Our Siberian harvest

Our short Siberian summer is over. It was lovely, warm, and sunny. Although it was quite cool at the end of May and beginning of June. There was little rain, so we had to water a lot.

It's already September, and the weather is changeable. It's been raining almost every day since the beginning of the month. In the early days, the rain was brief, but after each shower, the sun shone brightly again and a beautiful rainbow appeared.

The days are quite warm, but the nights are getting colder and foggier with each passing day, and in the mornings, dew glistens silver on the plants. It's time to harvest the vegetables.

We have an excellent harvest this year.

Berries

There were lots of berries—honeysuckle, strawberries, raspberries, currants, serviceberries, plums, and cherries—and we were delighted. We made jam and compotes, froze some of the berries, and ate our fill. There are still berries hanging on the cherry and currant trees. But we didn't have any apples this year. Our old wild apple tree was resting this year. And some of the young apple trees froze.

Vegetables

The vegetable harvest was also pleasing.

Onion

We harvested onions first. Our garden bed is small. We planted two varieties of onions—Centurion and Stuttgarter. The onions grew nice and large; we harvested a bucket and a half, enough for the first few days. Onions don't keep well in our garden; they rot, so we don't plant many.

Garlic

We dug up the summer garlic. Our winter garlic froze this year.

Pumpkins

We picked four huge pumpkins from three pumpkin bushes; I couldn't even lift the biggest one. We put one of the pumpkins away. We'll make pumpkin porridge, manti, and drink pumpkin juice. I'll also make candied fruit.

This is my second year growing Musk Honey Dessert pumpkins. They're delicious and juicy. Last year, they were small and produced a lot of pumpkins. This year, there are only three, but they're huge.

Another variety, Grand Helmet, produced a lot of pumpkins on the bush, but then they all rotted, leaving only one fruit. The pumpkin grew large, but didn't ripen, so we picked it when it was green, as frost was expected. I think it will definitely turn orange after storing.

Zucchini

These are zucchini—we'll be making zucchini caviar. We had a ton of zucchini; we ate young zucchini all summer long, fried them, made casseroles, and pancakes. We gave them to family and friends.

I planted six bushes - the Tsukesha variety, the White-fruited Gherkin, and the Salvador hybrid - this is my favorite zucchini, it has dense flesh and does not boil over, it is very tasty.

Watermelons

We harvested the last of the watermelons growing outside. This was our first time growing them in open ground, and we had five plants in total. The Ogonyok watermelons weighed about 3 kg, ripe and sweet. We'll plant more next year.

Potato

We dug up the potatoes. As always, they were good, large, and clean. Very few of the small, ugly ones. We lowered 40 buckets into the cellar. We also left a sack for food for the first few days.

We planted new potatoes this year. We bought two kilograms of them at Alley in the spring. We liked the look of them and decided to see what they would grow into. I don't know the variety, but the price tag said "imported potatoes." The potatoes are elongated and white.

Another pink, elongated variety from a local grower, but I don't remember where exactly it was grown. We don't care what variety it is, as long as it's tasty and productive. This potato is similar to ours, which we've been growing for many years; perhaps they're the same variety.

We also planted a round pink one from Ksyusha, the variety name is unknown.

And our pink ones, and our flat yellow ones, and our round yellow ones. That's how our potatoes grew.

Black Eyed Peas

And this is a whole bowl of green beans. We froze them for the winter.

Carrots and beets

We harvested carrots and beets.

Turnip and daikon

These are Petrovskaya and Golden turnips, and daikon. The daikon has all flowered and sprouted, and the turnips have grown nice and juicy.

Swede

We planted rutabagas for the first time. This is how they grew. Everyone loved them. They taste like turnips, only sweeter and with white flesh.

Radish

And this is a green Margilan radish and a black one. We pulled out the largest ones, but there are still a lot of small ones left. They didn't have time to grow. We left them in the garden bed; if there's no frost, maybe they'll grow some more.

Peppers

We've harvested our peppers. It was a good harvest, with plenty of them. We spent the entire summer cooking them, stuffing them, frying them, making lecho for the winter, pickling them for stuffing, and freezing them. And here's the last of the greenhouse peppers, along with mini peppers grown outdoors.

Sunflowers, corn and beans

The last sunflowers have been picked,

Corn and beans

Today, September 12th, we decided to harvest the last of the greenhouse crops. We arrived at our dacha after work. It had gotten sharply colder, only 5 degrees Celsius outside. It was damp and cloudy, with a piercing wind blowing, and it felt like snow was about to fall. It was so cold, even in the greenhouse, my breath was steaming.

Greenhouse harvest

We picked ripe and green tomatoes and a bucket of cucumbers.

Cabbage

In addition to white cabbage, other varieties were also grown.

The Savoy cabbage was a delight. There were a variety of heads, both large and small, and it makes delicious salads. There were only six heads left in the garden; the rest were eaten.

The cauliflower - 10 pieces - was also not bad, some were frozen, some were eaten.

But we had a bad time with broccoli. This is what it grew like: instead of heads, we had florets that quickly turned into bouquets. We pulled out all the bushes back in early August and decided we wouldn't grow that kind of cabbage again.

So, the entire harvest has been gathered. All that's left in the garden are root parsley and white cabbage.

In a few days we'll dig up the parsley and harvest the cabbage.