Harvest Monday 3 August 2015

 

We will start this post off with not a beet photograph. Lots of squash this week, with the Romanesco now producing eight fruit per week to Dunja’s three.

 

 

 

Here is the requisite beet photograph. Just a few more left. I need to replant these and hope I get some for the fall.

 

 

The escarole is starting to bolt, so I harvested two heads. And I am still getting some lettuce. When I removed the bolting lettuce heads, I found smaller plants crowded underneath from inadequate thinning, which I left. They are now harvestable size, proving that laziness has some usefulness in gardening.

 

 

The endives are also ready to harvest. The inside of this head is nicely blanched, which makes it more tender and less bitter. The frilly leaves are really hard to clean , however. Lots of hiding spaces for slugs, earwigs, pill bugs, and just plain debris.

 

 

More squash and tomatoes.

 

 

Despite my problems with bean diseases, I am still harvesting plenty. This is several pounds and I picked a like quantity on Sunday which I did not photograph.

 

 

I am finally starting to get some peppers. On the left are three Hungarian Paprika, then an orange Yummy Belle, and three Jimmy Nardello. I also picked some (too) large Padron peppers, which did turn hot.

 

 

More tomatoes are starting to ripen.. On the left are two Opalka, one with some BER. The green shoulders on it are typical. The large orange tomato in the center is my first Sunkist, one of the smaller ones. It has a touch of anthracnose rot on the stem end so it is going to get cut up and used today. The two rose colored cherry tomatoes are the first Sweet Treats. I like their color.

 

 

After clearing out the bed of Super Star onions of all that had formed bulbs, I was left with these “onions” with very straight and thick stems. I showed these in a photo a few weeks ago and wondered how big the bulbs were going to be, given the diameter of the stems. Well, they are not forming bulbs. Last week it suddenly became obvious. These are not onions but leeks. Apparently Dixondale Farms mixed some leeks in with the bundle of Super Star onion plants. I am not upset, I can always use some more leeks.

 

 

Finally, this is a satellite view of my house and its so-called yard. This should explain why I can not garden at home and have to drive to the town’s community garden/allotment. The house is located in a stand of climax Eastern white pine on top of a pile of rocks forming a knob off the side of the Vaughan Hills. East is the lower right corner. The land slopes to the left down to the town road. Elevation is enough that I have driven home in the rain to find it turning to snow as I go up the driveway. The “soil” is several inches of forest duff on top of a clay-like mixture of rock powder and pebbles left by the glacier. My first “gardening” tools were a chain saw, pick ax, and my favorite, a heavy five-foot pry bar. Thank goodness for the community garden.

 

That’s what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are doing, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Bean Golden Mosaic Virus

 

This is the leaf canopy for the Musica pole beans. The trellis is 8 foot tall and the vines are over the top and loaded with beans. The top of the canopy looks dark green and healthy but look at the bottom. The leaves are starting to yellow and are mottled. Since taking this photo last week, the yellowing is now half way up the vines, so it spreads fast.

 

 

Here is a closer look. The leaf at the top is showing the top surface and the lower leaf is flipped over to show the underside. The leaves are yellow with a mottled pattern.

 

 

From what I can gather, this looks like Bean Golden Mosaic virus, something I have never encountered before. It is fatal and all you can do is remove the plants and destroy them. It is not a seed-borne disease, which makes sense because these plants came from the same seed packet I used successfully last year. The disease is spread by insects, most likely aphids or whiteflies. That is puzzling because I generally never see an aphid in my garden. I have Japanese Beetles taking up their favorite dining spot at the top of the vines, but no aphids.

 

BGM is apparently a major problem in South America, Mexico, and parts of southern US and limits production of bean crops in those areas. Any legume plant can host the disease, including all the clover and vetch I have growing as weeds in the paths in the garden. Serves me right for not keeping up with my weeding. I hope to be able to at least harvest the pods now on the vines, but it does affect pods and I am starting to see signs of that. My Gold Marie  bean plants did poorly right from the start but their leaves don’t look this. I don’t know what their problem is but that crop is mostly lost.

 

2015 Planting List

 

What a winter! Historic snow amounts and low temperatures. We have had 7 feet of snow in about three weeks (a foot of that this weekend) and are expecting another 1.5 feet Tuesday. Tonight it is supposed to be –6 °F (-21 °C) with high winds and –30 °F  (-34 °C) wind chill factor. Brrr.

