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Monday, October 18, 2010

Harvest Monday, October 18, 2010

Something new in the harvest basket! The Diamante celery root is ready to harvest and here's the first one. This formidable looking vegetable needs some serious trimming to get to the good stuff. With skin and knobs still attached, but no stems, this specimen came in at 2 lb., 13 oz, and after trimming I netted about 2 1/3 pounds. I made a celery root and dried fava bean puree with half of  it and celery root remoulade salad with the other half.




And here's my growing stash of dried Petaluma Gold Rush beans, this is 5 pounds of beans and I still have one more basket of beans to shell. There's plenty of beans for both eating and sharing as seeds.



Yesterday we had some rainy weather come through so before it hit my husband and I picked the remaining tomatoes that were edible looking. You can see that some of them have small bad spots but if I use those right away they should be ok. There were a lot of overripe and rotting tomatoes on the plants, penance for 3 weeks away. The late producing Lenny & Gracie's Kentucky Heirloom were the most prolific. Had I been around during the past three weeks I think that the harvests would have been impressive. The other late tomato that I'm growing, Not Wes, didn't fare well, the plant succumbed to some disease and the many tomatoes on the vine were mostly shriveled or rotting.


Not photographed were a couple of pounds of Malaysian Dark Red eggplants that I used to try to replicate a dish that we enjoyed in Italy. It was bruschetta topped with a mixture of chopped flesh of roasted eggplants, olive oil, garlic, and mint. I also seasoned the eggplant with a dash of red wine vinegar to brighten the flavors. If memory serves me correctly I came pretty close to the delicious original.

Here's the harvest totals for the week plus a bit that I harvested back in September before I left for vacation:

Petaluma Gold Rush beans - 3 lb., 11 oz.
Diamante celery root - 2 lb., 13 oz.
Malaysian Dark Red eggplant - 6 lb.
Portuguese Dairyman's kale - 1 lb., 3 oz.
Sweetie Baby romaine lettuce - 1 lb.
Ananas Noir tomatoes - 2 lb., 11 oz.
Andine Cornue tomatoes - 3 lb., 4 oz.
Aunt Ruby's cherry tomatoes - 2 lb., 10 oz.
Chocolate Stripes tomatoes - 14 oz.
Galinas cherry tomatoes - 2 lb., 2 oz.
Gigantesque tomatoes - 1 lb., 15 oz.
Lenny and Gracie tomatoes - 5 lb., 6 oz.
Not Wes tomatoes - 4.75 oz.

The total harvest for the period was 34 lb., 2.5 oz.
The harvest totals for the year are 578 lb., 11 oz.

Daphne's Dandelions is the place to go to find more Harvest Monday posts. Head on over there to check it out.

11 comments:

  1. I just love looking at the vibrant colors of your tomatoes against that bright blue background (tablecloth?) The Petaluma Gold Rush beans look wonderful!

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  2. Very good harvest after 3 weeks of RR, glad the critters didn't have a party in the garden.

    I'm amazed at the Portuguese kale, does it grow year round for you? How does it taste? How do you use it? Are the leaves tender?

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  3. thyme2garden, the blue background is actually a ceramic tabletop. That could be the last photo op for tomatoes on that table this year. :(

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    Mac, there was a bit of critter damage, the rats or other rodents loved the ripe tomatoes, and the aphids and ants had a field day in the chard, and the vole or whatever it is is still tunneling all over the place....

    The Portuguese kale grows like any other kale. The flavor, ah, I'm not good at describing, but it is relatively mild and the young leaves are tender yet sturdy. It seems to like my garden, the volunteers are growing like crazy. I've been using it like the Lacinato kale, blanched and then sauteed as a side dish or piled on bruschetta. It's also very good in soup.

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  4. So, What do you do with the puree that you made?
    Everything looks really good!

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  5. That celery root is a monster! I have never grown it - just stalk celery. I wonder if it would grow well in my area? Stalk celery does so I imagine it would. May have to do a little homework on this plant!

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  6. That celeriac sure is impressive. Unfortunately my husband has banned celery root from our kitchen but I've always been curious how it compares to regular celery from a growing point of view.

    The rainy weather came our way too and I was also found picking almost ripe tomatoes before it hit us.

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  7. Oh, that's what we call celeriac and I love it, especially in remoulade. It was one of the salads we ate a lot when I was a child in Turkey because in those days in a hot country my mother worried that she couldn't get lettuce clean enough so we didn't have green salads! The yellow tomatoes look lovely too, but it seems to have been a year when tomatoes succumb to diseases - they have here too.

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  8. Congratulations to your new root celery, a rough diamond :-) I had some yesterday in my potato/carrot/celery mash and that was really nice, now enjoy yours Michelle, how do you plan to attack it? Great harvest, I see you still have a lot of lovely tomatoes to harvest. Tyra

    Fragrant and Tasty in Tyra’s Garden

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  9. I absolutely love celeriac and one of the reasons I grew it was because I had a hard time finding it and for its good storing qualities. As for the tomato disease - early blight (which ironically comes late as opposed to late blight that comes early)?

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  10. Shawn Ann, We had it for dinner, along with the celery root salad and some sliced tomatoes. We're not big meat eaters around here, but the the puree would be a great side dish with roast lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, etc... I did sprinkle some crispy bacon on top this time. :) It's really easy to make ahead, put into a baking dish, then heat through in the oven before serving.

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    kitsapFG, it actually got bigger than I expected while I was gone. If stalk celery does well for you then celery root should do great, it's easier to grow.

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    Angela, Oh no, you married a celeriac hater?! Lucky me, it's always welcome around here, my husband loves it. It's less fussy about growing conditions than regular celery, but it does seem to appreciate a steady supply of water. Last year my plants took forever to size up and I'm pretty sure it's because I had a hard time keeping that bed watered.

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    chaiselongue, it goes by both names here but I think celery root is the more common one. I imagine you had a variety of good vegetable salads in Turkey, not just celery root. Did your mother have a garden while you were there?

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    Tyra, very punny! :) I have my eye on a recipe for celery root "Anna", thin slices of celery root layered in a skillet with butter and cheese and perhaps something else, baked into a crispy cake.

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    Ottawa Gardener, Thank goodness it does store for a long time, I think I might have to harvest all of mine before it gets too big. I have no idea what did that tomato plant in, there was a lot of bad stuff going on in the tomato patch this summer, mostly fungal. But early blight is a possibility for that plant.

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  11. At least dried beans hold on the vine until you get back (mostly). It is sad about the loss of tomatoes though. With the early summer being so cold there you probably really missed them.

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