Harvest Monday - August 25, 2014

This week we have onions and then we have more onions – oh yes, and tomatoes!



Rossa di Milano (left) & Copra (right)
 

They seem like a lot, but then again, we use onions in almost every dish.  Many of the Rossa di Milano had already been harvested the week before so this was the balance of those, together with all of the Copras.  All of their stems had fallen over and, even though I would have liked to keep them in the ground for about a week or so afterwards, I ended up harvesting them after only a few days because the forecast called for this:

 

What my husband would call a "deluge".
 

I also harvested any of the Ailsa Craigs whose stems had fallen over.

 

Ailsa Craig Sweet Onions
 

These onions are definitely large.

 

A Two Handed Onion
Excuse my "I was just digging onions" dirty hands
 

And there is an even larger one that has yet to be harvested - they are pretty impressive.

All of the onions are now in the garage curing.  My husband isn’t exactly impressed with the fact that we can’t park in the garage right now.  I'm planning on making some sort of contraption that takes less room and provides the onions with better air circulation – with any luck, I’ll get to that this week.

 

Onions Curing in Garage
 

Once the onions have cured & are cleaned up, I will add them to the tally.  However, any onions that were smaller than 1½” across or where the stem broke off while I was harvesting are included in this week’s tally as these are not being cured & will be used fresh.

 

Onions that will be used fresh
 

The tomato harvests have really started to flow & we have graduated from basket to box when harvesting.  This was the harvest box from August 21^st.

 

From the top left - Aunt Ruby Yellow Cherry, Mountain Magic,
Gypsy, Brandywine, Speckled Roman
 

So what to do with all the tomatoes.

I got inspiration from one of Dave’s posts on ways to preserve tomatoes and made some oven roasted cherry tomatoes with fresh oregano & lemon thyme.

 

Tomatoes Ready for the Oven
 

Slow Roasted Goodness
They really are as good as they look!
 

They were AWESOME!  I had to put them in a freezer bag relatively quickly after I made them because I kept grabbing a few every time I walked past the trays - just couldn't help myself.

You may have noticed that I don’t have any red cherry tomato varieties – this was quite by accident.  Believe it or not, I only realized a couple of weeks ago that all the cherry varieties I chose were yellow.  They are all delicious but next year I plan to add some variety to the colour mix.

And then I canned some tomato sauce for the first time.

 

15 lbs. of Tomatoes - Ready for Processing
 

It took me all day yesterday and the kitchen is still a whopping big mess.  BUT there was a lot of trial & error as I was doing things - the learning curve was pretty big.  I’m expecting my next sauce making session to be considerably quicker and a lot less messy.

 

All day & 9 jars of sauce - don't laugh ;)
 

In this basket, tomatoes are joined by a few lemon cucumbers.  I made a refrigerator pickle with the cukes, just to try it out.  Up to now, I had only used the Garden Sweet & Suyo Long in my pickles.

Clockwise - Lemon Cucumbers, Ildi & Siberian Tomatoes
 

The Tyee spinach had started to bolt, so I harvested one last batch.

Last of the Tyee Spinach
 

Also harvested but not pictured was some lettuce, a bit of pak choi & and one big zucchini (yeah!).

My harvest totals this week were:

Chinese Cabbage – 114 grams (0.25 lbs)

Cucumbers – 2,804 grams (6.18 lbs)
Lettuce – 352 grams (0.78 lbs)
Onions – 1,336 grams (2.95 lbs)
Spinach – 328 grams (0.72 lbs)
Summer Squash – 630 grams (1.39 lbs)
Tomatoes – 15,388 grams (33.92 lbs)

Total for Week – 20,952 grams (46.19 lbs)

Total to Date – 89.89 kg (198 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…☺