 

All of  the seed orders are in and mostly delivered and safe inside. For those of you unfamiliar with suburban snow storms, mailboxes on the street are subject to being blown up by the town plows going by at high speed, throwing a plume of heavy snow that rips mailboxes off their supports and deposits them who knows where. The mere fact that my seeds have been safely retrieved and secured inside is a major accomplishment. The hell with the bills, my seeds are safe.

 

I am now working on the seed starting schedule, which is keeping me positive with all the nasty weather. Meanwhile, here is the planting list for Spring 2015, whenever (if ever ) it arrives. Seed vendor legend: BC=Baker Creek, DF=Dixondale Farms, F=Fedco, HM=High Mowing Seeds, J=Johnny’s, PT=Pinetree, R=Renee’s, SESE=Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, T=Territorial

Harvest Monday 6 October 2014

Last week I started the garden clean up process. I decided time to pull the bush beans because I need that bed for planting garlic. Turns out the beans are not ready to give up just yet. The Provider beans were kaput but I got a good picking from Jade which provided a meal for us that night. In addition I got an even bigger pile from the pole beans. The Musica beans were still cranking, although the cold nights are finally shutting them down. I got a few more Gold Marie beans but they are now finished and many of the pods have been damaged by some pest feeding on them. Surprisingly, the Violetto beans are putting on growth and flowering for a third time. If I just had a longer growing season, they would be a very productive bean.

 

 

I am puzzled by the pest that is feeding on the beans. I was expecting to find some green stink bugs, which like to drill into the pods, but so far have not found any. I did spot a couple of small, narrow black insects crawling around the Musica beans, which also have suffered some damage. Unfortunately, they had vanished by the time I fetched my camera. These things were not bug shaped nor beetle shaped. The body was sort of wasp shaped but with no apparent wings. The body was black with no apparent markings. They did not look like tarnished plant bugs. I have checked photos of bean pests online and have not found a match. I hope I can get a photo of them because I would like to know what I am dealing with.

 

 

Next up was pulling the tomato plants. I got a lot of green tomatoes for the effort and made a batch of refrigerator pickled green tomatoes. When pulling the tomatoes out of the raised beds, I had to be careful not to damage the peppers in the next row. Because of the loose, friable soil in the beds, the tomato roots like to roam the neighborhood and make themselves at home. Next year I have to reconsider what I put in the squares next  to the tomatoes. I may go back to planting shallower rooted plants like the onions in those squares.

 

 

The plant above is a Sunkist tomato from a raised bed. You can see the length of some of the roots. Most of the very longest roots seem to have grown from the top of the root ball at the base of the stem. This pretty well illustrates the advantage of planting the tomatoes deep enough to bury some of the stem. And of course, the beds are only 8 inches deep so going down is not an option.

 

 

Next I pulled the tomatoes that were planted in-ground in my extra garden plot. Those tomatoes did very well this year compared to the plants in the raised beds, and despite fairly poor soil. So I was curious to see what their root structures looked like. The two plants above are Brandywine and the root balls are probably about the same size as the Sunkist but without the really long roots. Apparently the roots found everything the plants needed in their own backyard and didn’t have to go roaming. At this point I realized I should have photographed the Sunkist and Brandywine root balls side by side, but the Sunkist was already buried deep in a trash bag of tomato plants and rotten tomatoes and I was not putting my hand in there.

 

 

The Carmen peppers have finally started to ripen. I got a large set of fruit on the two plants in the in-ground garden but they were taking their good old time ripening. How do you tell a pepper the clock is ticking and frost is on the way? I also picked some more Trinidad Spice peppers and have another five on the plant in various stages of ripening. 

 

 

I tried to harvest a single head of escarole from the August planting and wound up with two. Since I planted them farther apart than usual, they have kind of flopped on the ground so the leaves are entirely green. The first one I tried was kind of tough. I need to tie them up into heads so the center of the head blanches. Amazingly there was not a single spot of slug or earwig damage to these heads.

 

That’s what came from my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, check out Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 22 September 2014

 

Last Monday I checked on the garden after being away for a week and found this guy watching over the garden. He looks well fed, doesn’t he? Of course, he is in the tomato patch when I could really use some help over in the brassicas, where some late and hungry cabbage caterpillars are shredding my collards and kale.

