Harvest Monday 13 Jun 2016

I finally got around to weeding the raised beds. As a nice surprise, in the radish bed I found some radishes that were ready to be pulled. These are D'Avignon (French breakfast type) and Celesta cherry. A lot of the radish seeds did not germinate during our dry spring so I re-seeded the blank spots. If you look at the leaves, you can see extensive flea beetle damage, but it did not affect the roots.



The spinach and chard are now growing rapidly. I made another cutting and disposed of the leaves with leaf miner damage, which is not too bad at this point.



The mustards are now growing quickly, outgrowing the flea beetles. Left is Green Wave and right is Komatsuna. These went into a typical Southern braise with bacon fat, served with stuffed pork chops.

Harvest Monday 6 June 2016

I have been out of touch for the past week while we drove to St. Louis to attend my niece's wedding, which was inconveniently scheduled for Memorial Day weekend. That is prime planting season around here and I had to leave my tomato and pepper plants in the care of my son, who did an excellent job keeping the thirsty plants hydrated. Unfortunately the plants grew so tall that half had their growing tips singed off by the heat of the grow lamps. There are suckers showing on most so I am counting on them recovering.

On my first trip to the garden in a week, the garden looked fine but definitely needed some weeding and watering. I found the spinach and chard ready to harvest, my first harvest this year. The spade shaped, lighter green leaves are Tyee, while the darker green, round leaves are Escalade spinach. The container lettuces on the deck are ready and are harvested as needed, so I did not photograph them.




















The garlic is still looking good and I can see a few scapes starting to form on the larger ones, so it will be scape season soon.



The onions are definitely doing well. I planted them late, several weeks after I received them, as they were beginning to break dormancy. The result seems to be a better start than last year, when they were planted earlier while still dormant. This year the onion plants from Dixondale were uniformly larger than last year's plants and I am quite pleased with the purchase. A lot simpler than starting from seed.



The Takrima leeks that I did I grow from seed look established and are starting to grow. The shallots did not do well at all and seem to have disappeared. No shallots this year.



The cabbages are doing well despite the flea beetles. At the top is Golden Acre, a traditional, open-pollinated cabbage that can be grown in one square foot of space. At the bottom are the Minuet Napa cabbages, showing more flea beetle damage because they do not have the waxy leaf surface that tends to discourage the beetles.



The kohlrabi were only slightly affected by flea beetles and are starting to size up. This is Azur Star.



This bed contains some of the greens. The rightmost column is Webb's Wonderful crisphead, and I am pleased with how they look. Maybe I will harvest my first head lettuce this year. Next is a column of Winter Density Romaine. The leftmost column has escarole at the bottom and endives at the top.

I spent Saturday in the garden and got some weeding done. I put in the Ashley cucumber plants and half of the tomatoes and peppers. I also seeded the bush and pole beans. So the raised bed garden is essentially complete for now. Next I have to start prepping the other plot I garden to receive the rest of the peppers and tomatoes and seed the summer squash. That plot already has the kale and broccoli plants and they did fine in my absence. Just minor flea beetle damage and so far no cabbage caterpillars.

That is what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are doing, visit Dave at Our Happy Acres, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 15 June 2015

 

More chard, Magenta Sunset on left, Orange Fantasia, and Pink Passion. The chard and mustard were overhanging the squares where the cucumbers were to go, so they got trimmed.

 

 

The mustard greens are finally large enough to harvest.  Keeping them covered prevents flea beetle damage but I run the risk the higher temperature inside might cause them to bolt. Oh well, they are going to bolt anyway.

 

 

The squares in the foreground are needed for the cucumbers.

 

 

More radishes, Zlata and Dragon. I definitely have to try making radish pickles. For Michelle, I tasted a bit of the Dragon leaf and it was fairly mild but a little fuzzy. I would eat it, some bacon grease and a splash of pepper vinegar would make it quite tasty.

 

 

The garlic scapes have started to form and I got a first picking. The really fat ones are from the German Red garlic I picked up last year at the Mt. Desert Island garlic festival. The stems on this large garlic are at least an inch in diameter so I am hoping for some good size bulbs.

 

 

Finally got the last of the peppers planted, the spice and chili peppers that were so slow to germinate. On the left above are the spice peppers, Aji Dulce and Arroz con Pollo. The lighter green peppers on the right are the Lemon Drop chili peppers. All of these went in the raised beds.

 

 

As an example how crazy the variance in pepper seed germination is, the picture above shows two of my Jimmy Nardello peppers, a variety that I really like and really want to grow. The large plant was the first to germinate and one of the first seedlings I had to pot up. The rest did not germinate and/or I killed them, but I scrambled and used the paper towel in a baggie method and eventually got 6 peppers, 5 like the one on the left and one like the one on the right. Naturally I would like to be planting 6 peppers like the one on the right. I need to do something better, but at least it is not like last year where I killed just about all my pepper seeds that decided to germinate.

