeks, and now I have these beautiful scallions instead 😊

It wasn't easy to take them out because they were so deep, but look how pretty they are.

We are lucky to have a well in the garden, so I was able to clean them and now they look perfect. I will make carrot/kohlrabi/coconut soup today, and I will use them instead of onions. Autumn weather calls for soups!

For some to me unknown reason our rosemary decided to flower again this year. It is so strange as they normally flower in spring, but they might be confused with the weather. I prefer the flowers to the sprigs as they are not so strong in flavour.

I love that our garden is planted in a way that we get some flowers almost all year around.

Butterflies in the garden are beautiful, but their caterpillars are not as they will eat everything what comes in their way. However, I enjoyed watching this one yesterday as our growing season is almost complete, so at the moment there is not much to eat for the caterpillars 😊

Even though the fresh air didn't do me much good, I still enjoyed being outside, and I hope that I will be healthy in a few days, so that I can enjoy the garden again.

See you next time...