Goodbye 2024 | The Last Garden Harvest

Hello everyone, welcome back and if you're new here, my name is Meg and today I'm going to be doing the last Garden harvest of the summer stuff. It is late November here in North Carolina We haven't had a complete frost yet We have had like a light frost and some things are looking a little bit damaged, but they're still kind of hanging on So I need to get things Out of the garden before we have that really hard frost. I am officially back creating content I took like a month almost two months off Because I had thyroid surgery and half of my thyroid removed because I had thyroid cancer Um good news is that the surgery was curative. I do not have cancer anymore. It did not spread It was caught early enough. Thank goodness that it hadn't spread or anything like that You can see my my scar here. Here's where they Went in and took out half of my thyroid. I still have like a little bit of a hematoma Kind of behind it that you can see But other than that, I've gotten my meds adjusted. I'm like finally Finally starting to feel better, but then just as soon as I started to feel better from my surgery I got sick with some kind of cold. Whatever it was. It was nasty. I still am a little nasally so don't mind my voice today, but it's been like 10 days and I still don't feel like 100% over it, but Yeah, it's cold and flu season for sure be careful out there overall. I'm feeling better. I'm back in the garden We've got to get all this stuff out of here before It starts to get really cold. So let's get to it. I think first I'm going to go ahead and get all these lupa even if they're green they will dry out in my greenhouse No problem. I've done this for a few years and honestly, I feel like they dry out a little bit better That way than you know being exposed to the elements But i'm going to grab all the lupa that are on this trellis and as you can see the plant already has A little bit of cold damage. All the leaves are very crinkly, but the lupas are Still holding on to the vine. So let's grab all these there are a lot of green ones because This plant would just not stop producing. There are still little tiny baby ones that Have just flowered if you don't know anything about lupa. These are gourds and they're edible When they are young and tender and green just like this one as they start to dry out they turn into this kind of like Yellow color kind of looks like they're molding or something, but they're not they're just drying out and eventually They turn brown and crispy like this one And usually if you squeeze it and you hear this crunch That's how you know. It's it's ready and there's a sponge inside here. It's an all-natural sponge. I use these for Cleaning dishes you can use them in the shower as like a body sponge for christmas gifts I'm gonna be making some goat milk soaps But i'm gonna cut a piece of lupa and put it in the middle and I think i'm gonna do a video on that a lot of my indian and my filipino followers have told me how Good the young ones are and i've never tried them and I see quite a few on here So I might be cooking these up and trying them I actually cannot believe how many lupas this one plant produced. This is one plant Now we're on the other side of the trellis There's some up in here, but i'm kind of scared of the spider situation So here's what we ended up with I cannot believe there were this many lupa on one plant I counted 39 and that's including four that I had already harvested. They have like these little Mold spots on them. I think it was it was very wet when I harvested these like we had rain for weeks. These were the first ones that Uh, like the first ones that bloomed the first ones that dried out And i've already had these harvested for a little while now, but I wasn't sure What to do with them because I don't like these little mold spots hopefully the rest don't have these but i'm pretty sure it was just because it was like Super wet for a long time when I harvested these I think I have enough of these young ones to try them in a dish So I think i'm gonna look up a dish tonight. Maybe an indian dish Or like a filipino dish. Maybe i'll ask my neighbor menchi um if she wants to teach me something to make but Yeah, i'm gonna eat these I think next i'm gonna harvest the peanuts I didn't grow quite as many peanuts as I did last year I put them in a smaller bed kind of like this circular bed last year. I did an entire six by three bed full of them and while I was able to make Like exactly two cups of my own peanut butter I felt like it was a lot of work for like trying to make Peanut butter if that makes any sense so I decided to grow them again just because I like growing them and I think it's fun and they do really well here in north Carolina because it's really hot here peanuts love the heat but instead of making my own peanut butter with them I will probably just roast them just to snack on I planted these out in april as soon as it was hot enough for Peanuts liking and it's now the end of november. So it's been like over six months, which is perfect for peanuts So a lot of people are shocked to find out that peanuts actually grow Underneath the ground a lot of people think that they grow on trees like other tree nuts But actually peanuts aren't even nuts at all they're legumes they flower above the ground But then their flowers kind of droop to the soil And the peanuts grow underneath the ground and i'm going to pull up this first plant here And I can already see peanuts Look at how cool that is As tempting as it is i'm not going to pick the peanuts from the plant just yet I am just going to cut off the tops of the plant and i'm going to leave them Attached for now because I need to cure these peanuts and they cure The best just still attach the plant just pulled out this one. Look at all Of these peanuts. I think peanuts are one of the coolest plants Look at this pull I just did there are so many peanuts