Harvest Monday–9 July 2012

This was still a transition week between spring and summer crops. Almost all the tomatoes have set fruit now, along with some of the peppers and eggplants. The pickling cukes are starting to flower along with the first planting of bush beans. Some of the summer squash have flower buds. But with all the promise, there is nothing to harvest except the remaining spring-sowed vegetables.

This is the second picking of Tokyo Cross white turnips, and a lone radish. The rest of the radishes have bolted and were pulled. A few of the turnips show tunneling around on the surface of the bulb but no apparent penetration. I don’t know if this is the cabbage root maggot or nematodes. Anybody know?



The endive and escarole are getting crowded in their beds. I harvested two very large heads of endive which I cleaned up and placed in the refrigerator. Even though I was too lazy to tie up the heads to blanch the, the hearts are nicely blanched just from being cramped in the beds. There were a lot of small slugs in the heads so cleaning them was a chore. We already have had one salad, made with a warm bacon dressing and sprinkled with bleu cheese crumbles at Mark Willis’ suggestion.



Finally, another cutting of chard and mustard. The chard still looks fine but the mustard is thinking about bolting. This mustard along with a previous cutting provided us with a large pot of greens fixed Southern style with bacon drippings and served with pepper vinegar.



That’s what I harvested from my garden last week. To see what others have harvested, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions for Harvest Monday around the world.