The Last Big Harvest of the Year

I meant to write this post earlier in the week. Unfortunately, I'm still recuperating from some surgery I had performed on Monday and haven't had the will or strength to do so. Before the snow storm hit, I spent a day cleaning up the garden and harvesting a ton of veggies. These will keep well in the fridge as the garden becomes a less hospitable place to store food.

I would consider this to be the last great harvest of the year. I still have some odd and ends left out there but for the most part, this accounts for the bulk of this year's fall garden. When it comes to growing fall beets, I still have a lot to learn. They took much longer to grow then my spring-sown beets and produced only small roots that were a bit gnarled. Still, they'll be good peeled and steamed.


The mice were beginning to show interest in the carrot bed so I went ahead and pulled every single last one. Last fall, I lost my entire fall crop to them. This time around, I was feeling less than charitable so up they all went. Most of them could have spent more time in the garden but young carrots are better than no carrots.


I also picked enough celery to last us all winter. These were HUGE. We don't eat celery raw so what won't be cooked within the next couple of weeks will be chopped and frozen for later use.


A bowl of Chinese broccoli, wild arugula and Winter Density lettuce. Out of all of the lettuces I planted this fall, Winter Density is the only variety that hasn't turned bitter from the cold.


More leeks - the bulk of these will be chopped and frozen as well.


Tatsoi, broccoli shoots and Yukon Gold potatoes. The potatoes were from my two buckets. Unfortunately, they were riddled with holes and had to be tossed.


Finally, I waited as long as I could to harvest my lemon grass. I grew these from five cuttings I'd purchased and rooted from the Asian market last spring. These turned out much better than I had anticipated and will store will in the freezer. I use lemongrass to flavor grilled meats, soups and curries.

Today's Tidbit - Thai Basil

Thai Basil has to be one of my favorite Asian herbs second only to cilantro. I try to use it as much as I can in my cooking. It has a has a fairly pungent licorice flavor that hold up well when cooked. I use it in stir-fries, soups, cold noodle dishes and salads.


Thai basil grows well under the same conditions as sweet basil, though I find it a bit less temperamental than the latter. I pinch back the flower buds when they appear to keep the plants nice and bushy.

End of July Harvest

I can't believe that July has come to close, which means that we only have one full month of reliable warm weather left this year. I'm really hoping for a hot August as most of our slicing and paste tomatoes are still green on the vine. We're down to about five jars of tomato sauce from last year and it would be a shame if we weren't able to preserve as much this time around. Then again, I did cut down the amount of tomato plants this year to 20. We'll see if that was a wise decision.

In no particular order, here are a few things we harvested this week:


We picked and ate our first ears of Argent corn today. Out of all of the veggies we grow, I think we look forward to the first corn harvest the most. It tasted just as I'd remembered from last year. Unlike the bland, tough and overly sugary corn you find at the market these days, Argent has an old-fashioned sweetness and a very tender kernel that explodes in your mouth. I plan on growing this variety year after year.


Another good week for artichokes, I also picked a ton of basil to make pesto.


The string beans have peaked this week. It took me quite a long time to pick them all. The bulk of this will be blanched and then frozen for future use. I've never eaten frozen string beans before. Hopefully they retain at least some of their crispness.


Aside from the usual suspects, I picked our first long beans. I have a feeling they will continue to produce for us long after our bush beans have given up.


I'm still waiting for the BIG one. Hopefully it'll come soon.


I keep forgetting that I have scallions in the garden. These grew well while the red onion sets I planted this spring were a complete bust.


I'm very happy with my savoy cabbages. They took much longer to head up than I'd expected but are of a good size now.

Finally, I pulled all of my Paris Market carrots. I love the round shape of these carrots and have a feeling they'll be very tasty roasted.

Summer's Bounty - Picks of the Week

We hand another bountiful harvest this week. The Hungarian Wax peppers are producing abundantly at the moment. I'll have to set aside a night this week to pickle and can them.


Tomato season has officially begun. (Hurray!) The near triple digit temperatures of the past few days have really helped to produce our first vine-ripened beauties. Not surprisingly, our first ripe slicing tomatoes of the year were Cherokee Purple and Amish Paste.


Our cucumber harvest was a bit out of control this week. The Tasty Jades are producing like mad. We picked at least two dozen - much more than we can consume as a family. What we didn't give away, I'll have to pickle this week.


We also picked about a dozen zucchinis this week as well.


I love Napoli carrots. They are the perfect size for kids to munch on and are reliably sweet.


The first wild blackberries were very sweet this year. I picked a small bowl-full today and Jonathan gobbled them all up before they made it into the house.


It's nice being able to pick more than one or two artichokes at a time. Our plants are producing well this year.


The chipmunks left me these two tiny ripe Seascape strawberries to pick. It's my own fault really. I still haven't covered the bed with bird netting yet.


The string beans are beginning to roll in as well. I can't wait to cook these up.


A bouquet of cilantro, (pathetic) red onions and beets. I think it would be fun to open a store that sold organic vegetable bouquets and arrangements instead of flowers. I'm surprised no one has done it yet.

The Mid-July Garden

I love the garden this time of year. The beds have filled up nicely; everything is looking lush and green yet still manageable. It will be another month or so before the tomato vines become overgrown and our early planted cucumbers succumb slowly to disease. Now is the time to stand back and appreciate the beauty of the garden.

