July 15, 2013

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.

27 comments:

Annie*s Granny said...

Oh, my....so many hot peppers! I have three plants of them, and have to give most of them away to my son! I'll probably manage to kill my plants before I need the hot peppers for salsa, LOL!

Anonymous said...

That's an impressive amount of peppers! And that eggplant is something to behold. Nice harvests!

David Velten said...

I like your assortment of eggplants. There are so many varieties to try. Wish I could grow them, but lately the weather and bugs say no.

Julie said...

Nice peppers! I've never had cucumbers in stir fry, I'll have to try them out.

nutmeg gardener said...

Everything looks so good! Especially that beautiful eggplant. Chest high eggplants? To me that is unimaginable!

Michelle said...

Love that Ma Zu Purple eggplant. Whoa! Chest High eggplants? Either your plants are really really happy or you are really short, I suspect the eggplants are happy. :)

gardenvariety-hoosier said...

Lots of beautiful hot peppers, should make some great sauce. I live in Southern Indiana and my eggplants are looking very healthy this year, although I am still waiting on the first one. You must have had plenty of rain in Kentucky.

Unknown said...

What a beautiful Harvest. I miss Kentucky. We just recently moved to Hawaii from Fort Campbell and I'm having to re-learn everything it seems. That and I have to use containers here on the base we are stationed at. This is only my third year gardening so I was still learning when we moved. It is a fun adventure though.

Stoney Acres said...

Wow, 34 pounds is a great week! You had a beautiful harvest with a lot of variety. Everything looks great!

4theluvofgardening said...

When did you plant your tomato plants? I live in zone 6b and all my larger tomatoes are still green. Your harvests look amazing!

Shawn Ann said...

Wow! Very impressive harvest! Lots of peppers already! Mine are a bit slow going for now. A few have been nibbled by critters and some were casualties of a storm. Great harvest!

Phuong said...

I'm so excited! My husband just picked 20 pounds of tomatoes on Monday and there's more in the garden ripening up, salsa here we come!

Your peppers are doing fantastic! Your bell peppers produce a huge amount and the plants are so tall and healthy!

Phuong said...

Thanks! It's just one of those years where the timing was right, and the weather cooperated. The eggplants are actually taller than the okra. Which has never happened, so strange!

Annie*s Granny said...

Wonderful! I got my first really good tasting full sized tomato yesterday, so I hope more aren't far behind. The plants out in the garden are really loaded down, but the ones up by the house/patio aren't looking so healthy :-(

Phuong said...

You got so much rain this spring and yet you've been able to harvest gorgeous spring crops!

The year we had the floods, the only thing that grew well were the lettuces, radishes, and bugs.

Sarah Shoesmith said...

I felt hungry just looking at this post - small wonder the yellow tomato didn't make it to the weigh-in. WIth your green fingers, there are bound to be more ripening soon. Well done on such a successful harvest!

Anonymous said...

What an impressive harvest! That's a lot of peppers for the week :)

Phuong said...

I think cucumbers are really good cooked. Sometimes I stuff cucumbers and zucchinis with sauteed mushrooms, eggplant, and ground pork with nuoc mam which are then baked, but I get the feeling the husband isn't into stuffed vegetables.

You are getting some lovely summer vegetables! Our soil is clay as well, we've been heavily amending it for years and it is just starting to feel like normal soil.

Phuong said...

Your berries looks so good! I've never eaten gooseberries before but have seen them growing wild beside rivers out west. I wonder if they are tart like huckleberries. Your gooseberry torte with shortbread crust looks scrumptious!

The eggplants are really shocking this year, and they're branching like crazy too. So fun!

Phuong said...

I can't believe you've been getting zucchini since May, so amazing!

I am definitely on the shorter side, but eggplants normally just get around 2 feet tall for me.

Phuong said...

Your onion harvest is just stupendous! Look at all your gorgeous bulbs!

We've had the perfect amount of rain this year, one or two days of rain on almost a weekly basis. I also managed to get the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants in the ground about a month ahead of my neighbors, there was just one week in April when the ground dried up enough to do all the amending and tilling.

Phuong said...

Wow, moving to Hawaii is such a huge change! It makes me think about all those mangos, pineapple, and chocolate covered macadamias, yum. Gardening is so different from region to region, so many people garden in this area it's really great to have people to talk garden problems with.

Phuong said...

Thank you! It's been really nice cooking with all the summer vegetables, which we just started harvesting the last few weeks.

You are already planting your fall/winter crops, your garden is coming along so quickly!

Phuong said...

You've been getting some great harvests from your garden, lots of spring and summer vegetables!

My tomatoes were planted April 27-28. Most tomato varieties are described as 80 days to harvest from planting outside, which seems pretty accurate for me.

Phuong said...

The big basket of peppers was a wonderful surprise! I wonder what is eating your peppers. The rabbit in my garden has been eating tomatoes lately but it stays away from the peppers. It's so sad when plants get eaten or destroyed by weather, were your pepper plants knocked down by heavy rain?

You've been getting tons from your garden, the raspberry pie sounds amazing!

Phuong said...

Thank you! This year has been such a great year, which makes me happy because last year was so terrible due to the horrible dry drought.

Phuong said...

It will be a long time before there's another hot peppers harvest like this one, probably close to fall.

Your garden harvests are amazing! Although I would be very upset as well, if a squirrel got the first tomato. Hopefully you have will have many tomatoes to come!