Harvest Monday, 8/5/13

Tuesday's harvest: Eggplant, zucchini, and summer squash are really starting to coming in and we are still getting a few cucumbers although the plants look like they are on the downward slide into oblivion.

This is from the same Tuesday picking, more summer squash and zucchini. Look how the overgrown squash on the right look like shmoos, those wonderful mythical beings who love to be eaten (they were not counted in this weeks weigh in).

Friday and Saturday's harvest: Tomatoes were picked along with fresh hot peppers which were canned into 16 jars of salsa on Saturday, the jars are 3/4 of a quart so about 12 quarts total. Plus the 2 quart jars in the fridge were refilled for cooking and immediate consumption.

Sunday's harvest: A handful of Red Noodle yard long pole beans, okra, a single cucumber, and all manner of eggplants. The little round eggplants are a bit different then normal eggplant, they have a firmer texture perfect for soups and simmered coconut curries.

The garden is looking very overgrown and crazy messy. Pictures will be shared later this week. Shield shaped squash bugs are all over the eggplants, tomatoes, and pole beans. There are swarms of flea beetles amongst the eggplants. And vine borers have decimated a few winter squash vines. It has been raining too regularly for me to dust the plants with diatomaceous earth but something will have to be done soon.

I have been thinking about a fall garden in an abstract way, I don't know if I'm up for it. Maybe if the garden was flagging but there is so much canning and processing to be done. Pickled okra and hot peppers, dried eggplant, and maybe some tomato sauce are planned for the future.

This week's harvest:
17.89 pounds tomato
13.07 pounds eggplant
6.90 pounds zucchini
3.66 pounds summer squash
3.57 pounds cucumber
2.47 pounds hot pepper
0.79 pound okra

Totals: 48.35 pounds vegetables

Please join us for Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne's Dandelions.

Harvest Monday, 7/29/13

Monday's harvest: 36 pounds of tomatoes and 8 pounds of Hungarian Hot Wax peppers picked on last Monday became 25 gorgeous quarts of canned salsa (23.66 liters). Plus there's 2 more jars in the fridge for cooking and eating with chips. Yay! Salsa!

It took 2 days to can that much salsa. Whew, am I tired. There's still a ton of hot peppers in the freezer, so I might have to can more salsa in a few weeks. And there's even more growing on the plants which may just end up as pickles.

Tuesday's harvest: A zucchini that grew huge overnight. It must have swelled with the torrential rain, without the tomatoes it looks like a baby cradled in a basket. I also went through the garden looking for tomatoes that were missed on Monday, the greenish ones are Big Zebra and are actually nice and ripe.

Saturday's harvest: Cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, and a gigantic pile of okra! The green little orbs are actually round eggplants, which I've seen my great aunty use in Thai coconut curry soup.

On Sunday I started a 20 day sweet pickle recipe! It took every cucumber I've been collecting for 2 weeks to fill this gallon jar (3.8 liters), and yet there's still room. Next time I won't give away so many cucumbers.

I also picked some pole beans on Friday and Saturday but the husband immediately sauteed them for dinner with onion, garlic, chicken stock, and a little sugar till caramelized. Which he served with pork cooked with salsa one day and chicken cooked with salsa the next, served on rice. Delicious.

This week's harvest:
43.77 pounds tomatoes
8.02 pounds hot peppers
3.96 pounds zucchini
2.90 pounds eggplant
2.72 pounds cucumber
1.88 pounds okra

1.03 pounds sweet peppers

Totals: 64.28 pounds of vegetables

Please join us for Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions where wildly obsessive gardeners share their stories and weekly harvests.

Growing Eggplants or Aubergines in the Vegetable Garden

I try to start eggplants at least 8 weeks before the predicted last frost free date, this year it was more like 6 weeks. Eggplants need consistent warmth in the 70's to 80's to germinate, personally I keep the seed starter tray on top of the fridge. After the seeds germinate each seedling is transplanted to individual containers like a plastic or styrofoam cup that gets reused year after year, the plants are then kept under 24 hours a day light till it is warm enough to plant outside. When daytime temperatures finally reach 70 degrees and nighttime temperatures are above 50˚ F eggplants can be planted outside.

I have been growing eggplant in the garden for a few of years now, and they have always been a challenge. Most years the plants seem slow growing in the beginning due to early flea beetle damage, and once the hot temperatures hit in the height of summer they stop producing fruit till it starts cooling down again.

This year looks like it is going to be a banner year for eggplants. The plants are sizing up quickly and the leaves are huge in comparison to the short stature of the plants. Eggplants are sensitive to the cold which can stunt them, but they also need to get in the ground early so they produce fruits before it gets too hot and the pollen becomes sterilized from the heat. So, I try to put eggplants out a week or two later than the tomato plants. Then whenever the temperatures are going to dip down below 50˚ F  at night (10˚ C), I go ahead and cover them with a vented clear plastic cup in the afternoon so some heat gets trapped in there to keep them a bit warmer at night. Soil mounded on the bottom of the cups will hold them in place in case of wind.

This year when the plants got too big for cups they got covered with the Agribon floating row covers or agricultural blankets, it can get quite warm under there during the day. I keep the floating row covers on for a few weeks till the volatile temperatures of spring settles down and it warms up consistently. The row covers also excludes flea beetles and other pests from the eggplants, without the early seedling damage the plants are showing exuberant lush growth. Then as the plants grow, whenever there are signs of aphids and flea beetle damage, I go ahead and dust with diatomaceous earth which is an inert powder and organic way to manage insects. Once the plants get larger, they should be able to withstand flea beetle attacks.

The Ma Zu Purple eggplant grows very long, at 14 inches (35.6 cm) the fruit is not seedy at all so it can likely grow much longer while still being tender and sweet. The plant itself is very short probably because it is on the outside edge of the garden, all the ones on the outside edge are stunted.

This Thai Long Purple plant has 7 fruits forming on its branches. You can see the Ma Zu Purple plant at the bottom right of the picture with it's purple stems and veins, it is less than half the size of the Thai Long Purple plant.

The Cambodian Green Giant plant is just starting to set fruit. This variety is supposed to have truly massive eggplants.

The leaves from the Cambodian Green Giant are huge compared to the Bangladeshi Long leaves to the right.

Many of the eggplant plants are just starting to set fruit like this Malaysian Dark Red with its 8 little dangling eggplants.

It looks like a bunny rabbit has eaten another Thai Long Green eggplant. The brown rabbit seems to only like green vegetables like green beans, green tomatoes, and green kohlrabi.

Harvest Monday, 7/22/13

About 20 pounds of tomatoes were picked on Monday, last week. They went directly into the fridge, a deposit towards this week's salsa making extravaganza.

I ran into the garden Friday to gather everything that was getting much too big. Lots of cucumbers, giant zucchini, yellow summer squash, and okra. The okra at the top were too woody and had to be discarded.

I'm a little late for Harvest Monday, a tradition created by Daphne's Dandelions where gardeners share the past week's harvest.

It rained hard all day Sunday and throughout the night which spells big trouble for ripening tomatoes. I work long shifts so was unable to get out into the garden to save the tomatoes, by Monday morning yesterday a lot of the tomatoes were split open and there were even a few slugs sucking on the fruit. There were 36 pounds of salvageable tomatoes, and I went ahead and picked 8 pounds of sweet peppers since some of the plants had been knocked down by the deluge and were liable to get sun scald.

Then I got busy canning salsa, since tomatoes that split open when they are ripe can spoil quickly. I was only able to can two batches yesterday which equals 8 quarts of salsa. Hopefully with my husband's help we can get through 16 more quarts tomorrow.

I have to say this year's salsa is outrageously delicious. The flavors are so complex, bright and sweet with an undercurrent of fruity spicy smokiness, which is probably due to the huge variety of tomatoes and hot and sweet peppers used.

