Harvest Monday - October 12, 2015

Firstly - Happy Thanksgiving to all the Canadians out there!  This is one of my favourite holidays.  Our family normally has a big dinner on Sunday but this year things are much more low key as my Dad is in the hospital, so we will be having a small, rather simple dinner this evening instead.  But even when times are tough and things don't go our way, we all still have so much to be thankful for, don't we?

Now on to the harvests - this week I harvested my first ever butternut squash:

Waltham Butternut Squash
 

There are still 3 left in the bed which need a bit more toughening up so these will likely stay there until we have our first frost warning.

Another basket of tomatoes was harvested together with the only tromboncino squash this year:

Tromboncino Squash and Tomatoes
 

The trombonico was a late planting – I simply forgot to sow them in the rush to get the garden on track when we returned from our holiday in April.  By the time I remembered, they were about a month or so behind.  But as we veggie gardeners know, one is better than none, so this guy will definitely be savoured…not that this will take any effort as tromboncino is my absolute favourite when it comes to summer squash.

Since my update last week, I ended up pulling up the Amish Paste & Sungold vines as many of the tomatoes showed blight, even at the green stage.  The Juliet and Mountain Magic are still hanging in there but I am now getting anxious to clean up the bed, so I will be pulling these by the end of the week.

A big basket of Anaheim peppers were harvested:

Anaheim Peppers
 

These were roasted, skinned, seeded & individually frozen.  I also harvested a variety of other peppers including Stocky Red Roasters, Padron, Jimmy Nardello & Hungarian Wax:

Stocky Red Roasters, Jimmy Nardello, Padron & Hungarian Wax
 

A few more salad turnips were pulled – I think there are only 3 left in the bed now:

White Lady Turnips
 

And the trickle of yummy raspberries continues:

From plate to mouth in 10 seconds flat ;)
 

The raspberry harvest is so small that I’m not weighing them, but I am roughly keeping track of how many I harvest – just so that I have some sort of comparison to next year.

And lastly, I harvested a basket of Chinese greens from the bed that is having cabbage worm issues:

From left to right:
Ching Chang, Komatsuna and Green Fortune
 

I harvested all of the baby choy heads and left the joi choi which had much less damage.  I also did another once over for those pesky caterpillars.  Hopefully I found them all and the brassicas that are left will not turn to Swiss cheese.

As a side note I'm also having an issue with aphids this fall - I haven't had this problem in the past other than with the Mei Qing choi last summer - perhaps they are enjoying the mild temps?  Unfortunately, I still see cabbage butterflies flying around so I can't take the netting off the beds which is likely making things worse as natural predators like ladybugs are also kept out.

My harvest totals this week were:

Chinese Greens – 828 grams (1.83 lbs)
Sweet Peppers – 232 grams (0.51 lbs)
Hot Peppers – 752 grams (1.66 lbs)
Summer Squash – 366 grams (0.81 lbs)
Winter Squash – 2,825 grams (6.23 lbs)
Tomatoes – 572 grams (1.26 lbs)
Turnips – 474 grams (1.04 lbs)
Turnip Greens – 250 grams (0.55 lbs)

Total for Week – 6,299 grams (13.89 lbs)

Total to Date – 156 kg (345 lbs)

To see what everyone else has been harvesting over the past week, head on over to Our Happy Acres where Dave is our host for Harvest Mondays.

Till next time…