Harvest Monday 2 November 2015

Leeks and Pac Choi

I have been avoiding  the garden for a few weeks since there is little left except the chore of cleaning it up for the season. I am hoping to get that done this week and my garlic planted.  I visited last week and harvested a few things that survived the hard freeze we had October 19th. I pulled the last of the leeks. These were from leek plants I purchased as actual leek plants, not from misidentified plants from Dixondale. As such, they benefited from being planted deeply in holes so there is more blanched white bulb then the shallowly planted ones from Dixondale.

I also have a bed of kohlrabi, choi and Napa cabbage that was covered with row cover. Those did nicely except for the kohlrabi. Apparently kohlrabi is only moderately cold resistant and you can see the one pitiful survivor in the picture. The choi and cabbage did fine under cover and I harvested one of the Joi Choi heads for a stir fry. The Soloist cabbages are getting a nice size so I tied them up to blanch the centers. I am hoping for another week or two of decent weather for them to get a little bigger. I have a batch of kimchee planned for them. The ones I harvested this summer were so infested with slugs and earwigs I tossed them in the compost.

The carrots I planted in August in another bed are surviving as well but I am not sure they will get to harvest-able size in the few weeks we have left before solid freeze. I picked a few of the larger ones to try but the wind was blowing so hard I somehow lost them from the bag. We get some wild winds in the winter so I have to get the plastic mulch and row cover removed and stowed away soon.

My brassica bed with the kale and sprouts did not fare very well. The caterpillars have had a field day and pretty much destroyed everything. I may be able to get a few leaves of kale from the whole bed this week. The Brussels sprouts are a failure again. They have just tiny, pea-sized sprouts which will not size up in time. Like Susie I think I am done wasting space and effort on sprouts and will just buy them from the local farm stands. My wife hates them anyway.

That’s what happened (or not) in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, visit Dave’s Our Happy Acres, our host for Harvest Monday.

Note: posted late because LiveWriter has decided to be cranky, so this was manually done with the Blogger editor.

Harvest Monday 31 August 2015

The dry weather continued, with no significant rain but at least temperatures have been a little more moderate. It makes it tough to get any seeds to germinate if the beds continually dry out. Summer harvests continue to come in. The peppers are starting to come into their stride, too bad our season is not longer.

 

 

This is a big pile of Jimmy Nardello peppers, with a few others. The Tiburon Ancho are finally starting to fruit heavily and I hope I get enough for some Chiles Rellenos. It takes them a while to reach size, now small bushes about 30 inches/75 cm. tall. This is probably the last of the summer squash. The bushes have been taken down by the powdery mildew and I will pull them this week.

 

 

Harvested a couple of flea-bitten heads of Win-Win choi that was replanted when I pulled out the Soloist cabbages. These were started from seed indoors so I could ensure germination before transplanting.The advantage of the dry weather is no slugs or earwigs.

 

 

I picked a lot of tomatoes, including this pile of paste varieties. Eight quarts of these were turned into 8 pints of chili sauce for the pantry. That task consumed Sunday but is well worth the effort. I used this recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. I do not like to can and normally avoid it.  I can buy canned tomatoes and pasta sauce that is pretty good, but I can not buy anything like this chili sauce. We like it on hamburgers, steaks, and scrambled eggs. This batch came out with a bit of a bite. In lieu of the red pepper flakes, I used two of the large Padron peppers for heat. This year they are hotter than a Jalapeno by far.

 

 

Some of the larger slicers are ready now, including Celebrity. A lot of the Sweet Treats and Juliet tomatoes are now in the dehydrator for my second batch of dried tomatoes. Another bag of tomatoes was harvested but misplaced so they did not get photographed, plus a few of the slicers were snitched for BLTs. More tomatoes are due in this week, so maybe I will have to change my mind about processing some. I will probably try Dave’s technique of blender sauce in my Ninja Ultima and then freeze it.

 

To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday–17 June2013

 

Despite all of the rain (12-14 inches) the past 10 days, the garden has been hanging in there. I do think the plants would really, really enjoy seeing the sun again. At least the raised beds have kept them from being submerged in the puddles, see here. The community gardens are officially in a wetland, about 30 feet from Great Brook and the water table is maybe 2 feet down. With all the rain the soil is super-saturated and the least amount of rain will just puddle if it can’t run downhill toward the brook. So the Girl Scouts and I are high and dry in our raised bed gardens, we just have to garden in our galoshes. And you do have to be careful when stooping not to dip your posterior in the water (don’t ask how I know that). Our neighbors in the garden are not so lucky.

 

 

I did harvest quite a bit last week, enough to overfill the refrigerator. I didn’t cut any lettuce because I still have bags in the refrigerator, but I am going to cut some this week so my wife can take it to work. Other things did have to be harvested. The tatsoi below came from squares where my eggplant is going to go this week. The flea beetle damage on the older leaves is obvious.

 

 

A pair of Win-Win pac choi were looking like they might bolt so I cut them. They are destined for soup and stir fries.

 

 

I got a nice pile of garlic scapes, my first ever, and a pile of herbs, The broccoli is a tiny head of Purple Peacock which was starting to open, so I harvested it.

 

 

As I cut the purplish head from the very green Purple Peacock below, I was surprised to see it had already started to send out a bunch of side shoots. You can see at least three side shoots in the photo. This is my first year growing this variety so I have no idea what to expect from it. The leaves are also supposed to be edible just like kale.