 

 

The Soloist Napa cabbages are heading so I tied them up to help, and to get the leaves off the ground so they don’t provide a convenient ramp for the slugs to get inside the heads.

 

 

I also tied up the heads of endive to blanch the hearts, which makes them more tender and less bitter. I should be harvesting some of the endives in a few weeks.

 

That is what I harvested from my garden last week. Check out what other gardeners around the world are doing by visiting Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 8 Jun 2015

 

The first kale was harvested, some dinosaur kale. It went into a Genius Kale salad, a recipe from Food52 (thanks to Susan from Edible Gardens Point Loma for the pointer).  Thinly sliced kale was tossed with diced cheddar, chopped almonds, diced mango and a lemon olive oil vinaigrette. We had it with steamed PEI mussels from our CSF share and a baguette turned into garlic toast. The wife loved it and I got her to eat kale (and mussels)!

 

 

More spinach was picked. The plants are not yet showing signs of bolting but I guess I have the clock ticking as we march toward the solstice. This was put in a spinach and strawberry salad with some more diced cheddar (Cabot’s Alpine artisanal cheddar, my favorite), toasted slivered almonds and tossed with a honey balsamic vinaigrette.

 

 

Plenty of chard is now being picked after I removed and destroyed the leaves with the leaf miners. This was chopped and sautéed in butter with one of my Saffron shallots from the basement. The shallots are still rock hard with tight skins. Too bad Saffron was discontinued, it is a great shallot.

 

 

I picked the last of the Zlata radishes, and some more of the red Dragon radishes. Was Dragon named for its color or for the weird tentacles it seems to grow? They were very tasty, sweet and juicy with just a little heat. I also pulled a few of the Hakurei white turnips. The Hakurei are not looking great this year, maybe too hot and dry for them.

 

 

Finally on Sunday. I cut the first of the Tronchuda Beira, the Portuguese kale. I am growing this in place of standard American collard greens. It looks a lot like collards but is hopefully more adaptable. I am planning to try a batch of Caldo Verde soup this week. From reading recipes, the Portuguese kale soup I make from the Victory Garden Cookbook (with red beans and tomatoes) is likely to be Azorean in origin. A lot of our Portuguese neighbors here in New England actually came from the islands. Azorean food is more rustic, they say. I will be giving give Caldo Verde a try, but I don’t guarantee I won’t go back to the peasant soup we love.

 

That is the harvest from my garden last week. To see what other gardeners world-wide are doing, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, out host for Harvest Monday.

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 20 October 2014

 

 

Harvests are getting slimmer and after a couple of nights near freezing, will be even more so. I picked a nice head of endive, although not blanched as well as I would like. I have more of that and escarole still in the garden and it if slightly frost tolerant. The Swiss chard is recovering from a case of Cercospora leaf spot and I am starting to get some useable leaves. It is amazing how the color of the Magenta Sunset chard has deepened with the arrival of cooler weather. This is the chard that knocked me over when I saw it in the demonstration kitchen garden at Tower Hill. Unfortunately chard doesn’t do well in freezing weather because if its high water content.

 

 

The pepper plants have dropped most of their leaves and with possible freezing temperatures arriving, I decided to pick all of the remaining peppers, resulting in this haul. At least I managed to get a few more of the Carmen peppers to ripen. I now have a large batch of them to try roasting this week. I have to figure out what to do with the rest of the peppers. I will dehydrate some of them and maybe a pepper relish for the rest.

 

 

I did find some yellow banana peppers at the store to add to my Trinidad Spice peppers for a batch of hot sauce using Dave’s recipe. I also threw in a small Poblano, an orange Habanero, and a Shishito. The result is actually green not yellow and is still fermenting. It smells nice, not too hot.

 

That is what I harvested last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, 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.

Harvest Monday 7 JUL 2013

I was gone for the last week of June and knew I was leaving garlic scapes, turnips, radishes, chard and mustard to be harvested when I got back. My son watered and kept up with the scapes for me. Fortunately, most items held, but that left me with a lot to harvest when I got back.

 

 

Half of the white Hakurei turnips were ready for harvesting and I pulled the batch above with more to harvest next week. These turnips are far superior to the Tokyo Cross variety I used to plant. The lavender Boro King radishes from Territorial were also ready, which was good because their foliage was shading the squash that is going to replace them. Note that one of them was white, not lavender. Also pulled  a few stragglers of Cherry Belle and Zlata.

