Monday, August 27, 2012

Harvest Monday - August 27, 2012

August 27, already! When the heck is summer going to start around here, or is it going to skip us this year, again. It was 44ºF when I got up this morning. The "heat wave" last week, or was it the week before, brought a sizzling high of 87ºF one afternoon. The tomatoes are pouting, just sitting there loaded, somewhat loaded, with green rocks, reluctantly offering an occasional treat, waiting like the rest of us for the heat to start. At least the rest of the vegetables, with the notable exception of the edamame soy beans are ignoring the coolness and pumping out the produce.

Here is the star performer, really an over performer, I can't go into the garden without looking at the vines and thinking, sheesh, I need to pick beans again. Here's the latest basketful of Neckarkönigin green beans. This looks like quite a few, but wait...


It looks HUGE in profile. It's hard to get the proper perspective on these, each bean is 8- to 10-inches long. That basketful is 2 ounces shy of 9 pounds from one harvest. And I harvested over 3 pounds 2 days before. The vines pumped out over 16 pounds of beans in 12 days, and I should have harvested more yesterday but didn't get around to it. This variety of bean seems to have a rather short and intense harvest period. If I grow them again I will have to succession sow a series of smaller plantings since I really don't want to have to deal with piles of produce that need to be preserved. I like to have a little bit in the freezer to add to winter soups, but this is ridiculous. They are a very tasty bean, I guess I shouldn't be complaining about over production. The vines are also very healthy looking, they have escaped the usual scourge of spider mites so far, so perhaps the vines will be able to bloom and set a second crop.



The cucumber vines are happily producing a steady stream of fruits. The plants are staying healthy so far, it really helps that both varieties are resistant to powdery mildew.



Zucchini, zucchini, I forgot to weigh one harvest of zucchini last week so the numbers look down, but they most decidedly are not. The oldest leaves on the zucchini plants are getting powdery mildew and rather than trying to treat the mildew I just cut off the leaves before the infection gets too bad. That seems to help to keep the infection from spreading too quickly and the plants are vigorous enough otherwise so they don't seem to be set back by the loss of the older leaves. Removing the big old leaves is probably actually helping to prevent the infection from getting worse since it helps to increase air circulation around the plants. And there was also a last little trickle of Apollo broccoli which isn't in the harvest totals because this basket of produce got photographed but not weighed. I managed to accumulate enough broccoli to make another overstuffed 10 egg frittata.



And here is the first "bounty" of tomatoes. Mostly Fiaschetto, a few Sunshine Cherry, 2 tiny little Wheatly's Frost Resistant Cherry, one Rosabec, and one Nyagous. I harvested one little Jaune Flamme yesterday which did not get photographed. The Rosabec seems to be susceptible to blossom end rot, the first 5 tomatoes to show color all had it, and I keep finding more, how disappointing.



I started harvesting the first dried pods of the Gigante beans. These will be included in the harvest totals when the beans are fully dried.



And I can't believe that I didn't get around to photographing the pile of Pimento de Padron peppers that started to come out of the garden last week! Oh have they been good. I'm so happy that the ailment that is stunting the leaves on the pepper plants is not affecting the quality of the peppers, it looks like it will be a good season for the Padrons. I'm still withholding judgement on the rest of the pepper crop.

Here's the harvest totals for the past week (what I remembered to weigh):

Neckarkönigin beans - 12 lb., 2.5 oz.
Green Fingers Persian cucumbers - 1 lb., 14.9 oz.
Tasty Green Japanese cucumbers - 3 lb., 1 oz.
Pimento de Padron peppers - 14.9 oz.
Fiaschetto tomatoes - 2 lb., 4.8 oz.
Jaune Flamme tomato - 1.3 oz.
Nyagous tomato - 2.2 oz.
Rosabec tomato - 4.2 oz.
Sunshine Cherry tomatoes - 4.4 oz.
Wheatly's Frost Resistant cherry tomatoes - .2 oz.
Da Fiore zucchini - 12.8 oz.

The total harvests last week came to - 21 lb., 15.2 oz.
Which brings the totals harvests for the year up to - 131 lb., 6.9 oz.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.

22 comments:

  1. Wow! That's a lot of beans! Great harvest. It's getting hot here down in SoCal again after a brief respite, so maybe we can get a second push of veggies here. Good luck with those tomatoes.

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  2. Ha ha! You are waiting for heat and I am wondering when it is going to GO! The air was hot and wet at 7:30 this morning when I went out! Looks like you have some nice beans. I have been getting a decent amount too but I don't think that much. Enough to freeze, happily!

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  3. Beautiful harvests. Too bad you don't live close. I would have traded for some of those beautiful beans.

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  4. I had read about the yellow currant tomatoes, but I saw different sizes on them so wasn't sure. Thanks for the report on them, might be just the thing!

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  5. That's a big pile of beans. I'll have to look into that variety. But I agree with you, I would rather have a reasonable yield for weeks rather than a 9 pound dump for a few weeks. But what if they don't stop producing?!

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  6. That is a huge amount of beans! Great looking harvests all the way around. Try spraying your tomatoes with liquid calcium for the BER

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  7. Nice harvest! It seems to me you can always count on beans! You sure do have some cold there; too bad you can't shift a little of it over here and we could all even out a bit.

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  8. It does seem like we've had a strange summer. Here in San Diego, we had mostly cool weather until a couple of weeks ago when we were hit with some blistering heat... and then back to quite cool. It hasn't been good for my tomatoes. Yours, however, look great!

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  9. Great harvests and great pictures! I am especially jealous of your tomatoes!

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  10. What a harvest! Shame about thw weather but the tomatoe seem to be producing a bit anyway. Enjoy the beans (and when you're sick of them at last they freeze.)

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  11. Great looking harvest. That is a mess of beans!! We haven't had a very good bean year this year so I'm a little jealous!

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  12. That's a hilarious amount of beans! I've been there a time or two. I'm sorry (for us both) that the promised weather moderation never happened. Still hopeful for that long, warm Fall.

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  13. I'm looking at your totals and that awesome crop of beans and thinking....wow, next year I want a crop like that. Even despite the lack of heat, you sure have a lot on the scales. I cut the old leaves off of the zuke plants too because of powdery mildew. They've never complained.

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  14. Your "heat wave" was the same as ours... a tantalizing bit of warmth but not really very hot and certainly did not last long enough. Tomatoes are doing the same thing as yours as a result, even worse, we had such a prolonged cool period in July that much of the blossoms dropped during that critical period of heavy fruit set and they did not resume setting fruit until August when it warmed up just a bit... so my green tomatoes are not all that big on most of the plants with the exception of the Stupice and Silvery Fir Trees which are happy producers in even cool weather conditions (note to self... grow more of the Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes next year!).

    Very impressive bean harvests! Are those a bush or a pole bean variety?

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  15. A fantastic harvest, Michelle. Makes my "one of these, two of those" efforts look very pathetic! If you have too many beans, I'm sure you could always give them away. There's always a market for good fresh veg.

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  16. That's alot of beans and cucumbers! very nice harvest overall.

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  17. I think of you as I'm swamped with peppers! So glad you're getting yours. We are full-on into summer -- foggy morning, hot by 2. I'm wilting, but the tomatoes are happy. Hang in there.

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  18. Wow, over 12 lbs of beans. I have yet to manage succession sowing, know what you mean to have piles of produce come in all at once.

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