 

 

There were some other surprises in the garden. Below you can see the only kohlrabi in 4 squares that actually germinated, and it is actively growing now and starting to form a bulb. So it looks like I may actually get a kohlrabi this year, although I do plan to plant more for the fall. Since the kohlrabies didn’t germinate, I put some radicchio transplants in their squares. The one below is now starting to form a head. So far they have been completely resistant to flea beetles and slugs, maybe too bitter?

 

 

Another radicchio making good use of the square forfeited by the kohlrabies, below. The spinach in the adjacent squares are not happy, not bolting but not the deep green they were. Maybe lack of sun or a foot of rain washing nutrients out of the soil? Time for some fish emulsion fertilizer, and some sunlight, please.

 

 

That is what is happening here in Soggy Bottoms. To see what other gardeners are harvesting from their gardens around the world, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Garden Progress 13 May 2013

Still no harvest from the garden but this week should be the turning point. So far it has been a very dry spring, and very windy. The wind made the drought situation worse by evaporating water from plants and the beds, and it beat up some of the tender transplants. The dry spell was broken with two days of rain Wednesday and Thursday, sun on Friday, and two more days of gentle, soaking rain on Saturday and Sunday. Since there was no need to water the garden and nothing on the planting schedule, I didn’t get to the garden until Sunday. It appears all of the plants enjoyed the cool, wet weather and are finally showing some life.

 

 

The garlic has been growing slowly and steadily but I think it enjoyed the rain.  It seems to be taller and the stems are starting to thicken a bit. That’s German extra hardy on top and Red Chesnok on the bottom.

 

 

The Di Ciccio broccoli is looking really good again and is definitely growing. The transplants were damaged by a freeze a week after they were set out which then made them susceptible to what looked like flea beetle damage. I haven’t actually seen a flea beetle yet, but what else peppers a leaf with pin holes?  Now they have recovered nicely and I won’t be needing the backup starts I planted.

 

 

The Beedy’s Camden kale was less affected by the freeze and is now starting to grow.  I don’t have a photo of the collards in the same bed, but they are also appreciative of the change in weather.

 

 

The endive and escarole  in the top two rows were least affected by both the freeze and the flea beetle attack. The Win-Win choi in the bottom row however was seriously affected. It has a more succulent leaf with higher water content so it doesn’t take well to freezing. You can still see the bug damage on the leaves of the choi but once it gets going it grows so rapidly, I hope it can outpace the pests.

 

 

The lettuces are doing well and really like this weather. They probably have at least doubled in volume in the last 4-5 days so I think salad is on the menu this week from my first harvest. That is New Red Fire on the right and Green Ice on the left.

 

 

These lettuces are buttercrunch on the right and Forellenschluss on the left. The Forellenschluss is an heirloom Austrian romaine with specks of red on the leaves. The parsley obviously also likes this weather.

 

 

The Tyee spinach has germinated from seed and is adding leaves. It remains to be seen if I will get any before hot  weather. In the same bed, turnips have sprouted but not a single kohlrabi seed germinated in four squares of them. Are they really that hard to start? The seed catalogs all claim they are easy to grow, but I have not had any luck each time I have tried them.

 

 

The fava beans and snow peas are taking off. Some of the favas grew 3 inches in a couple of days. It’s time to put up the supports. I bought a couple of 12 inch tomato towers, which are 4 feet when unfolded. Those will span the long dimension of the bed, supported by some garden stakes at the ends,  and I will use some burlap twine to enclose the sides. Hope that is sturdy enough.

 

 

Finally, the onions are perking up after looking sad and droopy for the past few weeks. The stems have thickened and the greens are now standing up.

This week I need to reseed the kohlrabi, the mustard greens, and set out the Swiss chard. The chard was originally lost in the mass of brassica seedlings I started in 1.5 inch soil blocks. Chard germinates slower and grows slower than the brassicas, so the seedlings were shaded out  and I did not notice until too late. So I had to restart them. Meanwhile I am juggling pepper and tomato starts between my single grow lamp and the back deck on sunny days, waiting for the weather to stabilize and warm up. This has been a wild spring and they are predicting overnight lows in the mid-thirties for the next few days.

 

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

 

Harvest Monday-18 June 2012

The escarole is heading up nicely. This one was harvested to give the others some space and was sautéed in butter and garlic for Monday night’s dinner. Time to tie up the rest to blanch the hearts.

The rest of the harvest continues to be greens, although next week I should have my first snow peas and maybe turnips. This a sampling of the lettuce I have been cutting for several weeks now: Romaine, Red Sails, Red Romaine, and Buttercrunch.

.

The mustard Green Wave continues to look good and is growing well. I hope it lasts another week or two without bolting. They are talking about temps in the mid 90s on Wednesday and Thursday.

The chard is also doing well, fist year I have had some success with a plant everyone else can grow easily. This is Orange Fantasia and Bright Lights. I am following advice to keep it trimmed and that does seem to be stimulating more rapid growth.

Finally, I had to remove some pac choi because they were going to bolt and were shading my cucumbers.These are Joi Choi.  I got four but gave one to a neighbor. The three below weighed 3 pounds, 6 ounces, but still are no competition for Daphne.

I also lost 4 heads of broccoli which were obscured under row cover and I failed to notice the heads were ready. I’ll try to use them anyway. To see what others all over the world are harvesting from their gardens, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions