Summer's Garden Gone - Recipes Needed

The last day of summer and the plants in the square foot garden had just about given all they could. Many of the leaves were yellow or brown and the fruits were very slow to ripen. The daytime temperatures were fluctuating between 68ºF/20ºC and 85ºF/30ºC, the night time temperatures dipped as low as 51ºF/10ºC. Not much more ripening was going to happen this year.

It was actually a couple of days past the last day of summer when I cut down all of the plants in the square foot garden. There were already signs of cold temperature damage.

There were some ripe fruits.

and even more immature fruits.

Once the produce was weighed and put into a bowl, it looked like this.

Above you see Mr. Stripey, German Johnson, Big Beef, Early Girl, Husky Cherry, Chocolate Cherry, Super Sweet 100 and some green volunteer grape tomatoes. There are also Cayenne, Red Bell and Orange Bell peppers along with cucumbers and two green beans.

I have been weighing all the square foot garden produce since first I planted a seed. I will post the graphic once I have it ready. For now I present some figures from just this one harvest.

Total weight of ripe fruit was 2187g / 4.8lbs. The immature fruit weighed 2889g / 6.4lbs. for a grand total weight of 5076g / 11.2lbs. 

The ripe fruits will go into salads, grilled cheese with tomato sprinkled with oregano sandwiches, omelettes and fritattas. I am not sure what to do with the immature fruits. I guess, what I need are recipes for fried green tomatoes, green tomato relish and the like. Maybe a mixed pickle would be good? If you have favorite recipes for green tomatoes and or cucumbers, please leave a comment so I can get to work.


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