Harvest Monday, 7/2/18

June 25th was the first picking from the bush bean beds. The earliest and most prolific bean so far is Triomphe de Farcy beans, too bad it's the stringiest bean ever. The strings are so tough and difficult to get off they actually make my fingers sore. Thank goodness Landreth's Stringless is making up for it.

Dark Brandywine is the first large tomato I picked. (Berkley Tie-Dye would've been the first ripe but a critter ate half of it.) On the left are three Jaune Flamme tomatoes, they produce large trusses of fruit.

On June 27th I only got half the bush bean bed picked before it threatened to rain again. A mixture of Triomphe de Farcy, Contender, and Tendergreen.

I started picking the tomatoes early just to keep them from splitting too badly with all the rain we'd been getting.

The other half of the bush bean bed got picked on the June 28th. Mostly Landreth's Stringless and Derby.

In the back is a Berkley Tie-Dye tomato and a small Green Zebra.

Out of the 4 cucumber varieties I'm growing, only Salad Slicer and Heike have produced. The other two have yet to make female blooms.

On Sunday, July 1st, I harvested more green beans, cucumbers and tomatoes.

I mad a chicken, onion, and green bean dish yesterday using Aldi's Harissa Simmer Sauce and it was fabulous. Spicy and delicious over a bed of rice with fresh herbs and a dollop of homemade cucumber yogurt sauce. Yum.

A plate of homegrown Mrs. Burn's Lemon basil, Siam Queen basil, Gigante d'Italia parsley, and cucumbers with some store bought cilantro. This was served with the chicken and green bean harissa sauce dish.

We got 8 days in a row of heavy rainfall. The wind was so bad on June 28th it made me worry about a tornado. Lots of tree damage in the neighborhood and power went out for a little bit. But it looks like that stormy weather pattern has finally broken. All this rain means disease is running rampant in the tomato beds, and half the onions were lost. I've decided I'm done growing onions, it's a lot of work starting them so early in February only to have most of them die or not do well because of the amount of water we tend to get.

The bush bean bed will probably be done in another week or two, Gilfeather turnips will be directly sown in that bed. Broccoli and Brussels sprouts will get planted in the early Buhl sweet corn once it's done in few weeks. It'll probably be late before the Morado corn is finished so fava beans/broad beans probably won't be planted until October or November in those beds.

I might try a planting of peas along the fence in the Buhl corn bed. The only reason I've been able to keep up with the weeding this year is because the kiddo is vacationing with the grandparents. They've been going to the beach and out cherry picking, so lots of fun stuff.

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Harvest Monday, 7/24/16

It's been a hot year and I'm starting to look forward to fall and winter. We had such a mild winter last year, I wonder what this year will bring.

Tomatoes are coming in but the squirrels have discovered and are getting tons of them. They've been tearing the fruit off the vines or just eating them where they hang. What I thought were peck marks from birds, turns out they're claw marks from squirrels.

Cherry tomatoes are really nice to have around, they're great in omelets or just to pop in the mouth.

Combined the bush beans and pole beans are producing terribly this year, but at least they are starting to produce more. I'll probably be pulling them to make room for a fall planting of peas eventually.

Cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, and summer squash still coming in steady amounts. Squash bugs have invaded, so every couple of days I go out with duct tape to collect eggs and the occasional nymph and adult squash bug. After being hit by vine borers, the plants just aren't producing many squashes, plus there are cucumber beetles everywhere.

Three small ripe melons and a summer squash. The Ginkaku melons keep making melons, I counted eight still on the vines. Squirrels have been digging in the bed, killing one of the four plants.

I also picked a more ripe melon that isn't pictured to see how it would taste, very sweet and still crispy but starting to get a bit mealy. We much prefer them crispier with their sweet citrusy kind of honeydew flavor.

I picked a few tomatoes on Sunday that were just starting to ripen, to beat the squirrels. You can see the puncture marks from their claws on the Black Brandywine from when they got a couple of the other fruits. I'll probably go back to using fencing as supports for the tomatoes next year.

The loofah plants have started taking over the whole row of trellises but not a single bloom has yet to form, which makes me think their blossoming is dependent on day length. The winter squash and wax melons have just started vining, hopefully there's enough time left for some fruit to set. And the first Jimmy Nardello peppers are just starting to ripen, which I'm very excited to try.

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Harvested this week:
10.632 lbs. tomatoes
3.932 lbs. melon
2.336 lbs. zucchini
2.000 lbs. cucumber
1.158 lbs. green beans
0.536 lbs. yellow summer squash
0.402 lbs. eggplant

weekly total: 20.996 pounds

The Fruiting Vegetable Garden in June

Golden King of Siberia, a giant yellow-gold tomato. The plant has wispy leaves and seems to hate our hot weather but it always manages to produce, interestingly it seems to put effort in ripening one giant tomato at a time. This one is about the size of my hand already I had to prop it up under a piece of string because the whole plant fell over trying to hold it up.

Purple Cherokee really seems to enjoy this year's drier weather. During wet years this variety cracks terribly which means it rots before ripening, either way it really needs to be supported so the tomatoes don't come in contact with the wet ground or be grown in raised beds with good drainage. It's a great variety that puts on lots of fruit, but I don't think we got a single tomato that didn't rot during last year's floods.

All the tomatoes are three weeks to a month behind, I had to replace 40 plants this year due to varmint destruction. Even so, it looks like it'll be a decent year for tomatoes.

Celebrity (F1), I decided to grow a hybrid variety just as insurance against weather related issues. I've grown this variety before in desert country, it puts on two big flushes of tomatoes so would be classified as more of a semi-determinate. These fruits are more pointed at the blossom end than what is normal for this variety and they're not as ruffled on the shoulders, so I don't know what that means breeding wise. I do know it's a cross between a roma-like paste tomato and some round variety.

Homestead, a new variety for me. It's putting on some nice big bunches of tomatoes but they seem to be growing slowly.

Pear tomato, a red Italian variety that's supposed to be nice and big with gorgeous ruffles. The big one is about the size of my palm but still has a long ways to go.

The cucumbers are finally coming on like crazy, there are little cucumbers everywhere which I've been hand-pollinating everyday.

Ahhh, summer squash season is close at hand. The bees haven't found the squash plants yet so I've been trying to remember to hand pollinate, but it's difficult because the flowers don't stay viable very long. I purchased a couple of Yellow Crookneck plants but they've been hit by squash vine borers, they've recovered but aren't much bigger than this seeded plant.

The zucchini plants are massive already, 4-5 feet across. So exciting. I tried pollinating them this morning so fingers crossed.

The Korean melons have set 3 or 4 fruits and they're starting to take over the pepper bed. I'm really hoping this is the same type of melons we ate while visiting Virginia. Unlike the Crimson Sweet watermelon plants which keep growing and growing but no female flowers have shown up yet.

The snap pole beens are infected with rust with all the lower leaves dying out as the disease climbs up the plants, it's unlikely we'll be getting much green beans. They were heavily infested by flea beetles this spring which weakened the plants to begin with.

Santa Fe Grande is setting lots of little peppers. It's one of the hottest varieties I grow. The peppers are thin-walled but have a great flavor which I use in our salsa. We can salsa at varying levels of heat, but the heat does seem to mellow over time. I've increased the types of peppers and tomatoes in our salsa, and it is so good. The flavors are so complex and magical.

This year we have Serrano chile, Anaheim, Numex Big Jim, Numex Joe Parker, Santa Fe Grande, Lemon, and the hot Fish pepper. Sweet pepper wise, we're growing Corno Rosso, Carmagna Rosso, and Jimmy Nordello. Our daytime temps have been in the 100's (38 degrees Celsius) and nighttime temperatures at 75 degrees, so the plants have been aborting their flowers. This week it's supposed to cool down to the upper 80's (31 Celsius), so hopefully the plants can set more fruit before the next heat wave. Otherwise I'll be resorting to store bought peppers, knuckle bite.

Chinese Yard Long Beans Germinated in Just 3 Days

I noticed the other day the Chinese yard long pole beans have germinated in just 3 days. Amazing.

Usually I pick regular snap beans when the seeds bulge a bit because I like the added texture, but the Mosaic long bean variety needs to be picked before the beans start filling out the pods, otherwise the pods get spongy. And since the seeds are very small they wouldn't make good shelling beans. I am also trying Chinese Green Noodle asparagus beans this year to see if there's a difference in longevity. Maybe long beans just require more water than regular snap beans to stay juicy.

The reseeded Cherokee Trail of Tears pole beans have germinated in the nice warm weather we have been having. The first time I planted them, a cold front came in and only one bean sprouted. Which goes to show, beans need hot temperatures to germinate otherwise they rot in the ground.

Hmmm. The future holds cucumbers for stir fries, baked stuffed cucumbers, and marinated cucumbers. Yum.

The cucumbers have all germinated as well. I planted Sweet Success (F1), Sweeter Yet (F1), and Japanese Long cucumbers around a bamboo teepee support. I am thinking about planting cucumbers all along the tomato rows and letting them climb the fencing, which will increase the chances of getting a good cucumber harvest. It's so difficult growing cucumbers here, they grow few fruits and the vines die early due to mildew and beetles, so I'm trialling a couple F1 hybrid varieties to see if they perform better.

The bush bean bed is filling nicely. Normally I plant the bush beans in a single block with 2 to 4 inches between plants, but this year I wanted to keep track of production between varieties. Plus, it will be nice to see if giving the beans more room will actually increase yields.

The mulch really seems to be helping with the weeding. Instead of hoeing, it's just me and my trusty hand trowel digging up the few weeds that manage to make it through the thick layer of mulch. The mulch does make it harder to plant because layers of mulch has to be pushed away before digging a hole, but it is so worth the decreased number of weeds. Yay, I am finally winning the war against weeds.

The sweet potatoes have yet to start vining, but when they do they will create a dense living mulch ground cover that doesn't seem to compete with taller plants like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. Unlike winter squash vines which seem to bulldoze their way through the garden smothering all others in their path.