Harvest Fridays – Fall is here!

Happy Friday! It’s finally cooling down a little bit, so this week has been grrrreat!

We spent last weekend with a bunch of my family in the beautiful area of Point Reyes, California. It’s a little north of San Francisco and seriously gorgeous.

Point Reyes National Seashore Lighthouse

We were there for my cousin’s wedding and it was awesome to see my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins on my West coast turf.

And the food. Uhm. YUM!

Here on the blog, I decided to start a new feature– Harvest Fridays! People are always asking me about the garden, plus I’m super proud of it and like showing it off. So I thought I would check in once a week and show you guys what I’m harvesting, what I’m planting, and what I’m doing with my bounty. I’ve seen this kind of feature on a few gardening and homesteading blogs I read and I love to follow along (and get ideas!). Of course– I’m starting this at the end of summer, so not a super-productive time. But even though the summer is winding down, I’ve still got lots going on in the garden. And last year our winter garden was pretty successful!

This week, I cut a ton of rainbow chard. We have had our chard growing since spring, but the summer heat and pests had it looking a little worse for the wear. I harvested chard here and there throughout the summer, but a lot of it had bug holes and for the most part I fed it to the quails. Ever since the weather cooled off and pests dissipated (in part, I think, because I pulled out all my tomatoes and zucchinis– both of which seemed to attract a lot of bugs), my chard has been doing awesome!

How beautiful are these stalks?

To preserve the huge amount of chard I picked, I chopped it up (both stalks and leaves), blanched and froze it. I eyeball it and freeze it in packages about the size of a box of frozen spinach. That way, when a recipe calls for a box of frozen spinach, I can sub in the chard instead! I used my frozen chard packs in this Quinoa Frittata about 6 times this summer! (It’s one of Nick’s favorite breakfasts.)

The other thing I harvested this week– peppers! Lots of peppers. Jalapenos and some long, skinny sweet peppers (I am not sure exactly what type they are). I have more peppers than I know what to do with, so I made another batch of Quick Pickled Jalapenos. I’ve been putting my pickled jalapenos on EVERYTHING lately since I have so many!

What I planted: Most of our winter garden has already been planted, but this week I added some Russian red kale in pots. We cleaned up the yard a bit, which included moving a leftover bag of potting soil into several pots. I didn’t want the pots of soil to go to waste and figured greens would grow well in them– we’ll see! I got the kale seeds (along with radish seeds to be planted soon, and 2 types of heirloom tomatoes for next summer) this weekend up North at an adorable little shop! All organic and heirloom!

That’s it for this week, but we’ve got a couple things planned going in soon– happy vegging!

Do you have a winter garden? What are you harvesting and planting these days?