Harvest Monday - September 14, 2015

We went from hot, hot, hot to sweater weather overnight.  This morning it was only 4C/40F, but it’s supposed to heat up again as of tomorrow, so I’m hoping that my warm weather veg keep going for a while longer.

This past week was a bit slow on the harvest front.  The first of the Stocky Red Roaster peppers were harvested and they were delicious!


Stocky Red Roaster & Melrose peppers
together with a couple of Sure Thing zucchini

I didn’t roast them, but instead stuffed them with a ricotta/spinach mixture and baked them topped with some “Lazy Baked Tomato Sauce” – thanks to Michelle for that idea.  It’s come in very handy, especially for quickly dealing with those less than perfect tomatoes that I don’t want to use for canning.

And yes, those are two more zucchini (Sure Thing) from the squash bales.  And then a couple of Romanesco's were harvested yesterday:

Romanesco Zucchini
 

If the weather does warm up as forecast, I may be in for several more zucchini before the month end – this sudden turnaround in the straw bales is definitely the BEST sort of surprise!

The peppers have slowed down quite a bit, but I did manage to get a few sweet & hot peppers from the plants this week:


Jimmy Nardello, Pepperoncino & Padron peppers
 

The tomatoes are still coming in dribs and drabs.

From top left:  Brandywine, Amish Paste, Sungold, Taxi, Opalka,
Aunt Ruby's Yellow Cherry, Juliet, Mountain Magic, Yellow Pear (center)
 

I think my major trimming/cleanup of the vines has helped & although blight is progressing, it seems to have slowed down a bit.

And look at this huge Opalka:

This Opalka was literally a handful ;)
 

I had harvested a few other large tomatoes from this variety, although I think this one was definitely the biggest and, unfortunately, all of the others had blossom end rot.  I don't think I'll be giving up on this variety just yet as a lot of my BER problems this year may have been due to inconsistent watering.

Yesterday's tomato harvest
 

My kitchen is a bit of a tomato rescue station right now with ripening tomatoes seemingly everywhere :)

I harvested a bunch of the Vermont Cranberry beans earlier in the week:

Vermont Cranberry Beans
 

And then the weather became wet and cool, so I harvested the rest (although I think there are still some hiding in the White Walcherse plants) together with the remaining Trail of Tears:

Vermont Cranberry & the remaining Cherokee Trail of Tears
 

The Walcherse Whites are just starting to look as if they are drying out and I’ll be harvesting those soon as well – I’ve never grown that variety before and wasn’t sure what a mature bean looked like, otherwise I would have already started to pick them.

I waited much too long to thin out the carrots and I’m concerned that the crowding has slowed down their growth.  Hopefully they start to size up quickly now.  Although tiny, we did enjoy the thinnings, which I roasted in the oven together with some eggplant & turnips.

Carrot Thinnings
 

Unfortunately, I completely forgot to weigh the thinnings, but I doubt it was more than half a pound, so not a big deal.

I harvested the French Prune plums last week as well in two small pickings.  They are TINY, but oh so good.  Still my favourite fresh eating variety from the 5-in-one tree.

French Prune Plums
 

One herb I completely forgot to talk about was the dill.  I harvested several of the seed heads last week and they are in a bowl in my basement drying out.

Dill Seed
 

I really want to start harvesting most of my own herbs instead of purchasing the who-knows-how-old herbs from the bulk store.

I harvested a bunch of broccoli - and that hyper plant is still producing like crazy.

The shoots from the hyperactive plant are on the top left, runty shoots
 are on the top right & the bottom shoots are from the rest of the plants
 

This weeks picking from that particular plant weighed in at 336 grams (11.8 oz) from 4 sideshoots - so far, that one plant has generated 864 grams (1.9 lbs) of side shoots PLUS the main head.  So we are talking about 1.2 kilo/2.6 lbs of broccoli heads from one plant.  I'm impressed, Arcadia, & you will definitely be coming back next year!

And lastly, I had a huge picking of chard, most of which I blanched and froze:

Fordhook Giant & Peppermint Chard
 

The Fordhook Giant continues to outperform the Peppermint by about 2:1, but you just can’t beat Peppermints beautiful colour & mild flavour.  It’s a keeper.

My harvest totals this week were:

Broccoli - 952 grams (2.10 lbs)
Sweet Peppers - 443 grams (0.98 lbs)
Hot Peppers - 86 grams (0.19 lbs)
Summer Squash - 1,375 grams (3.03 lbs)
Swiss Chard - 2,225 grams (4.91 lbs)
Tomatoes - 3,222 grams (7.10 lbs)
Plums - 126 grams (0.28 lbs)

Total for Week - 8,429 grams (18.58 lbs)

Total to Date 110 kg (242.49 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…