Harvest Monday - October 5, 2015

Our weather is a bit warmer than usual for this time of year.  Here we are at the beginning of October and, surprisingly, there are still tomatoes, peppers, eggplant & summer squash to be harvested.  Our first frost date (October 3rd) has come and gone and no sign of frost yet, although our days do usually start off on a rather damp, chilly note.  Here is a screenshot of this week’s forecast from http://www.theweathernetwork.com/:

We have had quite a bit of rain and I was getting worried about the potatoes that were left in the bed.   I dug them all up last week and most were just fine.

Bintje (left); Viking (right)
 

All in all, I harvested 16 kg (35 lbs) of potatoes on top of the 3.5 kg (8 lbs) from last week.  Now that should keep us from having to purchase grocery store potatoes for a few months.  Do I smell Christmas mash with my very own potatoes?  Oh boy!  Now all I have to do is find a nice, cool, dark spot to store them.

Yukon Gold (left) & Roko (right)
 

I gave the bed a good once over with the garden fork to make sure that I found most of the potatoes and unearthed several Yukon Golds that I missed last week.  Judging from others experiences, I'll probably end up finding the odd potato in this bed next year when I prep it for the next crop.

A couple of the potatoes were too chewed up to save, so these were thrown into the compost.  There were also several that had minor chewing damage or were stabbed by my garden fork.  The damaged parts were removed and the potatoes were then cleaned, cut up, placed into quart jars and covered with water.  The jars went into the refrigerator & the potatoes should keep for several two weeks this way.  Update:  As it turns out, they only keep for about two weeks at the most - too much longer and they start to develop a rather unpleasant smell...which I found out the hard way.

Damaged potatoes were cleaned up & covered with water.
 

Even with our warmer than usual weather, the tomatoes are taking their sweet time to develop and/or ripen.  I did harvest a couple of small baskets over the past week, but that was about it.

The end of tomato season is near
 

There are still quite a few tomatoes left on the vines, so we shall see if these warmer temps are enough to get them to the finish line – or at least close enough that they will ripen successfully indoors.

The basil in the tomato beds did very well:

Eleanora Basil
 

I picked a good sized basket of leaves & made a big batch of basil-walnut pesto, some of which I froze in ice cube trays for a taste of summer during the winter.

Walnut basil pesto
ready to whirl in the food processor
 

I had to harvest the turnips – they were growing much too fast.  Not something I often complain about in the garden, that’s for sure!

White Lady Turnips
 

There are a few turnips left in the beds that were still on the small side, although I noticed just yesterday that couple of them are about ready to harvest.

I also harvested, blanched and froze a big basket of mizuna:

Mizuna
 

The mizuna has done very well this fall – it was in a better spot than the spring planting and its quick growth reflects that.  I sheared off a good portion of the leaves & I’m hoping that I get another harvest before it gets too cold.

I harvested the remaining radishes in two batches, this being the first one:

French Breakfast, Cherry Belle & Easter Egg Radishes
 

A few had a bit of slug damage, but all in all not too bad.

A couple of Romanesco zucchini also made it into the harvest basket – this time I actually harvested them when they were a decent size:

Romanesco Zucchini
 

And the first of the winter squash – a Sweet Mama:

Sweet Mama Winter Squash
 

This was the only winter squash I was able to get from the straw bales, but I’m SURE that next year I will have better luck with them.  We haven't tried it yet, so am not sure how sweet it is but I will report back when we eventually do.

More broccoli, of course, but the plants are slowing down.

Arcadia Broccoli
 

And lastly, the Zamboni rapini:

Zamboni Rapini
 

When it comes to crops such as rapini, I trim the tough stems off before weighing as they can account for as much as half the weight of plant.

My harvest totals this week were:

Tomatoes – 1,990 grams (4.39 lbs)
Chinese Greens – 1,114 grams (2.46 lbs)
Radishes – 174 grams (0.38 lbs)
Basil – 166 grams (0.37 lbs)
Turnips - 3,415 grams (7.53 lbs)
Turnip greens – 1,886 grams (4.16 lbs)
Potatoes – 15,994 grams (35.26 lbs)
Summer squash – 152 grams (0.34 lbs)
Winter squash – 622 grams (1.37 lbs)
Broccoli – 750 grams (1.65 lbs)
Rapini – 350 grams (0.77 lbs)

Total for the week - 26,613 grams (58.67 lbs)

Total to date - 150 kg (331 lbs)

To see what everyone else has been harvesting over the past week, head on over to Our Happy Acres, where Dave is our NEW host for Harvest Monday.  A big thank you to Dave for picking up the torch that Daphne has been carrying for the past 8.5 years!

Till next time...