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.

Preserving

I just packed 3 lb. of rainbow chard into yoghurt containers for freezing. It took most of the morning, but it's pretty easy to do:

1. Wash the leaves and stems.
2. Chop them into reasonable sized pieces.
3. Blanch them by submerging them, batch by batch, into a pot of boiling water for about 2 minutes.
4. Take it out, drain it, and pack it into a container or airtight bag.
5. Label and date each container and put it in the freezer.

Looks like I've harvested the equivalent of $82 worth of food so far (see the chart on the right), and my tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, etc. still aren't even ready.