on here This is amazing. I cut off the top foliage to give to the chickens and they are really enjoying it They absolutely love peanut leaves when one of them would escape and just be wandering around the garden The first thing that they would go to Are the peanuts when I was sifting through here? I found some baby potatoes. These are the blue majesty tomatoes And I had these planted in the spring before I planted the peanuts so what i'm going to do to get a head start on potatoes next spring i'm just gonna Throw them back in the soil Cover them up forget about them I'm going to crack open one of these peanuts. I'm going to sacrifice one just to show you how beautiful this variety is This variety is called fastidiotta pinstriped See if I can crack it open This is what they look like they're like this beautiful magenta color and they're striped and Yeah, they're just really pretty now we're gonna grab the sweet potatoes I am not super confident about these sweet potatoes They kind of have looked a little Lanky the whole time that they're growing and they they haven't been very vigorous But they have a little bit of frost damage. So we're just gonna see what's under there again I'm not very confident that there's gonna be anything actually, okay, we've got our first Potato, oh I am shocked. I'm shocked That's a good one I don't know why i'm expecting for there to be nothing but This already has me hopeful. I think that there's some potatoes in here That is a weird looking Sweet potato looks like an intestine. I'm kind of back to being disappointed because I feel like we got a really good one and now There's just kind of nothing They're really really tiny I planted these pretty late in the season. So I think maybe they just didn't have enough time to grow Some other tiny ones. These are so tiny They didn't get a chance to grow too bad I love the taste of nothing Oh, there's something But it's a little skinny A little skinny something. What is this? This isn't a potato Nothing will top my sweet potato harvest my first year of gardening, I don't know what happened but I absolutely slayed the sweet potato Harvest my first year. I got the biggest Best sweet potatoes ever and I just have not been able to replicate that. I don't know I don't know why it might be like a watering issue because this bed is not irrigated. Here is the sweet potato harvest I'm pretty disappointed just because they are pretty immature and just not top tier sweet potatoes, but You know you win some you lose some now i'm going to tackle the peppers. There are a lot of peppers There's even more peppers than our last harvest back in october Start with these habaneros here. I've got two different types of Habaneros, these are the red ones and then I have some orange ones over there Some of these are cracked so i'm going to give them to the chickens And yes chickens can have hot peppers because they can't taste heat Moving over here. I've got this one. This one is kind of just leaning over Like it got so heavy with peppers That it's just falling on the ground. Look at all these peppers There's so many So these are habaneros as well, but they're just the orange color I think these ones are more pretty than the red ones. Just I love this kind of orangey color So many habaneros on here i'm gonna be making all the habanero things I'm gonna make some habanero jelly to give as christmas gifts I am going to make some habanero beef jerky to give as christmas gifts as well Maybe some habanero hot sauce that used to be a favorite, but I have found myself in my Older age like literally the second I turned 30. It was like oh you can't really handle hot stuff Like you used to your stomach is like nope. We're 30 now Can't do it. So I try to use habanero now as more of like a subtle kind of flavoring Pepper instead of just like a straight up hot sauce got these orange little lunchbox peppers. These are sweet really great for snacking i'll probably Snack on these tonight actually These are really good. Just like dipped in a little bit of ranch a few red bell peppers in here That is a good one. That's like a perfect Red bell pepper lots of banana peppers on this plant My nails that I have on currently are like little little pruners This is another one that's fallen over because it's just so heavy. This is my poblano Pepper and there are so many poblanos on here There's this dish this mexican dish that I love with poblanos. It's called rajas con crema and it's basically just poblanos Roasted in a cream sauce And then you like eat them on a tortilla. It's so yummy. You guys know this garden bed all too Well, there are a ton of peppers in here I'm gonna grab all these little green Serranos they're not quite as hot as red serranos, but they still have a really great flavor And these make a really great green hot sauce, especially if you mix them with jalapenos There are just so many next week is going to be pepper processing I'm gonna spend like over an hour picking all these peppers probably because there's just so many So many this is one serrano plant still going for the serranos I think i'm almost done though. I think I've gotten most of them Some bigger sweet peppers under here. I can't remember the name of these I think it's called like big daddy golden or something. I can't remember They're just like a sweet italian roasting pepper and they're good green as well. So i'm just grabbing all the green ones, too There's a ton of jalapenos in here I think jalapenos are my favorite pepper ever. I know that's really like cliche, but I I mean, they're more than most popular peppers for a reason Totally wasn't recording when I thought it was but I also just harvested, um these calamansi also called calamondin from my calamansi bush also called the filipino lemon because they're really tart and sour like a lemon And that's how they're used in filipino cuisine. I did not know that you're supposed to harvest them when they're green These