Harvest Monday

My husband and daughter have been away for the week so I have spent some of my time freezing and canning without two more mouths to feed. I never realized how much they consume!
Frozen Beans
Frozen Tomato Sauce
Frozen Okra stew
Frozen Kale
Then a friend of mine has been away and she has a peach tree. She urged me to help myself. First year that it has produced fruit and she didn't even get to taste one. I made:
6 pints of Peach jam
4 pints of Peach chutney
Of course I'll give her some.

Tomato plants don't look so good but oddly have started to send out new shoots and flowers and have set fruit again. The Juliet and Sun Gold are loaded with fruit and the Brandywines have plum size fruit. Even the Early ripers are starting up again. The glut is over so I am happy to have fresh tomatoes as long as I can. The idea of buying them from the store is disheartening.

Some of the fall radishes are ready for harvest. I should have planted more. I wonder if it is too late. I lose a lot of my sun in the garden this time of the year.

Hop over to Daphne's to see more harvests.

Harvest Monday

RAIN Today! I can still count the number of days of rain this summer on one hand.
Last weeks post was late so there is some overlap and I am still lazy about taking pictures. Take a look at Dahne's Harvest Monday for other great harvests.

Tomatoes are slowing down but there are a few new shoots and fruit sets on the very yellow and scraggly plants. I am not sure what is happening to them but I do not think I will have tomatoes for much longer. Also see the previous post if you have any clue what might be the issue with some of my tomatoes.

The new carrots beets and radishes are doing well. I hope they get enough sun with the new growth of the maple tree this summer. it blocks some of the late summer sun.

I continue to pick kale. Froze some and tried a new recipe of raw kale, tomato and cucumber, marinated in soy sauce and  lemon, sprinkled with toasted sunflower seeds. You can see other great recipes at Greenish Thumb Garden to Table challenge.

Okra has not been coming in in the amounts I thought they would. two rows of okra are not producing at all so I am left with one row of about 8 plants.





Eggplants are starting to produce in quantity but I only have 3 plants. Pole beans are also beginning to kick in. I froze a pound of them this week. Peppers are still having a little difficulty.




All of a sudden the cucumbers are starting to produce. I think the hot weather stalled them. This is a persian variety. Small, smooth, crunchy. Never tried pickling these but I might have to since I am picking 4 a day.

Where has the Time Gone!

Monday harvest came and went and I have just not been on top of the posting. None the less, I have been getting a variety of items from the garden and they are pictured below. Oddly, the tomatoes are being consumed and nobody is quite sick of them yet. The small ones pop in the mouth without being conscious that you are doing so. Slicing, tomato juice, and cooking with the others. Pole beans are beginning to come in regularly.  I cut back all the swiss chard and am hoping it will send out another burst of energy. I did not plant more. The kale is beautiful. and some of the eggplants are coming in.

Any idea what is wrong with these tomatoes? They are mottled in color and very  mealy. I am picking them from the same exact plants that other very tasty and juicy brandywine tomatoes are being picked. If it were happening to all of them, I could understand, but only a few is perplexing.

Small but Amazing Things

I am truly amazed at some of the garden activity and thought this would be a good time to share.
For starters, Things in the garden have not looked really well lately. The tomato leaves are turning yellow. They stopped setting fruit so I think I might only have tomatoes through August. Despite thinking the zuchini was on it's way back, it has done nothing in the last 3 weeks. Strange that it is so big, green and healthy looking. I was feeling I needed new life in the garden.

Amazing thing #1
The lettuce bed died and thought that it was time to plant another batch. My lettuce bed is directly behind the back porch and gets sun until noon–1 p.m. The previous owners of the house left a large role of fiberglass screen material in the garage. While Granny has a great system for shading her lettuce, I discovered that the screening makes a great material to protect newly planted seeds from heavy rains, sweltering heat, the sun and cats using it as a litter box. It works for a day or two after they germinate.

Nothing too amazing except that it was Monday morning when I planted the box. This morning when I went out to do my morning garden stuff, I saw that many of the seeds germinated. Two days or 48 hours seems so quick and I am just amazed that the dust like seeds, can produce these seedlings, and in time lettuce.
Here are some of the pictures. Click on the picture to enlarge.

Prepping the lettucebox.                     Screening on the box after planting.

The seedlings at 8:00 a.m. this morning.

Amazing thing # 2
I don't prescribe to any specific gardening philosophy but I prefer not to use insecticides and feel that the food chain and insect world need to be kept in balance. So a few insects don't bother me. I would not call my garden organic but this year, I did not use anything besides compost in it. Sometimes it is a problem but sometimes I harvest something that is just perfect and I am shocked to see no bug bites, discoloration in the fruit, distorted shapes. How does nature make some things so perfect?

Kale leaves without a blemish.

Harvest Monday

I must admit, taking pictures has gotten harder as the summer has progressed. Perhaps it is the heat, perhaps not having replaced my good camera yet. I somehow forget to take the pictures when I harvest. Today I decided to try something different.

I went out this morning, as I usually do and collected the vegetables that were ready. Lately it has been a little of this and a little of that but there always seems to be a second harvest in the evening as well. I came in, and had some fun.
The veggie guy says "Happy Harvest Monday." Check in on Other Harvests at Daphne's Dandelions.

Harvest for the week include:

Okra, Cucumbers, Chili - Anaheim - Bell and ? Peppers, Eggplant, Tomatoes, Green Beans, Kale, Zucchini, Yellow Crook Neck and Mustard Greens.

Thank you to Villager for passing on the Freezer Tomato Sauce Recipe. I froze 40 oz for future use.

