Harvest Monday, 6/17/18

I've just got a couple tiny harvests from Sunday to share.

The first cherry tomatoes. Two are from Sun Gold and the more orange one with green shoulders is from Be My Baby. None of them were very sweet because they were picked a little too soon.

Teeny tiny ground cherries. These are from fruits that developed before the seedlings were in the ground so they're extra small. They had fallen already from the plants and were protected by their papery husks. Ground cherries definitely have a crunchy texture and light savory flavor, the third one I ate was sweeter reminding me of crunchy Fuyu persimmons.

I was going to harvest kale as well, but we decided to start a 5 day fast tomorrow. Just a little fast to reboot the system. We've done lots of fasts through the years. My husband has done a straight water fast for 21 days, but at most I've only done 14 days. We've, also, done fruit smoothy fasts, and lemon juice fast as well. We usually do them in the spring to kind of clear us out after all those rich meals that people fall into during the winter/holidays.

Please join us for Harvest Monday as presented by Dave at Our Happy Acres. A wild and wonderous place where the little known vegetable gardener lurks, and where you can catch a glimpse of them in their natural habitat.

Fruiting Vegetables in the Garden

A little tour of the different vegetables that are setting fruit in the garden. It's strange to think how July is only a couple weeks away. By the end of August I'm usually digging up beds and planting the fall garden.

Riesenstraube cherry tomato is a mass of blooms. It's just starting to set fruit, so is later than all the other cherries and it's a shorter plants as well.

Sweet Aperitif has set lots and lots of fruit and is a fairly tall plant having reached the top of its cage already. My packet of seed only contained 10 seeds so I'll definitely be saving seed from this variety.

Black Vernissage with its pretty striations. It has some bad reviews on Baker Creek, but texture and flavor has so much to do with climate and soil I decided to grow it out. The plants are massive and incredibly vigorous. They're a larger sized cherry, bigger than Big Cherry and Black Cherry which I've grown previous years.

Indigo Blueberry cherry, so cute with their dark shoulders. Another healthy vigorous plant that is well behaved structurally, meaning I don't have to constantly push side shoots back into the cage.

Ground cherry fruit with their adorable outer covering. Aunt Molly's and the unnamed variety have both set fruit. Ambrosia has yet to even bloom.

Pink Berkley Tie Dye is another striped tomato variety. They're pretty early for a beefsteak sized tomato. Most years they're a shorter variety that stop producing before the end of the season.

This is labeled Big Zebra but looks more like a paste variety. It's totally possible I mislabeled it. But I'm only growing Anna Russian and Orange Icicle long tomato types, neither of which I've grown before. And I think they're foliage are supposed to be much more wispy or droopy.

It makes me wonder if there are any other mislabeled plants in the garden.

Black Brandywine is a smaller plant for me this year. Maybe it's the extra hot summer we've been having.

In contrast Dark Brandywine is doing better this year. But I remember Black Brandy as having a more memorable flavor.

Jaune Flamme is setting nice long trusses of fruit. I'm very excited to try this variety.

Pink Brandywine sometimes gets yellowing leaves as a sign of magnesium deficiency in my garden. This plant is more affected than the other two of the same variety and is blooming later than the others.

Pink Brandywine is my favorite tomato, so juicy and delicious.

The fruit of the Brandywine. I just find them so adorable with their crumpled edges.

Granny Cantrell's German Red is actually a pink tomato with clear skin. Their young fruit are so pale they almost appear white.

There's something wrong with the Green Zebra plants. The side that get's full sun is dying which I've been trimming off. I've finally decided wilt is making its way through the garden. Cosmonaut Volkov is showing signs of wilt as well. The disease can be caused by either fungus or bacteria, but I'm guessing one of the fungal wilts.

I went ahead and ordered Serenade, which is an organic method of control utilizing the soil borne microorganism Bacillus subtilis.

Marianna's Peace tomato with its potato leaves is a big plant. This is another new to me variety that should have pink fruit.

Green Cherokee is a surprise. Another very large plant it's setting a lot more fruit than Purple Cherokee ever did for me. It's supposed to be one of the best tasting green tomatoes out there. I'm also growing Aunt Ruby's German Green, which is a delicious albeit late tomato so we can have a comparison.

All the cucumbers are setting fruit except for Boothby's Blonde, which also happens to be the smallest plants. I've spotted what looks like spotted cucumber beetles but they're pink/red, hopefully they're just little ladybugs.

It looks like Charentais has set a single fruit. I'm hand pollinating the melons residing in the pepper beds. I haven't seen any bees in the garden yet, not even the tiny sweat bees which usually pollinate tomato plants.

Tuscany has set 2 or 3 fruit. Look how fuzzy they are! So cute.

The peppers are finally blooming. I might try hand pollinating in the morning to see if that helps.

And I'd like to share my experiences with different tomato supports:

There's lots of different methods for growing and supporting tomato plants. I have a friend who prunes her tomatoes to one stem so as to get earlier tomatoes. Whereas, I allow side shoots or suckers to develop and fruit since we have such a long growing season. When we lived in the mountains we only grew stout determinant plants because the seasons were so short.

I've tried different methods to support tomatoes. Letting them lay on the ground is the worst in terms of production. Staking is ok for bush or determinant varieties, kind of fiddly with the tying of the stems. Florida Weave takes work especially with indeterminant or long vining types, but string is cheap. Sandwiching plants between fencing is easy to put up and easy to take down, but harvesting can be difficult if you're short.

This is the second year we've used tomato cages. It's by far my favorite support system. I have both the thin gauge and powder coated cages. Since I plant tomatoes in double rows within a bed, the thin gauge cages get tied together at the top to give them more structural stability.

Six on Saturday in the Vegetable Garden

I'm sharing six things from the garden on this lovely Saturday. Just a few vegetable related things.

Six on Saturday is hosted by the Propagator. Where gardeners all over the world share the goings on in their gardens.

1) In a shady corner of the corn patch grows a free range tomato plant. Who are its people, where did it come from? Possibly it will be a hybrid since we had tiny sweat bees pollinating tomato blooms last year.

2) Another self-sown plant is this little cucumber in the sweet potato patch. And the little plant in the bottom right hand corner is the tiniest of the tiny sweet potato slips.

3) Leaf celery. One of my triumphs after trying for years to raise a few plants from seed. Now we have a whole bed of them behind the greenhouse.

4) Asian chives. It only took two packets of seed to get 7 chive plants. But if you're counting, there are only 6 plants shown. Yes, a chive was lost to a weeding incident.

5) A ladybug amongst the bush bean blooms? I think not. More likely the dreaded spotted cucumber beetle.

6) And last but not least. I wanted to show the first ripening tomato. This variety is Sun Gold (F1) a cherry type.

Harvest Monday, 7/3/17

On June 26th we harvested tomatoes with Black Brandywine as the biggest one weighing 1.418 pounds. Also pictured is Granny Cantrell's German Red, Paul Robeson, Cosmonaut Volkov, Black Prince, and Taxi.

Black Brandywine continues to produce early heavy tomatoes. Cosmonaut Volkov and Paul Robeson are producing the biggest tomatoes I have ever seen from them, which tells me they don't like our normally hot spring weather. But there are some gigantic Pink Brandywines starting to ripen that should weigh more.

Also harvested June 26th: beans, Butta zucchini, and basil. My husband was elated to see fresh beans coming in from the garden.

I picked the basil thinking it would go well with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, but with more than 5 pounds of tomatoes harvested a day it looks like salsa canning is scheduled for Friday.

 June 27th: just under a pound of beans and some cherry tomatoes.

June 27th: Butta zucchini and Zephyr squash.

June 27th was a good day for tomatoes with more than eleven pounds shown here.

On the 27th: the never ending parade of squash continues.

 Harvested June 28th: almost seven pounds of tomatoes.

Also harvested June 28th: under three pounds of peppers. The peppers were a disappointment this year. The plants are big and lush and the peppers themselves are huge but the yield is dismal. In 2013 my first harvest of peppers was 12 pounds with almost the same number of plants. We haven't gotten a single pepper from Numex Joe E. Parker yet.

On the June 29th we were running around getting ready to can salsa the next day so I didn't get to photograph 17 pounds of tomatoes, almost 3 pounds of beans, and just under 4 pounds of squash picked that day. I'm trying to process the salsa only when our kiddo is out of the house because the fumes from all the peppers and onions can get pretty bad.

With all the tomatoes coming in we're going to try pressure canning tomato juice and sauces. It'll be great, we can add the tomato juice to our fresh vegetable juice blend. My favorite is carrot, celery, and apple that we run through our juicer. We'll probably can some crushed and whole tomatoes for  soups and chili.

Harvested this week:
41.644 pounds tomatoes
8.918 pounds squash
5.686 pounds beans
2.720 pounds peppers
0.294 pound cherry tomatoes

Total Harvest: 56.542 pounds

Please join us at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres, a happening place full of vegetables and their gardens.

Harvest Monday, 6/26/17

Harvested June 19th: Marrow zucchini, Butta Zucchini, Sophia summer squash, Fat Cherry tomato, and Sungold cherry tomato.

Harvested June 20th: Fiorentino zucchini, Butta Zucchini, Sophia summer squash, Chocolate Cherry tomato, and Sungold cherry tomato.

Harvested June 21st: Butta zucchini, Fiorentino zucchini, Striato D'Italia zucchini, Zephyr summer squash, and Sophia summer squash.

Also Harvested June 21st: Taxi tomato, Black Prince tomatoes, Black Cherry tomato, Fat Cherry tomato, and Sungold cherry tomato.

Good news, shockingly enough I have large tomatoes ripening in June. I've grown Black Prince before so it's actually a shock that it's this early. Taxi is a new lemon yellow tomato. Both varieties set lots and lots of fruit although Taxi is a much smaller plant. With a couple tomatoes ripened, I picked up some lettuce, French bread, and sour dough bread which will incidentally go great with bacon and tomatoes.

Harvested June 22: Taxi tomato, Black Prince tomato, Black Cherry, Fat Cherry, and Sungold cherry tomato.

Harvested Saturday, June 24th: Fiorentino zucchini, Striato D'Italia zucchini, Marrow zucchini, Zephyr summer squash, and Sophia summer squash.

It rained heavily all day Friday which kept me out of the garden till Saturday evening and I was greeted by boat-like creatures of the zucchini variety. The bowl they're sitting in is actually massive.

Also harvested Saturday: Granny Cantrell's German Red, Black Brandywine, Paul Robeson, Black Prince, and Cosmonaut Volkov tomatoes. The pink tomato is the Granny Cantrell tomato.

I was really surprised to see all these tomatoes ripening after the rain, I don't think we have ever harvested large tomatoes in June. Even Pink Brandywine is showing color so we'll get to taste them in a day or two. The biggest tomato picked so far is a Black Brandywine weighing 1.138 pounds.

And our cherry tomato harvest for June 24th.

We've eaten a pile of BLT's with the Black Brandywine and Black Prince tomatoes. And then a zucchini and tomato medley, next on the list is zucchini bread. Black Brandywine has a very savory salty flavor with hardly any seeds, Black Prince is much more juicy with a bit of a tang. Even with all the rain they're still tasty tomatoes.

Both Butta zucchini plants have split open along their main stem. It's likely that the stems were weakened by squash vine borers and then a huge storm battered the plants till they split open. But even with the severe damage, the plants are still producing and we'll see if they can recover.

There's quite a few plants infected with what I now know for sure is Tomato Speck which also infects the stems and fruit of the plants. The infected plants got a hard trim and dosed with Seranade, I was forced to apply the Serenade even though it was forecasted to rain in the next day or two. The disease had already infected 8 plants total: two Taxi's, one Black Brandywine, two Ananas Noire, two Manyel, and one Pilcer Vesy. The bacterial disease presented first on the Manyel plants, making me suspect the disease is seedborne and then has spread by aphid vectors. Next year the seeds will be treated with a diluted bleach solution before planting.

Harvested:
18.08 pounds zucchini
7.214 pounds tomato
2.632 pounds summer squash
0.974 pound cherry tomato

Total harvest: 28.9 pounds (13.109 kg)

If you're curious about weight breakdown by variety, I have that listed under the 2017 Harvest Totals tab.

Please join us for Harvest Monday hosted by Dave from Our Happy Acres, a place for gardeners and vegetable enthusiasts.

Harvest Monday, 6/19/17

Green Winner kohlrabi, purple Kolibri kohlrabi, and 4 little Sungold cherry tomatoes.

A couple more bolted tatsoi heads, and 3 little Butta zucchinis.

A mixture of Black Cherry, Fat Cherry, and Sungold tomatoes. More Butta zucchini and the first Lunga Fiorentino zucchini. Male squash flowers are starting to open up so we'll get some pollinated squashes soon.

We had a huge rainstorm Sunday, it rained so much all day. Yay to not having to water the garden. Usually green tomatoes can heal when they split open after a big rain, it's when they're ripening that it's a worry. But I probably need to go ahead and top the Black Cherry plant, it's too top-heavy even with added supports. And I'll probably end up tying its cage up to a wooden fence post. My partner thinks we should tie all the tomato cages together in each bed to create more stability. It's an interesting thought. Has anyone else tried something like that?

And I can't believe it's almost July already. This summer is progressing way too rapidly. We planted almost 3 weeks later than normal, so everything feels like it's happening at a rapid pace.

Harvested:
0.904 lbs. zucchini
0.298 lbs. tomato
1.054 lbs. kohlrabi
1.364 lbs. tatsoi

Total harvest: 3.62 lbs. (1.642 kg)

Please join us at Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres. Where gardeners from around the world share their joys and trials of vegetable gardening.

Harvest Monday, 7/11/16

Cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and green beans are still trickling in. We've been getting lots of big rain storms passing through last week. The plants are looking greener than ever and not having to water the garden has been wonderful.

The plants had put on so much growth, I actually had trouble tying up the tomato plants and knocked a couple green tomatoes off. Luckily the green tomatoes were fairly small.  :)

A couple of Homestead tomatoes ripened and they're very small, not much bigger than a cherry tomato. I looked up a couple of reviews and people said that this variety gets smaller the hotter it gets. Strangely enough, the tomatoes swelled quickly but once it got truly hot they just stopped growing and eventually ripened instead.

A handful of Asian greens and some basil gets picked for soup occasionally. Mibun, tatsoi, and mizuna  make up this handful and you can tell the flea beetles have been at the leaves.

And of course summer squash marks the highlight of a summer garden. It looks like the pattypan squash are starting to blossom, so they're not far behind.

My parents have been visiting this week, so I have to keep this simple. I hope everybody is enjoying the summer weather. It's shaping up to be a decent summer, no huge gluts to speak of but hopefully there'll be many good things in the future.

Please join us at Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.