This week's harvest:
20.6 pounds tomatoes
5.76 pounds zucchini
4.52 pounds cucumber
3.14 pounds crook neck summer squash
1.29 pounds okra
0.98 pounds straight neck summer squash

Total: 36.29 pounds of vegetables

Harvest Monday, 7/15/13

Tuesday's harvest: zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers, and okra. Cucumbers are good in stir fry they add an interesting and refreshing flavor, my grandmother stir fries cucumbers with pineapple.

Wednesday's harvest: hot peppers, tomato, zucchini, and eggplants. The tomato is Berkley Tie Dye, it has a good tomato flavor and weighed 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg).

The Ma Zu Purple eggplant measures over 14 inches long, it is very tender with a sweet mild flavor.

Friday's harvest: yellow tomato, bitter melon, pole beans, summer squash, cucumber, eggplant. The first yellow Kellogg's Breakfast tomato has a very mild flavor and good texture, sadly though it was eaten before making the weigh in.

Sunday's harvest: The biggest zucchini yet and more eggplants, summer squash, and cucumber.

12 pound (5.4 kg) mixture of jalapeno, Hungarian Hot Wax, and Santa Fe hot peppers were harvested in preparation for a salsa making extravaganza next week. The peppers went directly into the freezer, hopefully that wasn't a mistake since they are going to be canned in the near future. And the tomatoes seem to be ripening quickly which I will be amassing in the fridge.

The rabbit is definitely still hanging around the garden, I found a Thai Long Green eggplant nibbled on in 5 different places. The rabbit doesn't seem to like eggplant too much since it looks like it was taking tasting nibbles, and no other eggplants have been chomped on. Some of the eggplant plants are chest high already. But they may have been spaced too closely together, I am definitely having trouble reaching the middle row.

This week's harvest:

12.2 pounds peppers

6.20 pounds zucchini

4.45 pounds eggplant

3.98 pounds cucumber

2.57 pounds green beans

2.48 pounds yellow summer squash

1.57 pounds tomato

0.40 pound bitter melon

0.28 pound okra

Total: 34.14 pounds of vegetables (15.5 kg)

Please, join us at Daphne's Dandelions where garden enthusiasts share their harvests successes as well as trials and tribulations.

Picking All the Spicy Hot Peppers from the Garden

From top clockwise: Jalapeno, Hungarian Hot Wax, and Santa Fe peppers

12 pounds of hot peppers had to be harvested on Wednesday (5.4 kg). A few of the plants had fallen over from the weight of their fruit and flowers were aborting before they opened. The ripening fruit needed to be removed so more peppers can set, before the heat really comes on and sterilizes the pollen. The peppers were washed and frozen, in a couple of weeks they will be processed for salsa. I have never frozen peppers before, so hopefully that wasn't a mistake especially since I plan on canning them.

The cream colored Santa Fe peppers and yellow Hungarian Hot Wax are new peppers for me. My usual Anaheim peppers and Serrano failed to germinate this year, so let's hope these peppers are tasty and hold up well in salsa. It seems that Hungarian Hot Wax are normally pickled.

The tomatoes are starting to ripen en masse, it looks like salsa making is on for the end of July!

Harvest Monday, 7/8/13

Tuesday's harvest: green beans, eggplants, zucchini, cucumber, and tomatoes.

Sunday's Harvest: cucumbers, zucchinis, yellow summer squash, bell pepper, and yard long asparagus beans.

This week the first tomatoes, cucumbers, and summer squash were picked. On Saturday, I actually picked a summer squash and 3 more tomatoes that went unphotographed and unweighed, the tomatoes quickly went into a pile of bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwiches just like the first tomatoes that were picked earlier in the week. So good.

I have been trading green beans and other vegetables for country eggs and barbecued chicken. A coworker gave me a couple pounds of blueberries for a very minimal cost, so I was planning to give him some salsa. Lots of good food have been a direct result of the garden.

Hopefully the tomatoes will start ripening in mass quantities because I am planning to take the last week of July off to do some serious salsa canning. The hot pepper plants are laden with fruit, we are just waiting for the tomatoes to color up.

This week's harvest:
5.69 pounds green beans
1.85 pounds eggplants
2.25 pounds zucchini
2.26 pounds cucumbers
0.56 pound yellow summer squash
0.86 pound tomato
0.10 pound bell pepper
0.08 pound yard long bean

Total: 13.65 pounds of vegetables

Please join us at Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday where gardeners share their blogs and what they're harvesting every Monday.

The First Ripe Tomatoes and Cucumber with Lots of Eggplants

A basket with almost 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of produce including green bean, tomato, eggplant, cucumber, and zucchini.

Today we got the first tomatoes and cucumber! I also spent the morning picking clean the bush bean bed.

The Paul Robeson tomato plant gave the first ripe tomatoes, my husband was helping me stake the same plant and 3 little green tomatoes got knocked off. You can see the two oval Applegreen eggplants in the back of the basket, then a Bangladeshi Long and a Thai Long Purple eggplant to the far right.

The first cucumber of the season belongs to the Japanese Long variety. Training the cucumbers up bamboo poles is working very well, I love seeing them dangling in the breeze. A nice long zucchini was also harvested today.

The bush beans got away from me because I was too busy over the weekend to do much except a little hand pollination in the garden, so the snap beans were a bit plump when they got picked today but are still tender and delicious. All the varieties produced exceptionally well, except for Royal Burgundy. The Royal Burgundy plants are tall and lush and were heavy with blossoms but the blossoms did not set very many beans, I was lucky to get 2 or 3 beans per plant.

The rabbit seems to love the Blue Lake 274 beans, I found lots of munched bean remnants today. Both Blue Lake and Royal burgundy are smooth bean varieties, which makes cleaning them a lot easier than the downy beans like Romano and Tendergreen. But I think I prefer the flavor of the downy fuzzy beans compared to the smooth snap beans.

The bush bean bed was pretty much picked clean today, so I am going to fertilize them and see if they will give a second flush of beans after some rest.

Harvest Monday, 7/1/13

 Tuesday harvest: 2.91 pounds Romano green beans

 Tuesday harvest: 2.86 pounds Tendergreen green beans

 Thursday harvest: 0.60 pounds zucchini and 0.05 pounds eggplant

Thursday harvest: 1.72 pounds mix Royal Purple and Blue Lake 274 green beans

Green beans fresh from the garden are one of my favorite things to grow and eat. The bush beans produced their first big flush of green beans this week. Of the 4 rows of bushes, the Romano and Tendergreen rows cropped earlier than the other two bush bean types. The flat Italian Romano beans were delicious and sweet in a stir fry

The zucchini and summer squash have been producing blossoms, but the lack of bees combined with my poor pollination skills means very little squash. I was able to get one oddly bulbous pollinated zucchini and a couple unpollinated ones that I went ahead and picked.

And yes, the single little round Thai eggplant amuses me but there are many more in the garden growing as we speak.

This week's harvest:
7.49 pound green beans
0.60 pound zucchini
0.05 pound eggplant

Please join us at Daphne's Dandelions, a fun place to see what other gardeners are growing and harvesting.

Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplants

Pink Brandywine tomato. Distinctive large beefsteak tomatoes with crimped edges at the top and potato leaved foilage. I couldn't get a closer picture because of the tomato fencing.

These tomatoes are also supposed to be Brandywine but the tomatoes are not beefsteak sized nor are the plants potato leaved. I have 4 tomato plants from two different packets of seed that do not look like Pink Brandywine. Hmmm. We will need a taste comparison to solve this dilemma.

This is the biggest tomato in the garden that I can reach. An Ananas Noire or Black Pineapple tomato, it is unbelievably huge. I've been giving this and Big Zebra a gentle squeeze now and then, they're getting dense and heavy so hopefully will ripen soon.

Sweet bell peppers, ever stocky and robust.

The demure Santa Fe Grande pepper.

 The unassuming Jalapeno pepper.

 And the simpering Hungarian Hot Wax peppers.

 Thai Long Purple eggplant

 Bangladeshi Long eggplant, I thought it was supposed to be green with purple streaks.

 Applegreen eggplant, I'm really not sure when to pick these.

I just wanted to show the giant leaves on the Cambodian eggplants. The leaves are almost 4 times the size of the Bangladeshi Long eggplant leaves beside it.

The Cambodian plant isn't very tall and it is just starting to form flowers. I am very curious how big the eggplants will get on this variety.

The summer harvests are finally underway, I picked 7.5 pounds (3.4 kg) of beans from the bush beans earlier this week. A single zucchini at a little over half a pound, and a tiny round green Thai eggplant. It took hours to pick that much green beans let alone wash them because most are of the fuzzy variety, bush beans may be a bear to harvest but they are so much earlier than pole beans. The beans will go in a steak and green bean stir fry, green bean casserole, and green bean saute. I also traded a couple of pounds of green beans for a couple dozen country eggs. Pictures will be shared come Harvest Monday.

To be honest. I am growing 33 eggplants from 10 varieties, but I don't eat or cook a lot of eggplant. I eat a lot of tomatoes, peppers, okra, beans, cucumbers, squashes, etc. But I mainly grow eggplant because it is a challenge for me to grow. I have a feeling it's going to be a banner year for eggplants, and I am starting to wonder how many ways are there to cook eggplants?

Okra, Pole Beans, and Cucumbers

The okra that are about knee high are just starting to form little okras, and the plants are forming side shoots as well which means more growing tips and even more okra. Most of the other okra plants are shorter than this because of replanting due to low germination.

The Cherokee Trail of Tears pole beans are thick and lush and have completely overtaken their 6 feet tall bamboo stakes (1.8 meters).

Lots of purple flowers and a few tiny beans can be found under the Cherokee Trail of Tears canopy.

The Chinese yard long beans are much further behind in comparison. The two varieties planted are Green Noodle and Mosaic yard long beans. The Mosaic yard longs beans have yet to blossom and are just starting to climb their poles.

The Green Noodle yard long asparagus beans may not be the most vigorous but they are producing beans much earlier than the other two pole bean varieties.

The Japanese Long cucumbers are coming along nicely, the blossoms have been hand pollinated.

Sweeter Yet F1 hybrid cucumbers are just starting to form.

I have only seen 3 bees in the garden this year. Usually there are bees everywhere in early spring visiting clover blossoms and Asian greens that have been allowed to bloom. Although, I have seen little insect pollinators visiting tomato blossoms this year. Bees are just so necessary for the pollination of zucchini, summer squash, winter squash, and okra.

Hand pollinating has been part of my daily regimen, but I am having mixed results. Zucchini and squash blossoms seem to be fertile for only a few hours in the morning, I have managed to get one zucchini and lots of dead baby squashes. Cucumber blossoms seem to be fertile for most of the day, so lots of growing cukes. I pollinate squashes and cucumbers by stripping the petals from the male flowers and dabbing the stamens at the center of the female flower. I use a q-tip on the okra which are perfect flowers containing both male and female parts in one blossom.

There is a Rabbit Living in the Garden

 All the kohlrabi plants have been eaten by the rabbit.

A little wild brown rabbit with a white fluffy tail is living in the garden. She hides under the bush bean patch or Cherokee Trail of Tears pole beans and then runs away whenever I head towards her. There has also been evidence of a nibbling rabbit in the garden. Looks like she is partial to kohlrabi leaves, too bad they were just starting to bulb. The Asian greens are just now getting nibbled, so I have started harvesting them.

With the addition of a nice handful of green beans and a Hungarian Hot Wax pepper an udon noodle soup might be in order for the day. I love a big bowl of spicy noodle soup with lots of vegetables and an egg or two.