Harvest Monday August 16th 2010

Tomatoes, tomatoes and more tomatoes! We also harvested the beautiful orange wax pepper in my last post, as well as the first green bell pepper! I had to pull up a few of the potato plant due to crowding/space issues! All in all a productive week!

This Week's Harvest Totals:

11.790 lbs Tomatoes

2.5 oz Cranberry Beans

4.25 oz Bell Pepper

1.24 oz Wax Pepper

14.25 oz Potato

12 oz Basil

.03 oz Mint

Weekly Total: 13.932 lbs/6.319 kg

Seasonal Total: 30.13 lbs/13.667 kg

Harvest Totals have been updated.

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Some Color from the Garden - Shades of Red edition

A short trip to the plot today showed that shades of red are really standing out these days!

The sunflowers are exploding with color. This one in particular caught my eye:

I've been leaving a few Hungarian Wax peppers on the plant to ripen in the hopes that I can get a few red ones for seed. This one is the first to turn orange. In the back right of the photo another wax pepper from the same plant is still in the greenish-yellow stage:
I picked these Cherry Tomatoes this afternoon. They are black cherry, have a slightly sweet taste and are a wonderful dark almost purple color:
One pod of the Ottawa Cranberry Beans produced beans that were more red then the usual mix of cream and red the beans usually end up:
The Cranberry Bean jar (note the new jar) is filling up more and more each day:

Harvest Monday August 9th 2010

A great week weather wise! The tomatoes are coming in full force. Here is a nice picture of some of sundays harvest:

The beautiful bouquet of sunflowers was part of the harvest. We also finally got a few Scarlet Nantes carrots that had reached a good size! The hungarian pepper was just starting to turn from yellow to a more orange, it was picked to add a little zing to a homemade pasta sauce.

Last week we had eeked out 4 cranberry beans, but this week they really came strong! Each trip to the garden resulted in more beans being harvested:

Harvest totals for this week:

3.77 lbs Tomatoes

8 oz Basil

5.45 oz Cranberry Beans

2 oz Carrots

1.10 oz Wax Pepper

Weekly Total: 4.80 lbs/2.177 kg

Seasonal Total: 16.198 lbs/7.347 kg

Harvest Totals have been updated.

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

What's growing for the fall?

As planting spaces open up throughout the plot we are slowly transitioning/planting fall crops. Here's what we have in the ground as of Sunday:
Kale - We were gifted 5 seedlings from fellow community gardener Marie (who provided our leeks at the start of the season). 4 of the 5 are doing really well!
Bush Beans - We planted a row of organic Fresh Pick bush beans. These are a Jade type green bean.
Butterhead lettuce - The Romaine was incredibly successful at the start of the season. Hopefully the Red Cross butterhead we planted will produce as well. Red Cross produces a mix of crimson and green heads.
Mesclun/Baby Greens - A mixed bed of Johnny's Selected Seeds Elegance Greens Mix, additional Ruby Streaks mustard greens, and Surrey (Arugula/Rocket with a 'wild arugula' look)
Onions- Egyptian/Walking Onions of course!
Beets - more Detroit Dark Red Beets! They were slow to mature and undersized in the spring because we planted late, hopefully this crop will yield larger end results.
Radish- A few interspersed plantings of Champion Radish
Spinach- A 2nd attempt at Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach. Our spring/early planting suffered from our lack of experience and weed identification skills. Trying again in the hopes of better results.

As more space opens up I'll fill it with more greens/fall type crops.
What's to come in your fall garden?

Harvest Monday - August 2nd 2010

This week was an explosive week in the harvesting department! The first full sized tomatoes were picked on Wednesday. 2 Early Girl and 3 Striped Roman tomatoes:

We headed to the garden to do some major weeding and prep work for the fall on Saturday. When we got there we had discovered one of the striped roman tomatoes was collapsing out of it's cage under the weight of all the tomatoes that were on it! For the sake of the rest of the tomato plants we pulled the plant and took home all of the green tomatoes. We also grabbed a few cranberry red potatoes, some baby onions, 3 more ripe tomatoes, and a hungarian wax pepper:

We ended up picking 2 more ripe tomatoes, and some small bunches of Basil, Chives, and Sage yesterday which didn't make it into a photo.

Harvest Totals this week:

1.55 oz Cherry Tomatoes (including the first cherry tomatoes from 7/22)

2.84 lbs Tomatoes

3.44 lbs Green Tomatoes

4.25 oz Potato

1.05 oz Onion

.50 oz Hungarian Pepper

.55 oz Sage

.65 oz Basil

.45 oz Chives

Weekly Total: 6.75 lbs/3.06 kg

Seasonal Total: 11.394 lbs/5.168 kg

Harvest Totals have been updated.

Now that full sized tomatoes have certainly been harvested, the tomato watch is over. I'll note the first harvests and keep track for next year!

Another First harvest this week:

2 undersized Cranberry Bean pods had already dried out, yielding 4 Ottawa Cranberry Beans. The beans came from Daphne by way of Ottawa Gardener.

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Walking Onions

No time to post lately as work and non-gardening life have gotten in the way this past week, but I did receive a lovely gift today:

Gail took a day trip to Maine today to visit some family. While there she stopped by Beach Plum Farm in Ogunquit, ME and visited the community gardens on the grounds. She ended up chatting with 2 gardeners who gave her a few bunches of Egyptian Onions, the biggest one is in the above photo.

Egyptian Onions, known as Walking Onions or Tree Onions are perennial onions which are hardy to zone 3. When a bulb is planted and grows new bulbs form on the step of the plant. Eventually the cluster of bulbs (pictured above) gets so top heavy that it bends the plant and touches the ground, taking root and growing into a new set of onions.

As they are left to grow they will spread or walk across your garden. You can pull each set of clusters off and divide the bulbs in order to plant them. The stalks of the plants can also be cut before the onion clusters form and used similar to chives.

Planting a cluster or 2 should yield enough for stalks, bulbs and to save some for planting next year. Like traditional onions bulbs also will form below the ground. If planted in the fall they can be dug up as spring onions.

I'll be prepping and planting fall seeds this weekend and will most certainly be planting some Egyptian/Walking Onions, so stay tuned for future Walking Onion updates!

Below is the full hall of the 3ish clusters of Walking Onions I was gifted:

(Walking Onions: Some for Eating, Some for Planting, Some for...?)

First Tomatoes!

Gail and I picked our first tomatoes today!

A pair of black cherry tomatoes. I could have left them on the vine another day or two but the urge to pick them was just too tempting. Their flavor was sweet yet rich, as expected from a 'black' tomato.

They just might be the only harvest this week, but I'm pleased!

Harvest Monday July 19th 2010

We harvested ALOT of Herbs this week:

What's that in the bottom right corner of the above photo? PEPPERS! Here's a better look at the first 2 Hungarian Wax Peppers we harvested yesterday: Each pepper measured about 6 inches long. We roasted them up last night and enjoyed them with our dinner of beans and rice. The peppers were not burning hot but left a slight tingle on the tongue. I'll be letting a few of the remaining peppers mature as long as possibly and picking the rest as they reach appropriate size.
Another pepper note: These Hungarian peppers far outpreformed our bell peppers! We don't have any bell peppers of noticeable size and there are at least 4 sizeable wax peppers with 2 or 3 smaller ones closing up the ranks.
Harvest Totals:
2 oz Beets (not pictured)
10.5 oz Genovese Basil
1.1 oz Chives
1.25 oz Dill
1.5 oz Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper
3 oz Parsley
3.9 oz Red Rubin Basil
3.55 oz Spearmint
Weekly Total: 1.675 lbs/26.8 oz/759.77 g
Season Total: 4.55 lbs/2.065 kg

Tomato Watch: As of 7/18/10: 140 Tomatoes have set fruit.

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Thinking about fall...

Yea, I know it's mid summer and we here in eastern Massachusetts are on the doorstep of another lovely heat wave, but I've started to think about what to plant for the fall.

Truth is I really have no idea.
I'd like to plant some garlic in the fall, and I have some kale from a fellow gardener, but I've got to really think about what to plant soon that will be ready during the fall.
I've come up with: Radish, Carrots, Beets, various lettuces, but besides that i'm not sure.

Any ideas?

Dill Pickles & Beet Relish

With an abundance of pickling cucumbers and beets showing up at our local farms/markets Gail and I decided to take advantage. On Saturday afternoon we made 8 quarts of Dill pickles and 2.5 pints of Beet relish.

For the sake of variety we made 3 quarts of whole pickles, 3 quarts of pickle spears, and 2 quarts of pickle 'chips'
Dill Pickles
8 pounds 3-4 in long pickling cucumbers
4 cups white vinegar
12 cups water
2/3 cup pickling salt
16 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
8 sprigs fresh dill
8 heads fresh dill
Preparation:
1. Wash cucumbers and place in receptacle with cold water and lots of ice. Soak in ice water bath for at least 2 hours but no more then 8 hours. Add more ice as necessary. While soaking cucumbers sterilize 8 quart size canning jars and lids.
2. In a large pot over medium-high heat, combine the vinegar, water, and pickling salt. Bring the bring to a rapid boil.
3. In each jar, place 2 half cloves of garlic, one head of dill, and enough cucumbers to fill the jar. Then add 2 more half cloves of garlic and a sprig of dill to the top of each jar. Fill the jars with hot brine and seal the jars.
4. I found many conflicting ways to process the sealed jars in a hot water bath to make sure the seal. I processed them upside down in a sauce pan so that only the lids were covered with boiling water for 10 minutes. 6 of 8 jars sealed this way.
5. If jars have sealed store pickles for 8 weeks in a cool dry place before eating. Refrigerate after opening. Any jars that have not sealed can be kept in the refrigerator. Pickles will keep for up to 2 years if stored in a cool dry place.
We added mustard seed and/or red pepper flakes to some of the jars. We used Dill from our garden, while the cucumbers came from Keown Orchards and the garlic is from Red Fire Farm both by way of our local farmers market.
The real difficulty is having to wait 8 weeks to eat them! We decided we couldn't wait so last night we opened one of the jars of spears just to give them a taste. After a few days the pickles were crisp and tasted good, but certainly needed more time.



Some of the extra Beet relish was eaten the next day in a sandwich.
Beet Relish
3 lbs raw beets
1 tsp superfine sugar
1 lb shallots, finely chopped
2 cups cider or white wine vinegar (I used cider vinegar)
1 tbsp pickling spices, place in a cheesecloth or spice bag
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
Preparation:
1. Place the beets in a large saucepan. Pour over enough water to cover them, and add the superfine sugar (I used plain granulated sugar as it would be dissolving so to me it doesn't matter). Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour or until the beets are soft and cooked. Drain and leave to cool. When cool enough to handle peel and dice the beets into small, even pieces.
2. Put the shallots and vinegar in a pan and cook for 10 minutes over low heat. Add the chopped beets and the bag of pickling spices. Stir the mixture, add the granulated sugar, and cook gently until the sugar has all dissolved. Bring to a boil and cook at a rolling boil for 5 minutes, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 40 minutes or until the mixture thickens.
3. Remove the spice bag, then ladle into sterilized mason jars, leaving 1/4in (5 mm) head space and making sure there are no air gaps. Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Remove jars and let cool. Store in a cool, dark place. Allow the flavors to mature for 1 month and refrigerate after opening.
Relish should keep for up to 9 months.
We were expecting 4 jars of relish but ended up with 5 so we decided to set 4 aside to mature for a month as the recipe calls for and enjoy one right away. Gail enjoyed some on a veggie burger and I've had it with chicken salad in a sandwich. We used 5 of our own golf ball sized beets, the rest of the beets as well as all the shallots came from Allandale Farm.


Pickle recipe can be found at AllRecipes.com & the Beet Relish recipe is from Preserve It! which is a very visual excellent introductory cookbook to food preservation full of great tips and recipes for novice canners and preservers covering everything from fruits and vegetables to herbs, fish, and meats.