are way too way too overripe Um, I thought the opposite. I thought you were supposed to harvest them when they were ripe, but that's okay I'm still gonna like either candy these or make some kind of syrup or something I'm gonna find something to do with them my roselle bush Unfortunately, I don't think anything is going to come of it because it got hit by a little light frost It does not tolerate frost very well it had just started flowering so not a lot of the calyxes even got to the point of being able to be harvested because With roselle you harvest the calyx like two to four weeks after blooming The only one that did anything that looks proper ready is this one right here. So I guess I can Go ahead and harvest this one This is what they're supposed to look like when they are ready it's like really nice and plump there's a seed pod forming in there and unfortunately only One of all of these calyxes is like that So the thing I learned about roselle this year is that it takes a long time to mature It takes an entire growing season. It takes even longer than the growing season here in north carolina Apparently because how I grew this this year is I just direct sowed it into the garden along with my okra Because I had never grown roselle before and I know that it's in the okra family And I thought it would grow just like okra and I was wrong My roselle plant didn't even start blooming until very very late october early november And after the blooms like I said, it takes like two to four weeks after blooming for them to be harvestable And obviously me direct sowing it after our last frost just didn't give it enough time to fully mature So what i'm going to do next year because I still really want to grow this successfully. I love roselle hibiscus I love having it in teas and drinks and things like that So how i'm going to grow it next year is i'm going to start it indoors with my My tomatoes and my peppers give it a good six to eight week head start before our last frost And get a really good established plant And then plant that out into the garden and hopefully That'll give it the leeway that it needs to produce in time So although i'm really disappointed. I was really looking forward to this harvest. This is how we learn in the garden This was a new plant for me I'd never grown it before and I I really needed a season to see how it grows to really understand the plant And now that I understand the plant I feel like I can grow it so much better next year. So Gardening is all about failures you you have to learn from from failing and that's why it takes a long time to master gardening because You have these entire seasons That you fail and you learn from it and then you know, you start over again next year. So Failures are good in the garden to learn even more just because i'm curious I'm going to open this up. Like if I had a bunch of these that I were harvesting You would peel off this outer Calyx And this is what you would dehydrate to use for tea. This is the seed pod Which is kind of cool, so you wouldn't really use this But this is what we're after This is what makes the delicious cranberry flavored tea It even smells pretty good. I don't wonder what it tastes like raw It's very tart like it's good It's really good like this is what makes roselle tea a question that I had about the roselle that I actually googled like a few days ago Was do I have to wait for them to get to this stage to harvest them? Can I go ahead and harvest the immature calyxes the ones that haven't even bloomed yet or they just bloomed and the answer was yes You can still harvest those and make tea out of them But it's not really going to taste the same as those calyxes plump up That's where they kind of get their tartness and they're like their peak flavor So I think i'm just gonna Not bother with it I'm gonna call it a loss call it a day and just keep my sights set for that perfect roselle harvest next year The camera decided to not record when I was harvesting these but these Are just some green pumpkins my pumpkin plants were still going like this month. Um, so these are just green pumpkins and I can use these just as I would like a zucchini And then there's this green kind of butternut squash here as well So these are still usable again like a zucchini. I can make I can put them in baked goods There's people that make kind of like these mock apple pies with these but yeah, this is what I got All right, so we are done harvesting everything that I could possibly get out of my garden before it freezes next week Is on this table except for the peanuts I couldn't really fit the peanuts on this table They're already on the drying rack, but everything except for the peanuts So I have a lot of lupa to dry out. I've got the dried ones that i'm going to turn into soaps I've got a lot of peppers to process and turn into things Don't really know what i'm going to do with those sweet potatoes because they're kind of sad and pitiful I don't even really know if they're worth it. I don't know Um, i'll probably cure them. Anyway, i'll do the best that I can Syrup candy something with the calamansi and then maybe like an apple a mock apple pie situation with the pumpkin just acting as a zucchini, but I have a long week ahead of me as far as just like dealing like my friends at um Homegrown and can gather jordan and philvin how they say like dealing with the abundance It truly feels like that it's like the abundance is here and i'm so proud and looking at it i'm like Oh my gosh, I grew all this but i'm like what am I going to do with all this now? I have to do something with it now. I have to deal with it and um, that's also a fun part of gardening, but it can Be overwhelming when you're just like looking at an entire table full of stuff Don't forget to follow me on instagram tik tok facebook and sub stack Don't forget to check out the garden girls podcast and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye