Fall harvest

[sholio]

I can't believe how early autumn is hitting us this year. We had a frost a few nights ago that killed all the outside plants and some of the greenhouse plants, so today I'm harvesting potatoes and getting the greenhouse stuff in. Since most of the squash and pumpkin plants are still alive, I'm leaving the less-ripe ones on the vine for another week or so, to try to get as much vine-ripening as possible.








My squash are unusually photogenic this year.

The potatoes also did something a bit unusual, or at least something I don't remember them doing before, and made berries!





I sort of vaguely knew they did this, and also that the fruits (like the leaves) are poisonous, but they haven't done it before that I've noticed. The little fruits are very cute.

Comments

[frith_in_thorns]

I like the bright yellow squash that looks like it's melting!

[sholio]

Hee! It's a patty pan squash. It's supposed to do that. However, I fertilized it with a different kind of squash's flowers (I ended up doing that a lot this summer, due to only having one of each kind of plant) so it got way bigger than they're supposed to. I'm not entirely sure what the inside of it is going to look like.

[abyssinia]

I didn't know potatoes made berries!

Also, wow, for how hot of a summer Alaska had I'm surprised how early your fall is hitting.

[sholio]

I didn't know potatoes made berries!

At some point I think I'd found out that they did, because I wasn't surprised, but it did take me a little while to figure out what those green things were that I kept finding in the soil.

Also, wow, for how hot of a summer Alaska had I'm surprised how early your fall is hitting.

I KNOW!! This has been a super weird year. We had an incredibly hot, dry summer, and then half the state continued with heat and drought while the other half (our half) had torrential rains and flooding and frost. And now autumn is falling on us like a ton of bricks. But the way things are going, it could get warm again and stay warm 'til October! We just don't know.

[sheron]

We are also having a cooler August then normal. It was forecast, but still sucks since I didn't get much swimming in. The weather is still kind of gorgeous though (20C=68F)

[sholio]

I wouldn't mind some of that! Ours was more like 12C/54F today. IT'S STILL AUGUST. I'M NOT READY. ;___;

[sheron]

I know :( I am loving the weather but as a precursor of what's coming....so not on.

My mind immediately went to travel into warmer climates *snorts*

[rachelmanija]

In a Dorothy Sayers short story I think someone gets tricked into eating them and poisoning himself.

The potatoes look great!

[edenfalling]

Those are some gorgeous potatoes!

[sholio]

Thank you! :)

[madripoor_rose]

I had potato berries once, I think the plants have to flower for it to happen.

Very weird year. I was able to cut lettuce once, and then it bolted on me. A lot of heat and rain down here. Cherry tomato plant got about seven feet tall, started climbing the trumpet vine next to it.

[sholio]

Wow, yeah, and I guess it flooded all over the Midwest (not sure where you are). It's just been really strange weather all over!

And yeah, I've had scattered potato blossoms at the end of the season before, but this year they bloomed heavily and early (bloom early, bloom often) so I guess they had time to make fruit.

[madripoor_rose]

SE Michigan, over by Lake Erie.

Potato flowers are strangely pretty, too, that's part of why I grew potted potatoes a couple of years. They say if you want to you can save the seed from the fruit. (won't be the same as the parent plant and would take a couple years to get potatoes big enough to be worth harvesting tho.)

[booksarelife]

My mom didn’t get much useful basil this summer-she thinks it was too hot for a bit and then the wrong amount of rain

[lilacsigil]

I had no idea potatoes made berries! I can really see how they're related to tomatoes here. The potatoes themselves all look so bright and delicious!

[sholio]

Yeah, they look so tomato-like! It's cool. :D

[snickfic]

Beautiful produce! :))) I don't have a place to garden, so I love seeing photos of other people's fall gardens.

[kore]

Are those purple potatoes? NOM NOM NOM

The weather's been weird sort of here too -- hotter than usual, but just a bunch of "mini" heat waves getting up to the mid-eighties, not the terrible scorching from earlier. We're still getting smoke tho.

[cornerofmadness]

Very nice harvest, a little scary it's this early

[sartorias]

Those spuds are gorgeous!

[umadoshi]

So much bounty!

[yhlee]

What a beautiful harvest!

[st_aurafina]

Such pretty spuds and pumpkins!! And wow, I did not know that about potatoes and berries.

My sister is in Alaska right now (on one of those cruises with my mum) and the photos she is sending back look like tropical forest, so amazing.

[lunabee34]

Those teeny potatoes are so yummy looking. It's all yummy looking.

[sholio]

DO NOT EAT THE TEENSY POTATOBERRIES, THEY ARE POISONOUS. XD Everything else is yummy, though!

[lunabee34]

Heeee, no! I will not. I mean the teensy little red potatoes (which we always called new potatoes).

[leesa_perrie]

Wow, lovely!! And I, also, didn't know about the DO NOT EAT potato berries!

[maplemood]

So pretty! It's kind of insane to think that fall's already around the corner/already here, though!

[(Anonymous)]

Those are very handsome potatoes! And I like the melty squash, too -- it looks like some kind of sea critter :)

[hamsterwoman]

(that comment was me :)

[schneefink]

Very nice and colorful potatoes! And whoa, potato berries exist, TIL.

[cgbookcat1]

Beautiful harvest! I had 4 kabocha squash, several pending delicatas, beets, carrots, radishes, and many tomatoes so far. One cantaloupe split on the vine but I'm watching the second and third closely. And I spotted a happy groundhog at the top of the pole bean cage today . . . so I won't get many of those.

I didn't realize that patty-pan squash were both summer and winter! Yours is so pretty!

[scrubjayspeaks]

Goodness, everything you have photographed so well?! I'm currently inundated with peaches, which are delicious this year but spectacularly ugly. As are the tomatoes. For some reason, we got a lot of fruits with extra little noblins growing on them, so everything looks fairly Frankenstein-ish.

This year has been weird for us as well. It took until something like April before I could plant anything out. We just kept having bouts of frost. Now this summer has been the hottest since my first up here, five years ago. I have no idea how the plants made up for lost time and produced so much, when last year was milder and yet a total bust.

I swear, gardening is 25% actual agricultural science and 75% frickin' magic.

[aries_taurus]

My aunt got 15 GALLONS of green beans. Nothing else. No peas. No beets. just TONS of green beans. (Nortern coast of Quebec) Too dry of a summer. Potatoes are coming out with the slightest tug it's so dry. I'm DROWNING in plums.