 

 

I cut the kale to reduce its volume and allow my cucumbers some sun to get a start up the trellis. The kale went into Portuguese kale soup with some of the Hakurei turnips, half for dinner and half was frozen. Another Win-Win choi was harvested and used in a Asian-style slaw for the Fourth of July BBQ that was delayed until the 5th by the rain on Friday. The snow and snap peas are now starting to come in.

 

 

This a sampling of lettuces I have been picking from the Citypicker on the deck. I planted my lettuces in a self-watering container on the deck so I can pick them when I need them. The lettuces on the top are Jericho on left and Merlot on right. That is New Red Fire on the bottom. I also have my usual Buttercrunch but mistakenly planted it in the garden, so I have to drive 2 miles to harvest it.

 

 

The chard is finally mature and  producing well. The Orange Fantasia on the right obviously has some variability in its selection, with some white stems. That is Magenta Sunset on the left, not nearly as striking as it was in the Tower Hill Kitchen Garden last year. All of this and more was blanched and frozen.

 

 

More chard and some Green Wave mustard, plus more scapes. The chard and mustard was frozen.

 

 

Finally, Sunday I pulled some more of the Hakurei turnips that were throwing themselves out of the ground, just hanging on by the tap root. I guess they were telling me they were ready. I’m going to try freezing most of the snow peas. They will likely be used in a Thai curry or stir fry, so hopefully texture will not be an issue.

 

That’s 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–12 August 2013

 

 

The Trionfo Violetto pole bean finally has set some beans. This is the first of significant size but I should be able to start picking this week. The beans are a dusty purple color when mature but they start out green. You can see two immature beans above, the smaller one is green except for the tip and the seam. As it matures, it starts turning purple in patches. The shape is flattened, not round, and I sure hope I like them because it looks like I am going to get a lot.

 

 

The picture above has my first Sunburst patty pan at the bottom. At the top, the large tomato is my one and only Pineapple heirloom, with some splits due to the recent rain. The first fruit had a bad patch of BER and rotted so I removed it. The weeks of high 90s heat caused most of the larger tomatoes to drop their flowers. Ditto for the peppers. They are starting to flower again, so all I need is two or three more months of summer weather and some sunshine.

 

 

Some chard/silverbeet and another batch of Boro beets.

 

 

The mustards started bolting so I am harvesting what I can from them. I need to start some more and replant for the fall. The nice thing about kale and collard is that they are essentially biennials and need a winter before they bolt, so I can continue to harvest through the warm weather right into late fall.

 

I am cleaning up some of the beds and getting them ready for fall planting. I have lettuce, broccoli and kohlrabi seeds started and need to get more beets, carrots and turnips seeded into the garden. The Red Bull onions have dropped and need to be pulled before it rains again. They went at least two weeks longer than the Copra onions and it looks like there are some good sized ones.

 

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

Harvest Monday—29 July 2013

 

I finally cleaned and trimmed the German Extra Hardy garlic that was hanging in the shed. Given the torrid weather we had, like Daphne I wonder if I cooked my garlic. It seems OK. I used a small bulb from this batch and the cloves were rock hard and very flavorful. From a half pound of seed garlic I harvested exactly 2 pounds of dried and trimmed garlic. I don’t know if that is typical but I am pleased with my first effort growing garlic. The Red Chesnok was harvested a week later and will hang in the shed for another week. I set aside a half pound (5 bulbs) of the German for seed garlic.

 

On the subject of alliums, the Copra yellow onions are falling over and I have pulled some of them. It is not the best conditions for harvest since we just received over 2 inches of rain the past week and the beds are wet. I started to pull some of the onions and let them lie on the ground to start drying. The size of them is underwhelming, but I use more small onions than large so I guess that is OK. The Red Bull onions are starting to look like they are ready as well.

 

 

The tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, although some of these first tomatoes are suffering from blossom end rot (BER).  My first Gilbertie was rotten and dissolved in my hand when I tried to pick it (gross!), which I don’t think was BER. My first Pineapple has BER on the sides but I was hoping to be able to salvage part of it. Unfortunately, the rain last week caused it to split in multiple places. The photo below shows the Pineapple (upper left), my first Big Beef (lower left), and Juliet, Sungold and my first Black cherry tomatoes (a few of those didn’t make it home).

 

 

More chard and kale. These will appear weekly for awhile and probably are not worth a photo every week.

 

 

A couple of good sized turnips, finally. These have to be Golden Ball turnips, even though they do not look that golden. Finally enough to actually try them. I will be replanting these for a fall harvest.

 

 

The mustard greens are finally producing! I seeded these twice and they failed to germinate. I finally started them indoors and these leaves are from the transplants. That is Red Giant on top and Green Wave underneath. both great varieties. Pictured with one of the last lettuces (New Red Fire), some Broccoli shoots and a few Padron peppers.

 

 

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