Harvest time

This summer and autumn have been so good weather wise here in southern England and my small balcony garden has been thriving. This week is the first rainy and somewhat chillier week. I'm happy to have more autumnal weather now anyway. Many things are still growing on my balcony, mainly tomatoes and peppers. Of course I already dedicated a whole post to my Tomato Tigerella, which are still giving a proud daily harvest. I'm very grateful for any new ones and hope that they'll keep it up for a while still. They have been incorporated into quite a few summer and autumn recipes now, and I haven't had to purchase any tomatoes for the past couple of months. 

The courgettes, yellow and green, also had a good run this year, but they've now slowed down in growth. And I pretty much decided that I won't be growing any courgettes next year, as they take awfully lot of room away on a small balcony. Now after two years of growing plants here, I've had wonderful courgette crops and maybe a gap year is in order for them. I didn't get sick of them yet, though. There are so many good dishes, where courgettes can be utilised.

At the moment the best growers are the peppers. I find such joy in following them grow and turn colour. I only harvested the first large one a few days ago, but there are plenty more of them coming. A second ripe one surprised me among the tomato wines. I had no idea any more that there were pepper plants in that pot, since the tomatoes properly took over. Many caterpillars plagued the pepper plants earlier in the summer, so the leaves got a bit eaten, but they survived and are doing fine. I let my friend remove the caterpillars in a humane way. Here are some photos of the development of the peppers and I'm sure that also recipes will follow.