Bountiful Harvest: A Day in the Garden with Figs, Tomatoes, Peppers, and Cucumbers

First things first. Look at that little ball sack. One of them will never make it in the house. Just a fact. A beautiful little fruit I haven’t ate yet. I guess I’ll just eat lunch in my garden. There’s all different varieties of figs. Mine stay basically about this small, and if I leave them any longer than this, they will be eaten by the birds. Did read a lot about figs when we first moved in this house, and correct me if I’m wrong, but what I remember was, not every year of your fig tree growth is gonna be good. Like, your harvest is not gonna be great every year. The first few years we lived here, it wasn’t great. Um, but it’s like, every few years, you’ll get a really good harvest. These tomatoes look beautiful, but the branches looking crispy. See, this is still kind of green, and most people would leave this on their branch until it turns red, even if they have a little bit of color like this. You pick this now, and this will be red, like, literally by tomorrow morning. You store it like this, upside down on your counter. This branch is looking crispy, but the tomatoes are beautiful. I’m gonna pick all those little cherries. This is just, like, the time of the year in gardening season. We are, like, not really sure what’s going on. It’s, like, really humid one day, chilly the next. Um, and tomatoes, Like to be pretty consistent. So this is the start to the end, you know, in New Jersey at least. I mean, I don’t live in a place where I could have a garden all year. If I had like a greenhouse, maybe one day, but not today. Pick some cherry peppers while I’m on this side of the garden. Look how cute they are. I love when I get these funky little tomatoes. This is some sort of heirloom, but it like grew around the branch. I love that. Some more peppers I have. I think these are some cubanelles and some pepperoncini’s. And then I have all these banana peppers to pack. And there’s quite a few jalapenos on there too. That’s my banana pepper plant and my jalapeno pepper plant. They’re like growing against each other. I’ll show you. I’m gonna walk over there. But first, while I’m on this side, let’s pick these eggplants. This is literally the nicest eggplant I have ever grown in my life. It is beautiful. For size reference, it’s like the size of my big head. What the fuck? Loud ass cars disrupting my peace. Look at that mother trucker. I probably look like such a hot mess right now, but the abundance is real. Are you guys kidding me? Look at these beautiful, lush tomatoes. This was the banana pepper and the jalapeno bush. I was talking about the little trellis in the middle. This side is the banana pepper and This side is the jalapenos, and they kind of, like, are leaning on each other for structure and growing beautifully. Some jalapenos, some more jalapenos. I think I should have a spicy cocktail tonight. What do you think these are called? Graffiti peppers. They start out like this, and then they start to turn. They’re gonna be, like, dark purple, almost black. But these take a while to grow. I haven’t picked any of these all season, so I don’t know if maybe I just have too many plants in this pot to begin with. But these are super fun. I wanna see what they look like when they’re done. Another one over here. And then I also have just green bell peppers, this whole bush. Let’s see what I get out of this. Definitely gonna have to get another bowl before I go to pick our cucumbers. One more little green pepper. I’m gonna bring this bowl inside and just grab another one before I go over to my cucumbers. I also have some tomato plants over here. These could definitely be weeded a little bit better than what they are. I planted this one plant, and these two just appeared. Okay. But maybe tomorrow I’ll get out of here and just fix them up a little bit. But these are doing amazing. Haven’t harvested anything. There are a lot of green tomatoes, though, and look how beautiful the tomato is. So I’m pretty sure this is some sort Of heirloom also. Like, I’m wondering if it’s the same breed of tomato. I really couldn’t even tell you. Two of these bottle neck squash. Look at this big cucumber. Another big one. A few hanging over here. Planted, uh, like four or five different cucumbers. And the English cucumbers at the back of my yard, I’m still getting a ton of them. These weird shaped ones got wrapped up in the vine. And once they start turning like that yellow, you wanna definitely pick them, regardless of their size. Switched in the pool because it was really dirty, but it was laying on the floor. You see how it’s yellow? It’s not gonna grow anymore. They like to hang, so usually when they’re on the floor, they’re not gonna grow nicely. And if it turns yellow, this is just gonna rot. So you pick this right now, you can eat this, you can eat this within the week. Perfect for Mariella. Little snack and cucumber. Today’s harvest for the day. My husband’s already making a tomato, cucumber, pepper salad for the kids. And they’re having a frita shout out to Angelina’s Kitchen.