July 8, 2013

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.

20 comments:

foodgardenkitchen said...

Yay for tomatoes! Ours are very late this year - in past years, we'd already been picking tomatoes by the end of June. And I'm jealous about the eggplant; it looks like we have underachieving plants again this year...

Phuong said...

This is the best year I have ever had for eggplants. It seems really strange that they are doing so well, I'm kind of shocked by them.

Your garden is doing amazing and it's so picturesque surrounded by woods. I remember getting tomatoes by the end of June as well last year, the weather really has been interesting this year with all the rain.

nutmeg gardener said...

Everything looks lovely! Especially that tomato and eggplant! Still waiting for them here...and my eggplants were severly set back so I don't know what to expect.

4theluvofgardening said...

I live in Pennsylvania zone 6b and all my tomatoes are still green. Beautiful harvest!

gardenvariety-hoosier said...

Beautiful eggplant. Mine just set flowers a few days ago.

Barbie~ said...

Lovely baskets. Nice harvest!

Shawn Ann said...

Oooh, tomatoes! I am impatiently awaiting mine. Everything looks great! How nice to have people to trade with!

David Velten said...

Ia that a Ping Tung eggplant? I'm trying them this year after informally observing that oriental style eggplants seemed to have less flea beetle damage than other types. The rest of your harvest is also beautiful.

Stoney Acres said...

Great looking harvest! You have to love it when you can trade veggies for other goodies!!

Phuong said...

You have such a lovely array of spring vegetables! Spring gardens are really iffy here because it warms up so quickly, almost everyone I know only plants summer vegetables.

Eggplants can be so difficult to grow! If the flea beetles don't stunt them in their youth, then wildly variable weather makes them sulk. I used diatomaceous earth on the seedlings this year which seemed to really help with flea beetles, and keeping them covered the first few weeks with floating row covers seemed to help with the wildly fluctuating early spring weather.

Dave @ HappyAcres said...

Hopefully by the end of July we'll both have lots of tomatoes for salasa and sauces!

Michelle said...

Wow, it really is summer on your garden. It all looks great. My first ripe tomato and first eggplant are still a long way off.

Phuong said...

Thank you! I'm so excited to be finally getting harvests out of the garden. Your spring crops are doing incredible, it's amazing seeing all the variety of your carrots, beets and summer squash!

Tomatoes seem to take forever to color up while they ripen from the inside out. The first thing I do in the garden is walk around trying to see if the tomatoes have any color.

Phuong said...

Your garden is looking great! It won't be long till you have eggplants!

I am really hoping to get lots of eggplant to experiment with, there are so many recipes out there like Greek moussaka, eggplant parmesan, and lots of marinades for grilled eggplant.

Phuong said...

My Ping Tung plants just have little baby eggplants at this point, but they are growing quickly. The eggplants in the basket are Applegreen, Bangladeshi Long, and Thai Long Purple. You're right the flea beetles seem to go after the Asian eggplants less, but I've noticed the Japanese beetles are munching on them a little. There are lots of lady bugs in the garden this year, which makes me wonder if they're helping out on the garden pest front.

Phuong said...

Thank you! The garden is finally paying off with lots of food. Yay!

Phuong said...

You already have winter squash forming, so amazing! Look at all the variety of vegetables you are growing!

Being able to do lots of trading is wonderful, especially since I tend to grow large amounts of certain vegetables. It's a nice way of getting a variety of foodstuffs while still only growing my favorite things.

Phuong said...

Your garden has grown so much in such a short amount of time! Looks like your melons and tomatoes are really loving the heat.

I really do enjoy trading!

Phuong said...

I am very excited about getting a little processing done! It does look like the tomatoes are starting to get some color, so canning is on for the end of the month! Does it look like your tomatoes are moving in that direction for you?

I did end up freezing all the hot peppers that were picked from the garden in preparation for canning. Hopefully freezing them wasn't a mistake.

Phuong said...

It's a trade off we get early hot summers but a very short spring, so spring type vegetables get planted in the fall if they get planted at all.

Your garden looks fantastic! It's amazing the variety of spring and summer vegetables you are able to grow at the same time.