On the other hand, it's also the time to clear out most of our spring planted veggies to make way for fall crops in the coming weeks. The pea plants have been pulled and the garlic will be harvested soon. This may sound strange but already I can feel the days getting shorter, which is why I definitely consider July to be a transitional month in the growing calendar.

In any case, here are some random pics of what's going on:


As I mentioned, the cleanup has begun. This past weekend, I weeded the entire garden (which took forever I might add) and built another raised carrot bed (lower left). We started harvesting some of our spring-sown carrots this week and all but one were perfect. Last summer the majority of our carrots were either forked or stubby. What a difference a few extra inches of fine topsoil makes.


The perfectly ripe wild strawberry - I popped this one in my mouth seconds after I took the picture.


Most of the Fava beans have now been harvested but I did leave a few plants untouched, setting them aside for seed saving. While I've marked these plants with string, I'm still fighting the urge to pick the pods.

My blogging buddy Mac gave me this English lavender plant last year. It has since grown into a fine specimen.

The other day I was about to harvest the lavender to dry but then noticed quite a few honey bees at work on it. I ultimately decided against it as I figured they needed the flowers more than I did.


The back garden is like a forest these days. Pretty soon it will become a great challenge to navigate.


Since taking this picture, the tomato vines have reach the top of their trellis, which stands close to 8 feet tall. I'm really loving this trellising method. The strings easily twist around the vines and the vines themselves feel well supported.


In addition to the weeding, I also got around to trimming off the bottom few rows of tomato leaves. Hopefully this will mitigate the spread of any blight.

I picked this artichoke earlier this week. Already the plant is producing two more.


I'm really impressed by how well the Hungarian Wax peppers are producing. The Poblanos on the other hand are still doing nothing.

Lastly, I've been hand-pollinating the corn. Hopefully this will work out for me as well as it did last year.

Pick of the Week

Greatings from Washington, DC. I'm just here for 24 hours but already I can't wait to fly home and eat some of the veggies I picked this past weekend. I ended up harvesting both heads of cauliflower.


They're each about the size of a large grapefruit - perfect as a sidedish for two. The big difference between growing cauliflower and broccoli is that with cauliflower, once you cut off the head, that's it. There's nothing left to do but pull up the plant. Our broccoli on the other hand is still producing sideshoots. I wonder how far into the summer this will last. I feel like everytime I cut them off, the plants get weaker and weaker.


My cilantro bolted prematurely a couple of weeks ago and is now beginning to produce seed heads. I love harvesting them at this green coriander stage. They have a flavor in between cilantro leaves and dry coriander seeds. You just pick them off and stick them in the freezer for future use. They last a very long time that way. I might leave a few to fully mature and dry.


Finally, I picked 9 pickling cukes from my four plants. I have a feeling they will be prolific for the next few weeks and then trail off as the plants slowly succumb to beetles, powdery mildew and bacterial wilt - at least this is what happened to my cukes last year. I do have a game plan to try and prevent this from happening this year. I'll spray the plants with multiple applications of pyrethrin at the first sign of the beetles. Hopefully, this will prevent them from eating the foliage and infecting the plants with bacterial wilt. I'll also remove the lower leaves as the vines spread to help prevent the spread of blight, signs of which have already appeared. If anyone has any othe advice on keeping cucumber plants healthy, let me know!

Anyway, I did have time to snack on one before I caught my plane. They are REALLY crunchy, mild tasting and only slight sour on the ends. I can't wait to make pickles!

Better Late than Never

After a bit of a dry spell, we received some much needed rain today. At times torrential, the parched earth seemed to soak up the excess water like a dry sponge. I always look forward to these powerful late-spring storms as they are usually accompanied by a growth spurt in the garden. And it doesn't hurt that I won't have to break out the hose for next few days.


Today, I noticed that the snow peas were finally starting to make a show of it. By the looks of things, it should be another good harvest this year. I'm looking forward to picking our first crop tomorrow.


My 'Tongue of Fire' shell beans have germinated very well. I love when a bed is filled to capacity with seedlings.


This is my second year trying to grow cauliflower. Last year's crop was a major bust. Boy, they aren't kidding when they say that cauliflower is one difficult veggie to grow successfully. Already, half of this year's crop keeled over and died unexpectedly. The three remaining are still growing, albeit very slowly. I wonder if they will end up bolting prematurely like they did last year.


My three purple sprouting broccoli plants are doing very well. Too bad we have to wait until next year to get a harvest - that is, if we can get them to overwinter successfully.


Several of my beets are starting to plump up. I'm hoping to get a steady harvest well into the fall so I'm starting new seeds every few weeks.


Another of this year's tragedies - only 9 of my potatoes broke ground this year. This from 6 lbs of seed potatoes. About half succumb to disease before I even got a chance to plant them and the rest either rotted in the ground or were eaten by voles. I will never buy expensive seed potatoes through the mail again. I'd rather buy the ones available at our local feed store.


Finally, my cilantro is bolting prematurely again this year. Oh well. I love cooking with green coriander seeds so it's not a complete loss. I have new plants sprouting right now.

This weekend, I'll be sure do an update on our warm season veggies. Until then, happy Friday everyone!