After vacation, garden had some treats. I told a neighbor to take what she wanted but not sure yet if she did. Three sqaush types - yellow crookneck, green zuc and yellow zuc purchased accidentally
Note - The red is a combo of tomatoes and at the back a few small red "lunchbox"peppers. The plant tag said it would be prolific all summer, but we have only had a few.
Those beautiful garden colors!!
Purple peppers are green on the inside and taste like green bell peppers! 
this was my first attempt at growing them in a deck bed. Not bad! Except the deer figured out how to get onto the deck… and ate the tops of my tomatoes and nibbled on the peppers!! Next year, I will plant some spicy ones. 
Mr. B already figured out how to keep deer off the deck…
I was looking at our fig tree this morning. It’s difficult to catch on film, but there are still oodles of figs on it even after we’ve eating and given away a lot.
Did you know you can use fig leaves as a wrap to steam fish, vegetables, rice???
Or to make fig tea???
https://ourpermaculturelife.com/do-you-eat-your-fig-leaves-heres-5-ways-to-prepare-them/
Our permaculture lad has made Fig tea, but wasn’t super impressed with it. Right now he’s been using homegrown banana leaves for wraps - tamales yesterday. I suspect those are easier than fig leaves, but if we run out of banana he might switch. He’s always looking for new things to try. I’ll make sure he knows it’s an option. 
cleaned all the beds out this weekend and now contemplating whether to seed beets and kale for a late fall harvest.
Most of my beds are cleared also (except for some field peas); I was thinking of seeding some radishes in the empty spaces for a quick crop.
If you have (growing) time, why not?! I missed the window for planting fall lettuce here and I regret it.
I also pulled a little more from my garden yesterday. Still have a couple of withering tomato plants with a few tomatoes and actually my pepper plants are still producing and have new flowers. Will give them a week or two.
I have “dinosaur” (lacinato) kale and it will keep producing through fall for sure.
I’m thinking I might have missed the window, though my H is talking about using cloche coverings, if needed.
We ate stuffed peppers last night using up 9 of our last good peppers. I saved one additional one to put into pasta today or this weekend.
I also froze tomatoes (and used some in the peppers), but I think we’ll get more of those because no frost is on the horizon yet.
With our peppers (for sides) we had beets and beet greens - and figs - plenty more figs. Spices for the peppers were homegrown too, except the salt.
I love beet greens as much as beets! Delicious when sautéed with a little bacon/bacon fat and then a little balsamic!
We just sauté in avocado oil and garlic. They’re probably my favorite green to eat.
Beet greens are basically swiss chard with an edible root attached – swiss chard and beets are the same species (Beta vulgaris).
Cooked in bacon fat with onions, and a little vinegar, is wonderful! I also like to cook them in a casserole with rotini pasta and a cheese sauce.
Largely put my community garden bed to rest today. Picked out all the zinnias. And green tomatoes (I’ll brown paper bag them to ripen). Planted garlic for next year. Left the kale and some carrots to have some fall growing time before I put the leaf mulch down for the winter in November.
Have you thought about making green tomato relish with your green tomatoes? I usually do this at the end of the season with the green tomatoes left on my plants right before the first killing frost – except this year an extended spell of high temperatures destroyed my tomato plants before I had many green ones to use for relish.
Lovely zinnias, by the way!
I noticed temps dipped down to 34 degrees last night, so despite some nice warm days I was thinking it may be time to bring in the green tomatoes and try green-bagging them. Or maybe I should try green tomato relish;)
For us the tomatoes will get better used ripening them. I don’t think I’d put a green tomato relish to use and my husband doesn’t touch any condiment besides ketchup. 
The brown bag closed shut always works! I put a bunch of green grape tomatoes in a brown bag last Sunday and today I checked to find about a third of them ripe!
I bag or box them and check them once a week. Come take awhile. No problem. Last two years I was able to use the last ripened tomatoes nearly at Thanksgiving! Not bad for Ohio!
Great hints for green tomatoes - thanks!
Tell us more about your leaf mulch. We usually put ours in the town’s paper bags for curbside pickup and waste diversion center drop off. My husband grinds down many of them in leaf blower/mulched to pack more compactly. Now that we have a small veggie garden, should I spread some over there instead?
Also have an option to buy compost, end result of a new city compost program (which we don’t participate in, well at least not yet). Not sure the best use for that since we are still novice gardeners.
