Picture taken Monday, September 17, 2018.
What?!
Picture taken Monday, September 17, 2018.
Category: Vegetables
Picture taken Monday, September 17, 2018.
No More Cucumbers
Today’s harvest: Swiss Chard, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, tomato, eggplant, dahlias.
The cucumber vine has started to wither. There is a couple more cucumbers still but I am not sure if they will make it. Well, we had a good run for sure. Still growing: tomatoes (winding down), pole beans, eggplant, chard, kale, carrots, leeks, hot peppers, greens, radish, arugula. The last three were just sown a couple of weeks ago, so they are not ready for harvest just yet. I also still have my directly sowed butternut squash. It looks great and has plenty of flowers, but I believe it is too late in the season for it to bear fruit. Alas.
I ordered seed garlic this past weekend: softneck Transsylvania from Burpee. I decided to save a few of my biggest Red Russian heads for planting. This will not happen until late October/early November. I also ordered a ton of bulbs and perennials for fall planting for our front yard (tulips, crocuses, black-eyed Susan).
Basil
I harvested a lot of basil today, about a third of what is in my plot. I will puree the washed and dried leaves with olive oil and freeze for use in the winter. I find that just freezing the basil in oil makes it more versatile for cooking and it keeps better. I use it to top soups or as pesto for pasta, pizza, potatoes or chicken. I just add the cheese and pine nuts (for pasta) later during cooking.
Today’s produce harvested other than basil. (My first red dahlia is finally blooming!)
Rainbow Harvest
Today is Labor Day and the temperatures are in the 90s. The tomatoes and cucumbers are winding down. There is still a steady production of pole beans and chard, and the eggplant has a handful of fruit. The arugula and radishes I sowed are coming in nicely. The golden beets and mache are a no-show. I never got mache to grow in my plot. Not sure what the problem is. I successfully have grown mache in the spring in trays on my back porch. Also, no fall greens and lettuce yet, which is strange. I might re-sow in the next few days.
Lunch
Baguette with slow-roasted tomatoes/garlic/herbs, sheep feta, parsley plus freshly picked cucumber. All the veggies and herbs on this plate are home-grown.
Garden Beauty
Today’s harvest.
Monster Cuke
I harvested this monstrous cucumber today. It must have hidden under all the foliage and escaped my view. It weighed in at almost 2 lb. I also harvested tomatoes (3 lb.), a handful of pole beans, Chard and basil. The cucumber total for today was 3 lb. 8 oz. I will quick-pickle the big one. I have found this to be a good way to use cucumbers that have become to big to eat raw.
I also did some fall planting today and sowed golden beets (hoping I am not too late), fall greens (a mix), lettuce, arugula, mache and radishes.
Potatoes
This morning, I spent a couple of hours in the garden cleaning, weeding and harvesting potatoes. This year’s yield was pretty meager and I noticed a good amount of soft and rotten potatoes in the ground. We had a lot of rain in the past couple of weeks and I probably should have harvested them earlier. I am not sure I got all of them, in particular the purples ones, who looked just like clumps of dirt and were hard to spot in the soil.
Overall, I harvested 3 lb. 12 oz. of Banana fingerlings and 1 lb. 8 oz. purple Magic Molly. I had planted two rows of six plants of fingerlings and six plants of Magic Molly. Of the fingerlings, only seven plants total grew and only four of the purple ones. I laid the harvested potatoes to dry for a couple of days and will then gently rub of the dirt and store them for a few days until the time is right for a nice dinner of roasted potatoes.
Overall, I harvested 3 lb. 12 oz. of Banana fingerlings and 1 lb. 8 oz. purple Magic Molly. I had planted two rows of six plants of fingerlings and six plants of Magic Molly. Of the fingerlings, only seven plants total grew and only four of the purple ones. I laid the harvested potatoes to dry for a couple of days and will then gently rub of the dirt and store them for a few days until the time is right for a nice dinner of roasted potatoes.
I also harvested more cucumbers and more tomatoes and my first Kentucky Wonder pole beans. My eggplant is finally bearing fruit. I am very excited!
My plot this morning. A lot of bare space where I harvested the potatoes (left side) and took out the bush beans (right side in front of the pole beans). Time for fall planting!
Volunteering
I signed up to be one of the harvest volunteers at City Natives in Mattapan and today was my first day. We harvested (and weighed and recorded) tomatoes (8 pounds), eggplants, bell peppers, hot peppers, turnips, cabbages (Savoy and Oxheart), kale (Rainbow Lacinato and Red Russian) and 26 (!) pounds of callaloo. All of the produce will be donated to a nearby food pantry. I will be helping out once a week during the months of August and September.
Ping Tung eggplant 
Mixed peppers: Bell peppers, Anaheims, Banana peppers, Islanders, Little lemons, Serrano.
My share 🙂 (The tomatoes are from my garden).
EDIT: A few days later, I made this recipe. Yum!!! Served with rice, green beans with chili sauce and ginger chicken.
Four Days
Four days out of town:
Cucumbers, Swiss Chard and tomatoes.
Cucumbers, Swiss Chard and tomatoes.
I had harvested really thoroughly the night before I left and took four cucumbers up to Maine where they went into a salad.
The cucumber is producing fruit like crazy. Those six cucumbers weigh in at 4 pounds. When I came to harvest this morning, the cucumber cage was toppled over and I had to stake it to fortify. Same happened to my Brandywine cage. Looking forward to the next few weeks of fresh garden produce.
The potatoes are getting ready to be harvested, and the pole beans (that I planted late) are flowering. The bush beans are close to being done, the cucumber is still producing heavily and my three tomato plants are heavy with (for the most part still green) tomatoes. The leeks are looking great and the kale is coming up. The golden beets I sowed sadly did not germinate as did the last carrot crop.
The pinkish-white dahlias are the only ones flowering so far – I have two of those. The two red ones are taking their time.
I need to weed and clean the plot and will sow fall greens in the next couple of weeks.