GA: Ground cherry harvest ramping up / ongoing

Even though the ground cherry plants at the allotment are only inches high, they're delivering a decent harvest!  Finally had enough today to make a pie.

Ground cherry pie! From the backyard volunteers! (Not from the allotment!)

Woo!  Getting a very decent harvest of ground cherries from the backyard volunteers, mainly the huge low sprawling one at the south of the central bed.  Made my ground cherry pie recipe today -- hoping to get enough more to make a second one later on!

(The allotment ground cherries have been useless due to squirrels helping themselves!)

Allotment: Squirrels eating ground cherries!! So I'll pick them a bit unripe

Someone, squirrels likely, is eating the ground cherries at the allotment!  Sigh!  So, today I picked a few that hadn't fallen yet, and will let them finish ripening at home.  Will try to do that for the rest.

Harvesting volunteer ground cherry

Nice, the volunteer in among the zinnias in the SE central bed is producing a nice surprise harvest after I had to tear out all the other plants because they were feeding the rat(s).  No rodents have found this ground cherry plant yet, as evidenced by the undisturbed fruit on the ground.  Yay!

Also I haven't seen any rats in several weeks now.  I think removing their food source (the row of ground cherry plants, plus adding a seed-catcher tray to the birdfeeder), removing their compost bin hideout, plus clearing out junk around the kitchen step did the trick. 

Removed all ground cherries :-((((((((((( (due to rat)

Oh so sad.  Oh my.  There would have been hundreds, even likely thousands of ground cherries to harvest.  But the plants are simply feeding the rat(s) so I just can't keep them.

So now, there is nothing in the yard that interests the rats, save maybe a few tomatoes if they get to them before I do.

Compost bin gone.

Kitchen step blocked off.

Bird feeders anti-drop tray.

So with any luck, the rats will soon move along to some other more hospitable place.

Finally enough ground cherries for a pie (slow due to rat) -- aphid damage minimal

The aphid thing is gross, but not horrible, minimal impact to the harvest.

The larger impact is the rat who, out of all the things in the garden, seems interested only in ground cherries and sunflower seeds (rather from bird feeder or from sunflower plants themselves).  Oh and s/he also took a bite here and there from a couple of tomatoes that I didn't pick soon enough.

Harvesting ~1-2 small handfuls per day of ground cherries

Since the past week or so.

Enough to snack on, not enough for pies yet.

Aphids inside ground cherry husks!!! But they seem to be ok?

I had been noticing that the ground cherry plants still look healthy and strong after having noticed aphids on the ground cherry plants on July 4th.  I also noticed some lady bug larvae on the ground cherries recently.

Well today I noticed that the inside of some of the husks look dirty -- you can see it through from the outside of the husk.  Opened one up and...  aphid poop and some aphids (mostly deceased?)!!

Sigh!!

They're in a bunch of husks, but a bunch of husks look fine.

The good thing is that the cherries inside the affected husks actually look fine.  So, maybe will just need to give them a good rinse, rather than chuck all of the affected husks.

Harvested first ground cherries!

Only a half dozen or so, and not fully golden, but a decent size, and very tasty!

The plants look relatively sparse at this point though, hard to imagine hundreds coming off each plant... but it's early still, so hopefully they'll bush out more in the coming weeks.

Ground cherries producing very well

^^^

Ground cherries -- first harvest

The first ground cherries have fallen to the ground!  A small handful.

About half were still green or semi-green.

Lots of ground cherries, making pies

Harvesting lots of ground cherries, yay.

A few ground cherries harvested

Have harvested a few ground cherries so far.  Two or three every few days.

In my fridge / on my table/counter right now

In my fridge / on my table/counter right now!

- tons of tomatoes, cherry and normal, some ripe, some still green
- 5.5 cups of de-husked ground cherries ready for pie
- a huge bag of swiss chard
- a huge bag of beet greens about to be made into a pasta dish
- a big bag of beets
- a sandwich bag of potatoes (puny harvest)
- several cucumbers
- a bag of celery
- a few jalapeno peppers
- one small green pepper

Still in the garden:  more chard (about half has already succumbed to the cold but some still crisp) and celery; a few more beets; maybe a few carrots but not sure if there's much root to harvest

Harvesting update

Harvesting update reflecting where things are at these days:

Zucchini:  TONS have come in already.  Probably 30-40.  Freezer really filling up.

Tomatoes:  Just starting.  A few cherry tomatoes here and there, and one large one.

Ground cherries:  Trickling in, like the cherry tomatoes.  Finding some on the ground, empty...

Beets:  Two so far, one of which was quite small.

Garlic:  Two so far, both quite small, only 4 cloves each.

Carrots:  One so far, just for fun.  Disappointingly not a good flavour, but edible.

Chard:  Haven't been harvesting much, but plants doing well.  Some were getting shaded by zucchini plant so they really stretched up and have long stalks.  Have now pulled back the zucchini leaves to give more sun to the chard.

Peppers:  A few jalapenos, which really aren't hot.  A few banana peppers.  Scooter harvested one very young and small green pepper.

Ground cherry harvest started within the past few days

Ground cherry harvest started within the past few days.  Just a few here and there so far.