Harvest Monday - July 21, 2014

And the winner is…..

Bloody Butcher!
 

The first ripe tomato of the season!  Yeah!

I’m wondering if this one was an anomaly.  All of the other tomatoes on this plant are still fully green and I also don’t see any sign of ripening on the two other tomato varieties with similar days to maturity (less than 60 days) – Ildi & Siberian.  Hopefully I’m not waiting too much longer for a steady supply of tomatoes.

This was an exciting week as there were quite a few firsts.

Our first two zucchini - always a treat in my garden where squash are usually few & far between.  These came from one of the Sure Thing plants.  I planted two and one is decidedly larger than the other, probably because of competition from the borage (that I have since removed).

 

Sure Thing Zucchini
 

I also harvested the first Suyo Long & Lemon cucumber:



Suyo Long & Lemon Cucumbers
 

I really enjoyed the Lemon cucumber - this is the first time I've grown it.  I had read that you have to harvest them quite young otherwise they get too seedy.  This one was perfect as an evening snack, just simply sliced with a sprinkling of salt.

The Suyo Long is in my fridge right now, waiting to go into a refrigerator pickle that I will hopefully get to this afternoon.  I really like the Suyo Long except that it does have a tendency (in my garden anyways) towards incomplete fertilization – which is what has caused it to be skinny on one end and fat on the other.  It’s still delicious, so I’m not complaining.

And still on cucumbers, I harvested a couple more Garden Sweets – these are doing very well.  Early production and they are pumping out a few cucumbers each week, it seems.  A few more hot peppers were harvested this week as well but the plants have really slowed down in the past week or so because of the coolish weather.

Garden Sweet Cucumbers & Hungarian Hot Wax Peppers
 

And lastly but certainly not least, I harvested the garlic and shallots.

I like to keep the garlic separated so that I can keep track of how well each variety did.  I find an easy way to do this is to pull up one variety at a time & place it in a plastic bag, together with the variety marker.  I then pile my bags into the wheelbarrow & take the whole lot to the garage where I tie them up into bunches.

Garlic - Harvested & Ready for Transport

I slip a piece of paper through the string on each bunch with the variety printed on it before hanging it up.

The garlic is hanging in the garage & each day I make sure to open the garage door in order to get some nice air flow.

Garlic Hung to Dry
 

Right now, the shallots are simply laying on a piece of chicken wire that is propped up by some wood.  In the next day or two, I am going to build a proper drying “rack” for the shallots which will consist of a wooden frame with chicken wire stapled to it.

Golden Shallots
 

The garlic harvest was much better than last year but still not that great.  Two of the varieites I grew – Porcelain and Czech - bulbed up very nicely & I’m satisfied with their size.  The other varieties, however, were still really small – Ichelium Red, Persian Star & Salt Spring Select.

I’m taking the small size with a grain of salt, however, as I did use the cloves from the disappointingly small garlic from last year (which I messed up because of insufficient soil amendments and spacing that was too close).  I do think that, although small, this year they are larger than last.  I’ll have to make a final determination on this once the garlic is dried and weighed.  If it is larger, then I will continue growing it, picking the largest bulbs/cloves for planting this fall.  I really don’t want to give up on a variety simply because I messed up one season, which resulted in super small bulbs (and planting stock), without giving it a chance to bounce back.

The shallot harvest was really good.  All of the bulbs were a decent size & they multiplied well – much better than last year, both in terms of size & division.  Both the garlic & shallots will be added to the harvest totals once they are dried & trimmed, which will be in about a month or so.

This past week I also harvested the last of the sugar snap peas…so sad.  On the bright side, I have a huge bagful in the fridge which will last at least a couple of weeks.

My harvest totals this week were:

Cucumbers – 1,082 grams (2.39 lbs)

Peas – 750 grams (1.65 lbs)
Hot Peppers – 212 grams (0.47 lbs)
Summer Squash – 962 grams (2.12 lbs)
Tomatoes – 80 grams (0.18 lbs)

Total For Week – 3,086 grams (6.80 lbs)

Total To Date – 31.41 kg (69.25 lbs)

To see what everyone else has been harvesting over the past week, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Mondays.

Till next time…☺