Harvest Monday - September 1, 2014

Our internet has been down all morning so I have been back & forth between home & Tim Hortons trying to get this post done & the pictures uploaded...unsuccessfully.  The upload speed was brutally slow and I also had formatting issues.  The internet went back up for about 30 minutes during which time I was able to upload the photos.  Now it's down again and I have to upload this through my husbands phone...hopefully it works.

It’s the first Monday of September and we have yet another statutory holiday here in Canada – Labour Day.  This also normally marks the last day of summer vacation.  The kids are back to school tomorrow and I’m kind of sad and kind of happy at the same time.  It has been a wonderful summer – didn’t get as much done as we wanted to but isn’t that always the case?

Now on to this weeks harvest.  New to the harvest basket was a Gold Nugget winter squash.


Gold Nugget Squash
 

Such a cutie, isn’t she?  And at only 348 grams (12 ounces), just big enough for a side dish for one – which is fine by me as I’m the only one in my family that appreciates winter squash – so far anyhow.  Haven’t cut her open yet so not sure what she looks like on the inside.  Right now, she is hanging out with my onions in the garage.  I hope she tastes as good as she looks.

I finally harvested some sweet peppers, but unfortunately I had to harvest them green.  Why?  See for yourself:

Holey Peppers, Batman
Sorry, couldn't resist ;)
 

I had noticed a hole in one of the peppers and then, upon examining the other plants, similar holes were found on two more.  When I split them open, one of them had clear damage on the inside, so off to the compost pile it went.



The top pepper went to the compost pile,
but the bottom two were salvageable
 

The other two showed no signs of internal damage, so the section with the hole was trimmed before the peppers were washed, chopped up & tossed into a grill basket that already contained some oh-so-rare zucchini.

Although last week was a bigger tomato week, this week was still pretty good and there are tons of tomatoes on the plants right now as I haven’t had the time to harvest any in the last couple of days.
 



Tomato Harvest from Last Friday
 

The last of the Ailsa Craig onions were harvested:



Final harvest of Ailsa Craig onions plus
two potato onions on the bottom left side
 

Look at those monster onions at the bottom, in the middle.  Of course they still have to cure, but I couldn’t resist putting the biggest one on the scale anyhow – 806 grams (1.78 lbs)!  That’s a whole lot of onion!

A couple of the potato onions had flopped over at the same time as the Ailsa Craigs so these were harvested as well.

Later in the week we were expecting yet another rainstorm, so I ended up harvesting some more of the potato onions – basically all those whose tops had flopped over.



Potato Onions
 

That snow white onion in the middle is a beaut!   I hope it keeps well so that I can plant it in the spring.  These potato onions were grown from seed and since they do not grow true to type you never know what you will get.  You can then reproduce those that have the qualities you are looking for by planting them just as you do shallot bulbs, and they will multiply by forming clusters of bulbs.

The Camelot shallots that I grew from seed had finished curing.  I braided them and they are hanging in the garage for now.

Camelot Shallots - Cured & Braided
 

The garlic and Golden shallots had finished curing, so they were trimmed, cleaned up & weighed.  I will be doing a detailed post on the garlic & shallot harvest later this week.



From Left to Right:
Czech, Ichelium Red, Porcelain, Salt Spring Select & Persian Star

Not the best photo as this is the largest size that will fit in the post - I should have photographed them in a circle instead of a straight line.  I did take photos of each one individually which I will post when I do my garlic/shallot write up.


Some of the golden shallots had insect damage (which I will also discuss in the later post) so these will be used up now.  The rest will be stored.

Golden Shallots
Those on the left are to be stored
while those on the right are for current use
 

The last of the Golden of Bacau beans were harvested and the vines were pulled.

Golden of Bacau - Final Harvest

Even though the Golden of Bacau vines were infected with bacterial brown spot, I was able to harvest a total of 3,339 grams (7.36 lbs) of beans this season so I am more than happy with my decision not to pull them.

The cucumber vines are now badly infected with Powdery Mildew but they are still squeezing out quite a few cucumbers.  So this past weekend, when I harvested these:

Garden Sweet & Suyo Long Cucumbers
 

I decided to turn them it into these:

Garlic Dill Pickles
 

This was my first time canning cucumber pickles & it wasn’t half bad.  Most people prefer refrigerator pickles to canned pickles because they are crisper.  The only problem is that they don’t keep as long and, of course, there is the issue of refrigerator space as well.  I figured that I would can a few jars that could be cracked open once the refrigerator dills run out.

Also included in the tally this week were a couple of Rossa di Milano onions that I accidentally dropped – since these were now likely bruised, I decided to use them fresh instead of continuing to cure them.

My harvest totals this week were:

Beans – 538 grams (1.19 lbs)

Cucumbers – 5,240 grams (11.55 lbs)
Garlic – 2,314 grams (5.10 lbs)
Onions – 210 grams (0.46 lbs)
Sweet Peppers – 206 grams (0.45 lbs)
Hot Peppers – 20 grams (0.04 lbs)
Shallots – 3,976 grams (8.77 lbs)
Summer Squash – 1,650 grams (3.64 lbs)
Winter Squash – 348 grams (0.77 lbs)
Tomatoes – 11,609 grams (25.59 lbs)

Total for Week – 26,111grams (57.56 lbs)

Total to Date – 116 kg (256 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.

One last thing.  As I was checking my Trail of Tears beans, I noticed this bug:

Mystery Bug
 

I've never seen one before and have no idea what it is so I thought I would throw it out there because I am sure that more experienced gardeners will take one look and know what it is right off the bat.

Till next time…☺