Challenges and Updates

I have been a little delinquent in posting and it is in part because when the days are warm, the room with the computer is very uncomfortable an we have been having a lot of those days.

A few things to catch up on:

I guess it started with a call to show off your sunflowers by mama pea.  I love my sunflowers but mainly because of the story behind them. When we first moved in and we landscaped to put the veg garden in, I took my daughter seed shopping with me. I asked her to pick something she wanted to plant. I thought she would pick peas or beans, even broccoli but instead she picked sunflowers. I cringed at the idea of giving up precious space in my veg garden for these tall monster flowers. I planted them at the edge of the garden by the garage and have to admit they were beautiful and a wonderful addition to the garden the first year. They have returned every year and now have filled in the "dead" spot between the garden and the garage. I am forever grateful to my daughter for asking me to buy those seeds.
The show:

The second picture is a flower that is 10' high by the garage. The two on the right are from a dwarf sunflower 4' high with 10" diameter bloom.

Then came the refrigerator challenge that was put out by Erin followed by Granny. Forget it! It is not going to happen. I pride myself in keeping the garden up not the refrigerator. I had no idea that people connected the two.

Somehow, a swallowtail butterfly managed to escape my search and look at her. She was not far from going off to make her cocoon when i shot this two days ago. This morning I can't find her anywhere.

Some of my other eggplants are beginning to produce. I am excited for a new vegetable.

Listing for my own future reference, the harvests have been as follows:
Lots of tomatoes, I will pick most of the Romas this weekend for canning.
Cucumbers but not as many as I would like, I planted a variety that cannot be pickled so I guess that is good.
Peppers not coming in as they should. A burst of chills in the early season but very few now. Bells may be starting, plus a few Anaheims.
Kale, swiss chard slowing down in the heat.
Eggplant, ichiban have stalled but some fruit coming up on new plants.
Okra beginning to produce regularly
Squash slowed down in the last two weeks but may start up again.

Beans

I was checking my fellow bloggers posts before I was going to post today. Low and behold, Robin over at Gardener of Eden posted exactly what I was going to. So go on over there and take a look. I am posting so that I have my own record of the delayed producing pole beans.

Flowers and Fruits

Hot again today and I am afraid that the pole beans are just going stall in this place with thousands of flowers but no beans. What a bummer. Last year I had so many.
I have been enjoying the tomatoes which are doing much better than last year. I have another load full and if the weather doesn't get a little cooler, I am going to have to freeze tomato puree again.

On another note, the okra are enjoying the heat and have begun to produce enough that I could make a whole dish. I know that okra are not most people's favorite vegetable but they are nostalgic since my mother used to make them. I was happy to see that even thought the package said that the plant grows 6-7 feet tall, mine have stalled at 4 feet. My garden feels like a jungle already. the flowers are gorgeous. These are the pickings for one day so I will have enough for a meal in three days.

My daughter left for Sleep away camp for the first time. She is there for two weeks. I had to harvest her edamame beans but I blanched them and put them in the freezer. They are very good but this was the yield of 6 plants. Does anyone know if they re-flower and will they keep producing? If not I will pull them out and plant a new fall crop which I will have to do very soon.

The other two eggplants that I planted are beginning to produce flowers and fruits and I find them to be so beautiful. I do not remember the variety of these two plants but I will take what I get.

Garden Gone Wild and Harvest Monday

Well, I replaced one of the stolen cameras with a small camera that will take semi decent pictures. That should make this week and future weeks' posts "prettier" if nothing else. Daphne has a lot more harvest to look at.

Granny dared me and I took the challenge.
Three of the 5 corn that I can harvest. As you can see, much less impressive than Granny's corn harvest. I recently learned that every bud on the corn flower is the pollinator life line to the kernels in the corn. There were a lot of pollinator bees on those flowers so I am not sure why the corn looks so…. I do not think I will try corn again unless I can pick a different spot for them.

On some of the other fronts, Tomatoes have been rolling in by the bowl fulls. I weighed my Sunday harvest and it came out close to 10lbs for that day alone. It looks like I will have another week of this kind of harvest every two days and then I think there may be a hiatus. The plants have some small tomatoes on them but I am hoping there will be more flowers and fruit set with slightly cooler weather.

Harvested some pepper.

Beans are doing poorly but the plant has gone wild. i am not sure if I would find a bean if it was in there. Robin is having the same problem and we think it was the excessive heat. Oh well. I am beginning to get okra on a regular basis and that is fun. The flowers are so beautiful.

The zucchini squash plant that was giving me a a squash every other day has stopped producing and the SVB does not seem to have stunted the plant growth. Maybe I should pull it out.

I am looking forward to being able to post some other stuff with the new insta-camera.

Tomato, Tomato

The tomatoes have taken over my life. I did not expect to have so many before July 31. This is usually where we are at in mid August so I wonder how long into the August and September we will have tomatoes. A couple of years back, I had tomatoes on the plants till the first week of October.

I have been working minimally in the garden during these hot days. They are so exhausting for me. I try to get an hour of work in before the sun hits the garden which is at 8:00 am So I am out there early.

Last week I pulled out all the peas and gave room to the okra that was planted between the pea rows. They are happy and it is amazing how much they grew in the last week. I harvested about 10-12 okra. The first 5 went into a squash, tomato, swiss chard stew and my daughter did not notice. Next time we will put 10 in and see if she can taste them.

This week I pulled all the carrots and beets and planted a fall crop of carrots, beets and radishes. Hoping the heat does not kill them before they get started.

The pole bean has not started producing and I am not sure why. There are loads of flowers on the plant but no beans.

Peppers are beginning to come in.

Cucumbers are being picked one or two a day and then ………………
There are the tomatoes: