Harvest Monday

For this weeks harvest monday I have a bunch of roots crops and some other warm season crops. We are starting to have much cooler weather now compared to last week, definitely more fall like.

I dug the last of the potatoes, there was about this many already harvested this season. Not a lot but potatoes never seem to produce much in my garden. To much summer heat I think. In the mix are Alaska Sweetheart (red skin, pink flesh), Purple Viking (purple skin, white flesh) and Pacific Russet.

I also dug all the spring planted carrots. The parsnips were completely covering them so they had to be pulled. Next season I need to grow the carrots elsewhere, parsnips just grow way to big. In the mix here are Amarillo (yellow), Purple Dragon (reddish) and Scarlet Nantes (orange).

Here we have a bunch of tomatoes, they are just about finished up now. There also are a few Double Yield cucumbers. I think I am going to try an all female cucumber next year. This variety is just not producing much, probably a pollination issue. Also in the mix are a few Purple Sprouting broccoli florets.

I'll ends things off with the last of the dry pole beans. It is a mix of Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco & True Red Cranberry beans. There also are a few Purple Podded pole beans that I am letting dry. Once shelled they filled two dinner plates.

Harvest Monday

A small Harvest Monday today, just a basket of tomatoes and a big plate of dry beans. Looks like some cucumbers and snap beans will be ready early in the week though. There are a few Anaheim chilies just about ready as well, maybe I'll makes some green chili sauce this week.

Here are the dry beans shelled. This is the largest harvest of them so far this season. I have been getting a shallow bowl but this week I have a large dinner plate of them. Next week there should be about the same amount. The red ones are True Red Cranberry grown from seed shared by Kath. The other ones are Boriotto grown from seed shared by Gary. Both are pole beans and are alot more produce then the dry bush beans.

Fall Crops Part II

Today was a blustery cold day, the kind of day that makes you realize fall is not far off. It was motivation enough to do the second fall planting this year. Today's planting should have been done around Aug 15th. I think I should still harvest something from my planting though so all is not lost. The coldframe was planted this evening with Tatsoi, Red Pac Choi & Claytonia (seed shared by Thomas). Tomorrow I am hoping to get the cedar polytunnel planted up. With that done everything will be planted for the fall & winter garden.

With September upon use it is now time to start picking apples. This past long weekend we visited Orchard Home Farm which has turned into an annual visit for use. It is still early in the season so only a few varieties were ready. We picked 23lbs of Mcintosh apples, half will be eaten fresh and the other half I will make apple sauce with. Bartlet pears were also ready so 16lbs of them were picked. The pears I will use to make spiced pear jam & canned pears.

The farm also had a huge earthen mounted that pumpkins were growing over. It was just packed with pumpkins. I wish my butternut squash were as far along as these pumpkins. The skins are still green on them!

Harvest Monday

Dug these up for Sundays dinner, some spuds & parsnips. This weekend was really cold, like 18c(64f) so I made stew. Strange weather, last week was over 30c (90f) and really cold right after.

Here is what else came in Sunday. The Purple Sprouting Broccoli made its first appearance. I am hoping for lots more from them during the cooler months. The storms this weekend snapped off a few peppers so they came in a little early. The cucumbers are still coming in nicely too, they took for ever to start producing this year. For tomatoes this week we have, Kellogg's Breakfast, Giant Belgium, Pink Berkley Tye Dye, Green Zebra, Monomakh's Hat & Velvet Red.

Here is yet another weeks worth of dry beans. The dry beans are coming near the end though. All the bush varieties are done now and the Trail of Tears (black ones) are pretty much done too. The True Red Cranberry & Boriotto above still have many pods that have yet to mature.

I harvested another variety of hops this weekend as well, this one is Nugget. It is used to bitter beer were as the variety I harvested a few weeks back is used to give the beer aroma/flavor. There also is a Goldings variety growing but it only produced a couple hops. Hopefully next year it will put on a better crop. If you would like to see some of my beer brewing check out my other blog: Daniel's Home Brew