Harvest Monday - August 31, 2015

I’ll start off with the biggest surprise this past week, literally:

Gargantuan Choy
 

That is a (not so) baby bok choy.  That's right, I said BABY choy, and we harvested two large heads this past week.

If you recall, I tried growing baby choy in the ill-fated Bed #8 that was partly shaded and also had the invasion of willow tree roots.  I harvested 8 baby choy from that bed with a total weight of 140 grams (4.9 oz).  The one head in the photo weighed in at 940 grams (2 lbs).  In this case, it was definitely all about location.  Unfortunately, I completely forgot to note the variety so we are either looking at a Green Fortune or Ching Chang Choy.  From the rate at which my new fall seeding of baby choi is growing, I’m venturing a guess that this variety is Green Fortune.

I had one “never before harvested” veg this week:

Ping Tung eggplant with Amish Paste tomatoes
 

Ping Tung is my absolute favourite when it comes to eggplant, so I was thrilled to be harvesting one.  The eggplants have been hit with what I suspect is Verticillium wilt and it’s anyone’s guess how much longer they will last. They are hanging in at this stage so I’m still hopeful that I’ll harvest a few more eggplant before the end of the season.

Grouped with the eggplant are the first of the Amish Paste tomatoes.  You’ll see that I’ve split them up into two groupings – the group of 3 have been struck with, you guessed it, blossom end rot which you can just make out in the upside down tomato.  The 2 tomatoes beside the eggplant are fine.

Between this variety and the Opalka, I have never had such an issue with blossom end rot before.  Interesting that it’s only on these two paste tomatoes; I suppose they are simply more susceptible.  The other paste tomato variety I’m growing is Speckled Roman, which I grew last year as well & these do not seem to have this issue.

Speaking of tomatoes, I also harvested the first of the Chadwick Cherry tomatoes, pictured here with Aunt Ruby’s Yellow Cherry:

Aunt Ruby's Yellow Cherry & Chadwick Cherry
 

The Chadwick cherries are definitely a large cherry & they taste pretty good too.  These are being eaten fresh, while I’m using the Aunt Ruby’s primarily for roasted cherry tomatoes, which then go in the freezer.  I really enjoyed using the roasted tomatoes last year over the winter.

The tomato harvests have started to pick up and the annual graduation from harvest basket to harvest box has taken place.  This box includes the first of the Brandywine tomatoes:

Clockwise from the top left:  Amish Paste, Aunt Ruby, Juliet, Costoluto Genovese,
Chadwick Cherry, Yellow Pear, Bloody Butcher, Brandywine, Taxi
 

I’m not harvesting anywhere near the amount I did last year, but on the bright side, most of my tomato plants actually look much better all of a sudden.  Perhaps it was the fish emulsion I gave them or our recent dry weather which may have slowed down the blight.  Whatever the reason, I may not get a larger overall harvest than last year, but I’m hopeful that I’ll at least have a longer harvest period (last year all of the plants had been pulled by the 2nd week of September because of blight).

Another picking of peppers, including the first harvest of Anaheim peppers:

Peppers clockwise from the left:
Padron, Ostra Cyklon, Anaheim, Hungarian Hot Wax
 

The Anaheim plants are very productive – those pictured in the basket came from only one plant!

I harvested a couple of the summer sown turnips – this variety is “Just Right” & I think I let them grow a touch to large:

Just Right Turnips
(Excuse the blurry photo - the mosquitos were particularly bad at the time)
 

Although they were still tender & not at all woody, the roots were not as sweet as the White Lady turnips I grew in the spring.  I’m not sure if that is because I let them get so large, the hot weather we’ve had or simply the variety.  I only grew four of these and there are two smaller ones in the ground which I will harvest this coming week.  We’ll see if those are sweeter.

As I did with the spring turnips, I kept the leaves, trimming off those with a bit too much damage.  Just Right doesn’t seem to produce as many leaves as White Lady, which is a shame as I enjoy them almost as much as the roots.

Also harvested but not photographed were a handful of cucumbers.  There are a couple of small ones left to pick before I pull the vines up today and then they are done.  It was a dismal cucumber year.  At least I was able to get a couple of jars of refrigerator pickles out of them.

Also included in the tally is a late picking of plums that I forgot to include last week and I’m adjusting my numbers for the potato onions.  As I’m using them in the kitchen, I’ve found that removing the tough flower stalk often reduces the usable portion of the onion quite a lot, so I’m cutting the weight for the potato onion harvest in half.

My harvest totals this week were:

Chinese Greens – 1,702 grams (3.75 lbs)
Cucumbers – 366 grams (0.81 lbs)
Eggplant – 174 grams (0.38 lbs)
Onions – reduced by 633 grams (1.46 lbs)
Hot Peppers – 992 grams (2.19 lbs)
Tomatoes – 12,893 grams (28.42 lbs)
Turnips – 564 grams (1.24 lbs)
Turnip Greens – 338 grams (0.75 lbs)
Plums – 1,025 grams (2.26 lbs)

Total for the Week – 17,391 grams (38.34 lbs)

Total to Date – 85.28 kg (188.01 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…