Saturday, July 23, 2016

Harvest Time!

It's been, eek, over 2 months since I posted here.  Life has been busy, the garden has grown insanely well, and the harvest has been starting to come in.   Aside from the occasional GIANT zucchini, the theme is primarily tomatoes, with a secondary note on eggplants and peppers.    Here's how we've been doing so far:

  • Tomatoes: OMG, drowning 
    • I have 6 quarts of early girl and black krim in the freezer, 
    • and two gallon bags of sungold cherry tomatoes.

 

  • Peppers: doing great!
    • none of the italian types are producing yet, though some peppers are on the vine
    • but the yellow bell has yielded two yellow and 5 green bells, all as big as a fist or bigger.

  • Eggplants: galore! 
    • Several softball-sized rosa bianca, 
    • several large ping tung long and japanese long, 
    • and a double handful of fairy tale.


  • Beans: not so good

    • oops, I didn't pick the gold of bacau pole beans in time, so I've let them dry on the vine for dry beans
    • the golden wax beans got buried by squash growth and were deemed too hard to pick because of that
    • the roma beans yielded very well, but because I'm not used to them I didn't realize to pick them small and white, not large and green, so they were tough and they didn't all get eaten




  • Turnips: meh
    • white ping pong ball salad turnips produced well, but were bland, mostly tasted of salt, pepper, and butter when eaten
    • yellow turnips didn't do well (probably a better fall crop) and had a bitter aftertaste








  • Zucchini: we're keeping up
    • A number of large and a couple of GIANT WE BLINKED zucchini
    • The spiralizer has been helping tame the giant ones, we've had sauteed zuke "noodles" in pesto a couple of times and really enjoyed them

  • Winter Squash: promising!
    • Several sunshine kabocha on the vine, small compared to store bought ones but likely to weigh in at the promised 2 - 3 pound average
    • Two large emerald kabochas ripening
    • Georgia candy roaster: only one so far, but it's about two and a half feet long and 4 -5 inches in diameter; I'm eagerly anticipating it being ready; it's doubled in size since the picture!
    • Kamo kamo: I haven't seen any of these ripening, and it's gotten powdery mildew something fierce.  Going to pull it out soon and put in a second bean crop I think.