The heat wave broke on Thursday and needed rain came Friday and Saturday. I was so confident of the forecast, I did not water the garden.

I wasn’t ready for peppers, yet here they are. I picked a good number of jalapenos, as well as a new sweet pepper, Lemme’s Italian Sweet. I harvest green and process them, although I should let the sweet peppers turn red. There will be plenty of peppers.

Last summer I made two quart jars of sliced jalapenos and I haven’t cracked open the second jar. These are mainly for tacos and I forget to use them quite often. Maybe Ill put up one more jar from this year’s crop.

Last year I also pickled halved jalapenos and whole long hot peppers. I drained two quarts of these and ground them up with carrot, garlic and onion to use as a condiment. It made three pints of fiery hot deliciousness. They need to sit in the refrigerator for a few days.

The first jalapenos will go into a quart jar to be fermented, after keeping some in the refrigerator to use fresh. I need to decide if any peppers will go to the food pantry today. Probably not this week.

Some celery was big enough to harvest. Processing celery means cutting the leaves and freezing them for vegetable broth, evening out the top of each stalk and making a chopped vegetable salad with that part, then the main stalks stay together and go into the refrigerator vegetable drawer for general kitchen use. When the rest are big enough, I’ll have a chop and freeze party to build a stockpile for winter soup. The flavor of home grown celery is unrivaled.

This year has been the best okra harvest yet. The fruit looks good, and I collected more than enough to make a vegetarian gumbo. I sliced and froze the first harvest. There will be more.

Cucumbers, zucchini and squash plants are fading. I gave a large quantity of zucchini to the food pantry last Monday. There will be more today.

With the pickle shelf in the refrigerator full, I have taken to juicing cucumbers and drinking a cup each morning to stimulate my digestive track. This is a useful application of an abundant vegetable.

I bought some fermentation weights and started a quart of fermented dill pickles. Less than 12 hours later bubbles were rising in the quart jar.

There was a small bowl of cherry tomatoes early in the week. By Sunday, the counter looked like this:

The plants look healthy. I expect there will be many more. The first slicer was ready as well.

A couple of leek plants began to flower so I brought them all in. A lot will be frozen for broth and soup, as well as a good number stored in the refrigerator drawer for general kitchen use. I also harvested the rest of the turnips from that plot. Some of the greens made vegetable broth for gumbo. That plot is now empty of everything that was planted there: potatoes, onions, leeks, turnips and radishes. Next step is to prepare the plot for winter.

Garden Huckleberries are ripening. It is new to me this year, and they don’t taste like much on their own. I got 2-1/2 cups and made jam with them. I depend upon experimentation to keep my interest in the garden, so garden huckleberries are a main one for 2026.

I need to check the kale as I haven’t been in that plot for more than a week. Hopefully the bugs have avoided it as they have the early part of this year. If the plants look good, the harvest will continue, likely until well after first frost.

With two days of rain I spent time in the kitchen. The freezer was full, yet now it is really full of vegetables to use this winter. We had steamed green beans with supper… twice!

Ready or not, the garden is transitioning from summer to fall with an abundant harvest. It is why gardeners garden.