A frost warning sent me out to my community garden plot yesterday to gather all the green tomatoes that were never going to get ripe.
I picked a heavy bagful of tomatoes, a few from my Butter Bush, a lot from the Rutgers, plus four more huge tomatoes from a volunteer tomato plant in my home garden. It was so many, it felt like more than all the ripe red tomatoes I’ve picked put together.
Every visit to my plot since late July has yielded at least one tomato. Usually there’d also be some eggplants or squash or chile peppers. I cooked up most of the harvest, but the chile peppers got so far ahead of me, I decided to just let them turn red. That never happened. Instead, I gathered a whole pound of hot green chiles yesterday.
I’ve also been pulling carrots and parsnips, neither of which I had expected to grow at all. I sowed a bunch of old seed, just to see if any of them were viable, and they were indeed. The parsnips have done so well, they have crowded out the carrots. There’s a patch of them in the middle of the plot now, thick with greens. I left them in place to get sweetened by that first frost last night. My next trip there will be the last harvest, pulling all the parsnips for winter stews.
I would have liked to grow more greens. The most successful (and a small success at that) was the amaranth, which is practically a weed.
As for the total tomatoes, it turns out I was right. All along I’ve been weighing my harvests this years, and when I add up the tomatoes I got about two kilograms of ripe ones, and about three of green ones. That’s plenty!
Writing Every Day 
Chili peppers freeze very well. Halve them, scrape out the seeds, rinse, dry, bag. Done. Deep freeze is best, of course.
I noticed the other day that I’m almost out of the dried thyme you gave me last year. Are you drying ridiculous amounts again? I’d be happy to return the jar for a refill. I can trade some dried sage for it (although the amount would be disproportionate – I don’t have it in abundance). – Chris
I’m thinking about roasting them first and then freezing the excess.
The thyme plant is threatening to become a herb garden all to itself, so any amount of thyme, fresh or dried, you’d like to harvest would be a service.