 

 

It is dangerous to leave the summer squash and cucumbers to themselves for a week, but fortunately they have slowed down with the cool nights and the PM. I did find a fire hydrant sized zucchini which went right into the compost bin.

 

 

The Bay Meadows broccoli is finally producing some side shoots.

 

 

The long red peppers are Carmen and are 8 inches long. That gives you an idea how big the Revolution bell pepper is. It is pretty rare for me to get a pepper that size. The small yellow Habanero-shaped peppers are the Trinidad Spice peppers.

 

 

The fall planting of root vegetables are starting to yield a few bulbs, including a golden beet overlooked by the rabbit.

 

 

I am a bit weary of beans but the beans have not given up yet. A lot of these went into a pot of stewed beans and tomatoes and the nicer ones went into the dehydrator. I rehydrated a few of the dried beans and I am not sure I like them. The idea was I could use them in a dried soup mix along with squash, turnips, carrots and other vegetables. Does anyone do this?

 

 

I finally had time to try drying garlic. The pile of cloves above were just from the Rossa di Sulmona garlic. I acquired the Zyliss garlic slicer that Dave has recommended and it worked very well. The tubular silicone rubber garlic peeler (mine is an Oxo) sort of worked but the garlic cloves are still moist and the skins are still pliable, so over half the cloves had to be peeled by hand. The result was great. The dried garlic is still very pungent and I can now make garlic powder in my spice blender (a dedicated Krups coffee grinder I got on sale) whenever I need it.

 

That’s what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Beans and Squash and Tomatoes, Oh no …

It’s August in the garden, so the harvest includes the usual suspects, beans, squash, and finally, tomatoes in large quantities. The beans I did not bother to photograph, and I only show a sampling of the tomatoes.

 

 

Some more beets and a couple of turnips. A rabbit in the garden has discovered that beetroot tastes a lot better than just beet leaves and has been nibbling the beets. The ones above were the only survivors. I need to set a rat trap in that bed since I have more beets and spinach seeded there.

 

 

I finally got my first broccoli. This is Bay Meadows, which Fedco raves about. It was very slow to start and only now has decided to put on a growth spurt.

 

 

The ugly tomatoes on the left are Cherokee Purple from the vine that fell over. The big fruit there was 12 ounces.

 

 

Finally getting a few cucumbers. Others have had a banner year, but not me. Bacterial wilt has wiped out a large number of the vines. The large cuke in the center is a Poona Kheera, an Indian heirloom variety that is new for me. I picked the first one while still white and small, thinking it was the Crystal Apple. This one I let get bigger. When mature they are supposed to turn yellow and then brown, but all this thing did is get bigger. I have no idea how big they get, so I picked this one (it already weighs a pound) since they are still edible at any stage. I haven’t tried it yet since it takes a little planning to figure out what do do with a one pound cucumber.

 

 

The Richmond Green Apple cucumber above is an Australian heirloom that produces small roundish cucumbers, similar to Crystal Apple and Lemon. They can be eaten without peeling, just like an apple, and are sweet and crunchy. The Crystal Apple cukes were to small to pick one for comparison. For some reason both varieties were very late to produce fruit this year but the remaining vines not killed by wilt are now growing rapidly up the trellis and setting lots of fruit. So it’s a race with the cold weather to see if I get any more of these.

 

 

An assortment of peppers. The red pepper in the middle is my first Lipstick, next to a couple of Carmen. I thought these two varieties were roughly equivalent, but they are not. Carmen is much larger, much more productive and ripens faster than Lipstick. At the bottom, my first Poblanos. The one on the left has turned yellow as it starts to ripen but I picked it anyway because I want these for Chiles Rellenos.

 

 

An assortment of squash, including my first Tromboncino and just the second Costata Romanesco.

 

 

The Brandywine tomatoes are starting to color and these were picked to lessen the load on the vines.

 

 

Pineapple tomatoes above. The biggest one unfortunately cracked badly.

 

 

Finally, more Cherokee Purple on the left, to get them off the ground where things have been eating holes in them And the remaining Sunkist on the right.

 

That’s all from my garden this week. To see what is happening in other gardens around the world, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 18 August 2014

Last week, the weather was moderate with a lot of cloudy days that suggested rain, but it only rained significantly for one day. We got several inches that day but the garden was so dry that it was all absorbed. When I got back to the garden, a few things were a little overgrown. At this time of year  the beans and squash really need to be checked every day.

