Surprise Harvest

What do you get when you plant something during the wrong season, wait six months, and forget about them completely? You get this:

Yep, that is an actual cauliflower head peeking through. This cold-weather veg is meant to be planted in late winter or early fall in these parts, but we planted 3 of them in mid-spring. They didn't die during the summer heat, but they didn't do anything else, either. In the last month, they've taken off and when I went to visit them this morning, they were ready to harvest.

Aren't they pretty? I had no clue what to expect from these lovelies, but to give you a sense of scale, here they are next to a full-sized apple:

Pretty big. I broke them apart, blanched them and filled up a 1 gallon-sized+1 quart-sized freezer bags with them. I think I'll save the gallon for Christmas dinner (nothing like bragging about serving homegrown veggies in the dead of winter, right?). This surprise harvest has really encouraged me to try more cauliflower and broccoli in the spring (ahem, EARLY spring) and again next fall.

I am also fairly amazed by my die-hard pepper plants. They just won't quit. This is only part of what was growing out there today; I left several peppers on the plants to get bigger.

These will get chopped and tossed into the freezer.

My cherry tomatoes have also made a bit of a comeback as well. I think the Indian summer we're experiencing is to blame for the extra long tomato season:

I'm growing these in a large Tomato Tree (the kind where the plants grow out the side, not the bottom) but they're going in the ground next year. The tomato plants were more leggy and tall than they were productive, and these are actually the most fruits I've seen on this plant at one time the whole season.

Live and learn, and then harvest.