Harvest

...

Among the community of garden-bloggers, there's a group who diligently document their harvests every Monday.  I'm not terribly organized, and I'm not much of a "joiner" but I've always enjoyed reading about what other people are growing.  So, here's my humble contribution.

Last year, I had terrible luck with shallots and only mildly better success with garlic.  I suspect that my rock-hard soil doesn't help any crop that grows underground.  I must have missed harvesting some part of the shallots, because I've gotten a tiny volunteer crop.  This is a part of what came up, unbidden.

The meyer lemon tree is finally winding down for the season.  This tree is just amazing.  We get fruit for months and months and months.

We recently realized that someone must have stripped every single lemon off the tree when our house was being sold.  When we looked at the place three years ago, there wasn't a single ripe fruit on the tree, and we had no idea if the tree was a lemon or a lime.  I now find this very amusing, considering that Robb was so scandalized at my suggestion that we harvest the plum tree before we actually owned the house.

The plum harvest is just about finished. It's amazing to think how much the health of this tree has improved since we moved in.  Our first harvest was exactly three plums.

This year we -- almost -- had more than we knew what to do with.  Today, I'll make our last batch of jam from the plums I've been collecting in the freezer, and then we'll use the really soft fruits for wine.

Here's one of our kitchen experiments.  These are nasturtium seed pods, that we're in the process of pickling. They're currently soaking in brine, and in a few days, we'll immerse them in an herbed vinegar solution.  I saw a recipe for fermented nasturtium buds, but was scared off by the instructions that went something along the lines of, "we just sort of improvised, and when the buds got moldy we ate them."  I'm not ready to be quite that bold in the kitchen.

Overall, this summer's garden has been small and disorganized. But that's okay.  We're learning a lot, and it keeps getting better.