The last of the tomatoes

The mornings have turned. There’s a softness to the light that wasn’t there a fortnight ago, and the tomato plants have started to lean, tired, you’d say, if a plant could be tired. We pulled the first of them out on Saturday.

A handful of green ones

Every year a stubborn last few stay green on the vine. We pick them, lay them on a windowsill in a single layer, and they ripen one by one over the next two or three weeks. A green tomato chutney is on the cards for the rest.

What’s still going

• Capsicums: slow but ripening, will keep producing until the first hard cold
• Beans: climbing beans are still flowering, a surprise this late
• Silverbeet: workhorse, as always
• Basil: getting leggy, time to make pesto in earnest

Up next

The autumn working bee on the 9th is for clearing the summer beds and getting garlic in. If you’ve never planted garlic before, this is the easiest crop in the garden, a clove goes in now, you forget about it through winter, and in November you pull up a whole head.

“Tomatoes end. Garlic begins. The garden never quite stops, it just changes shifts.”