 

 

More beans. The purple ones are Trionfo Violetto. I froze a lot of those but have no more room in the freezer. A large amount of the beans were again donated to the food pantry.

 

 

Some of the heirloom tomatoes are starting to ripen. Above are a Brandywine and a Pineapple on the right. The heirloom tomato vines are loaded with clusters of very large tomatoes and show little signs of actually ripening. I am a little worried about the tomato stakes snapping under the load. That’s a problem I haven’t had in a long time.

 

 

The long peppers are Carmen, a sweet pepper that is turning out to be very productive. A few Sunkist orange tomatoes and a very green Cherokee Purple. My Cherokee Purple plant was loaded with large fruit like the one above when it fell over. The heavy rain saturated the soil and the pole wasn’t driven deep enough, so the plant toppled toppled over as the pole came out of the soggy ground.

 

 

A fully ripened Sunkist tomato sliced up. This is a meaty, low-acid tomato with good flavor. It is very productive and fairly disease resistant, a tomato I will be growing again.

 

 

More squash and a few Cherokee Purple tomatoes starting to color up (as well as crack, damn rain).

 

 

More beans.

 

 

The last Napa cabbage, considerably reduced in size after removing the slug-damaged outer leaves. This one was used for slaw. I used some of the previous cabbage and some radishes to make kimchee, which turned out OK. It is a little too salty and a tad too hot for my taste, but not bad.

 

That is what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 11 August 2014

It has been a pretty nice summer so far, more of a “typical” New England summer, with warm (but not hot) days, cool evenings, low humidity and a little breeze blowing most of the time. Great weather for those at the beach or the mountains. Unfortunately, I’m here, not at the beach. We had a lot of partially cloudy days with predictions of showers, but little actual rain. So that means a trip to the garden every day to water the raised beds, which tend to dry out faster. Still, the garden is being amazingly productive. I used the warm, dry weather to harvest my shallots and the rest of the onions, the Rossa Lunga di Tropea.

 

 

The seed shallots above are Saffron, an F-1 hybrid from Johnny’s. I started seed in February and transplanted these in early May (should have been April), just like onions. These are gold or brown or copper skinned shallots (depending on your perspective) and are considered to have a good storage life. Seed shallots don’t divide, so you get one bulb per seedling (but you can see two of them did twin and produce two bulbs). I was impressed by the size of the bulbs.

 

 

I have been pulling the Rossa Lungas above as needed for fresh onions. They are starting to get diseased, as you can see from the white specks on the foliage, so I decided to pull them. One of these went into a batch of salsa and I plan to use them and not try to store them. I also found a couple of shallots I missed to add to the pile of drying shallots.

 

 

The rest of the harvest gets a little monotonous. Beans, tomatoes and squash.

 

 

A huge pile of Gold Marie and Musica beans above, larger than it appears here. I froze a lot of these and a large bag was donated to the local food pantry. These beans are very tasty and amazingly productive. I have been proselytizing my fellow gardeners by giving them handfuls to try. I think I have won a few converts for next year who may abandon their Kentucky Wonders, the only pole bean they have ever known. Sad but true.

 

 

Finally got some beets (Boldor golden beet and Boro red beet). I have replanted these so I hope I get a few more.

 

 

And finally some peppers. Two Carmen sweet peppers, and some Shishito peppers. One of the Carmen peppers wound up in a salsa. I also picked some of the Blue Beech paste tomatoes you see above. The largest one weighed 12 ounces. The Blue Beech has a variety of shapes, including the block shape of the three tomatoes upper right, and the long, skinny tomato just below them. I have no idea what influences the variation in shape, appearing on the same plant in the same cluster.

 

 

I have not cut chard for a while. The pile above is just a sampling of the harvest. I froze two thirds of the chard and the rest was used for dinner last night, since there is no room in the refrigerator.

 

 

More tomatoes and squash. The food pantry did get a generous bag of squash to dispense this week.

 

 

I allocated 2 squares for Trionfo Violetto pole beans on a shared trellis but didn’t check the seed packet., so I didn’t have enough to plant the 2 squares. I also had some losses after germination and from some errant bunny nibbling on the stems at the base of the plants. Nonetheless I am still getting a nice harvest and these beans were frozen to enjoy this winter.

 

That’s what happened here in Bolton, Massachusetts. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.