Monday, October 12, 2009

Harvest Monday - 10/12/09

It's Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions, time to report on what came out of the garden in the previous week. This was Tomato Week in my garden, likely the peak of the 2009 harvest. I decided to weigh each box of tomatoes, just out of curiosity.

Monday's harvest:
17 pounds of Gigantesque (misspelled in previous posts because of a typo on the seed packet).


16 pounds of Aunt Ruby's German Green


20 pounds of Blue Beech Paste, plus a few more not photographed.


About 5 pounds of Chocolate Stripes. This tomato has only ok flavor but I'm not going to pass judgment on it since the plant really suffered this year and I don't think it is showing its true potential. I'll try it again next year.


Palace King cucumbers and Pimento de Padron peppers.


Tuesday's harvest:
15 pounds of Caspian Pink and Hillbilly.


9 pounds of Isis Candy, Galinas, and Black cherry tomatoes.


Wednesday's harvest:
6 pounds of Paul Robeson. This is usually one of my absolute favorite tomatoes, but this year the plant suffered, the foliage died, the tomatoes got sunburned and didn't size up well. I rescued what I could and turned it into puree which ended up tasting pretty good.


15 pounds of Todd County Amish and Black Sea Man.


Thursday: a couple pounds of Diamond Eggplant. This was made into Imam Bayildi - Eggplant stuffed with a tomatoey onion filling - heavenly!


And I've been collecting ripe caper berries from my pink flowering Caper bush for seed saving.



Also harvested but not photographed this week was a couple more pounds of Diamond eggplant (made Caponata with most of that) and another picking of Pimento de Padrons and a few more cucumbers.

And, I forgot to mention when I originally put this post up, a huge bunch of Piracicaba broccoli.

So, the grand total tomato harvest this week...

drumroll...

103 pounds!

Rain is on the way today, an unusually big storm for this time of year, so I have to get outside and pick MORE tomatoes.

Join in the harvest fun and head on over to Daphne's Dandelions to report on your own harvest and see what other gardeners are harvesting also.

14 comments:

  1. 103 pounds ? Holy moly, I'm speechless. And that's just the tomatoes ?
    Amazing harvest ! The capers are sooo lovely !

    (At this point I am compelled to peruse your blog for a PROPER look at your garden. Ah ! I see. What an awesome space you possess !)

    Formidable ! as the French would say :)

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  2. I suppose you could call it cruel to show me all those tomatoes, but really I like seeing them all. You picked more in a week than I did all summer. How many plants do you have?

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  3. miss m, I have to admit that I'm amazed by last weeks tomato harvest, it was really unexpected.

    Daphne, I'm glad you're taking this so well, I suppose it is cruel to so many of you from the east who got hit so hard by late blight. There are 3 paste tomato plants, 3 cherry, and 7 other plants, all different varieties (8 really, but Marmande didn't produce anything worth harvesting).

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  4. I'm astonished. Tell me again that you and your husband are really going to eat all this! :)

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  5. Chuck, LOL, are you kidding!?!? No, we are incapable of wrapping ourselves around all that bounty. We may get through a fair amount of it in the next 9 months. I've go a case and a half of canned tomatoes (so far), the freezer is starting to bulge with frozen puree and sauce, there's a bunch of dried tomato slices on hand now, containers of oven candied cherry tomatoes to snack on... But even so, I can't deal with it all myself. I've been doling out gift boxes of tomatoes to friends and neighbors and visitors...

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  6. Great going with the tomatoes! I tried to give some of mine to the FedEx guy, but they are not allowed to accept "gifts" :)

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  7. Jackie, that's funny, I could understand refusing a "gift" of zucchini, but not tomatoes! I going to my book club tomorrow night, I figure I can gift a fair amount of tomatoes there.

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  8. Wow, what beautiful tomatoes and what amazing harvest from each plant. Do you stake or prune or just let the plants do what they want?

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  9. Michelle, You do have a prodigious harvest. I like your eggplants and the way you laid them out for their photos. So many tomatoes!!

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  10. Emily, I make cages from 6-inch square concrete reinforcing mesh. They stand about 5 feet high. No pruning, I just tuck the tomato vines into the cage as they grow.

    Mary Delle, yup, prodigious is almost an understatement. I was telling my husband tonight that it's the tomato equivalent of tax season (I'm an ex tax accountant).

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  11. Wow, 103 pounds is a lot for 1 week! Those are some of the nicest looking tomatoes I have ever seen. I just love all of the different colors and shapes. Congratulations on another great harvest.

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  12. Goodness! I'm amazed. Good luck for more!

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  13. That is a lot. I had better start investigating eggplant recipes. Yours sounds good.

    Jackie, maybe the FedEx guy could "find" some tomatoes left out on the curb?

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  14. Michelle, I am constantly amazed by your tomato harvests! It makes me envy your California weather. Do you sell any of your tomatoes? If not, than you should! They look wonderful.

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