Harvest Monday - August 17, 2015

This week there was one new, surprise crop that I didn’t expect to enjoy at all this season.  Corn.  That’s right – I actually picked a cob of corn.  Of the ground.  Because my corn muncher had severed a mini-cob right off one of the stalks.  And then left it there in the path – untouched.  I’m thinking this rules out a raccoon.

The miracle cob

It wasn’t a big cob, by any means – I actually didn’t think there would be much under those leaves as it certainly didn’t feel all that plump.  But when I pulled back the husk, I found some small, but plump kernels:

Shucked

With the corn patch in total chaos, I honestly can't believe that this cob was pollinated as evenly as it was.  Pretty amazing.  I picked off a couple of kernels and did a bit of a taste test right there and then, just to see.  Mmm, mmm good – it was so sweet!  So off to the kitchen I went, plopped it into some boiling water for a couple of minutes, then cut it up so we all could have a piece…no butter needed.  And everyone loved their little taste of heaven.

Ok, back to earth and the less exciting but nonetheless delicious harvests for the week.

The 2nd pepper variety to be harvested this year (after Hungarian Hot Wax) were the pepperoncino peppers:

Pepperoncino Peppers

These are going to be pickled – I really like them tossed into a salad with an Italian vinaigrette (homemade of course!).

A few more Hungarian Hot Wax peppers were also harvested, together with more Bloody Butcher & Sungold tomatoes:

Tomatoes & Hungarian Hot Wax Peppers

Juliet & Yellow Pear tomatoes have now joined Bloody Butcher and Sungold in the harvest basket, pictured here with a couple of broccoli side shoots:

More tomatoes & broccoli side-shoots

I shelled the fresh favas that were picked last week & these were frozen:

Shelled favas (Ianto's & Extra Precoce Violetto)

The ones that were black or turning black were left on some newspaper in the basement with a fan running and they are drying nicely.  They should be ready to shell this week sometime.

The last of the Copra and Rossa di Milano onions were harvested as well as all of the Ailsa Craigs and Red Wings.  I forgot to get a photo of the onions as they were drying in the sun, but here are the Red Wings on the way to the curing rack in the garage:

Red Wing Onions

I don’t include the onions in the tally until they are cured & ready for storage.  Very small onions, however, head to the kitchen right away.  I also cleaned up the potato onions that had bolted – all of them were quite small, about the size of shallots – and those were included in the tally as well since they are also for immediate use.

Onion runts (left) & bolted potato onions (right)

The Contender plants had developed some sort of blight and I pulled them out, harvesting the rest of the beans.

Contender Beans - Final disappointing harvest

This was a dismal year for green beans - I’ll give some more details on this in my mid-month update (I’ll be posting Part 1 tomorrow).

A huge quantity of Gold Marie beans were harvested – over 7 pounds.  This will be the last harvest from the vines, which I’ll be pulling this week.


Gold Marie Yellow Romano Beans

More cucumbers & tomatoes:



Tomatoes:  Bloody Butcher, Juliet, Yellow Pear, Sungold
Cucumbers:  Lemon, Chelsea Prize, Garden Sweet

More plums.  The Shiros are basically done but there are a quite a lot of Burbank plums to pick.  The Japanese beetles are really going at them now - I guess they can tell when they are ready too:



Plums in basket are ok or only have minimal damage;
plums on the right are too damaged to eat

That single tiny plum in front of the basket is a French Prune, my favourite variety on the tree.  Unfortunately, it is also the variety with the smallest & fewest plums.  That was the first one to ripen and it is quite a bit smaller than the handful left on the tree, which are still green.

And lastly, the harvest from Bed #8.  This is the super shady bed where everything seems to stand still as of early summer when the trees leaf out.  I harvested whatever I could from this bed over the weekend and a paltry harvest it was, especially for the Beira Tronchuda as it was my ONLY harvest this year.

Kale from left to right:  Red Russian, Siberian, White Russian

Barely worth harvesting Joi Choi
together with Beira Tronchuda

I will be reseeding this bed with spinach and lettuce today, just to see if I can get some sort of fall crop from it.

My harvest totals this week were:

Fresh Snap/Romano Beans – 3,528 grams (7.78 lbs)
Fava Beans – 554 grams (1.22 lbs)
Chinese Greens – 110 grams (0.24 lbs)
Collards – 228 grams (0.50 lbs)
Corn (shucked) – 42 grams (0.09 lbs)
Cucumbers – 2,068 grams (4.56 lbs)
Kale – 722 grams (1.59 lbs)
Onions – 2,205 grams (4.86 lbs)
Peppers (hot) – 380 grams (0.84 lbs)
Tomatoes – 1,510 grams (3.33 lbs)
Plums – 828 grams (1.83 lbs)

Total for Week – 12,175 grams (26.84 lbs)

Total to Date – 56.50 kg (124.56 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…