Last harvest

I'm moving out in two days, so I spent today harvesting whatever was ripe (or almost ripe) before I leave, which included cherry tomatoes, ruffled red tomatoes, and sweet peppers. I hope I have a chance to harvest a few more ruffled reds on Thursday – there are so many big, bulbous unripe ones!

I also harvested all my basil, which I am in the process of putting into freezer bags to preserve over the winter. (Freezing basil seems to be the best way to preserve its flavour, in my experience. Though once freezers become too costly to operate, drying it is!)

I still have to harvest my parsnips, valerian root, lettuce seed and flax seed. My eggplants most likely won't be ready before I leave. They're really tiny things. Maybe I'll drop by at the end of the month (while I still have legal access to the property) to see how they're doing.

Seedling Swap

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been spending most of my time practicing with Meta and Chris for the Cowboy Mimes' second show last night. My amazing friend Kelly from Everdale kindly drove my big-ass keyboard to the gig at no charge, and it was a good chance for
us to swap seedlings. I gave her some of my many sweet pepper seedlings, and in return she gave me a zucchini, two varieties of tomato (beautiful, large mini-plants they are), and an unusual kind of eggplant that's produces orange-coloured fruit (I'll find out the name).

My own tomatoes are doing very poorly. None of my groundcherries have germinated, and only two of my ruffled red tomatoes have sprouted. All my seedlings seem to be growing very slowly, despite the amount of sun they get. Perhaps it's still just too cool at night? Or maybe my potting soil is too dense and the roots don't get enough oxygen? Beats me.

What do people think about transplanting seedlings into 100% compost, just to give them a boost? Maybe I'll experiment.