Monday, September 19, 2011

Harvest Monday - September 19, 2011

I was a little better about taking photos of some of the harvests last week. This basket contains Black Beauty, Orient Express, and Diamond eggplants, some Musica green beans, zucchini, a few Pimento de Padron peppers and a couple of baby Chioggia beets. I made a bruschetta topping with some of the eggplant - roasted eggplant flesh seasoned with olive oil, garlic, mint, pepper flakes, and secret sauce - one of my favorite ways to use up extra eggplant.



Under ripe tomatoes snatched from the jaws of the raiding rodents. It only took a few days for them to color up nicely, but the flavor isn't quite what I want.



My first significant harvest of Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli.


It has a larger frillier leaf and looser flower head than most calabrese type broccolis, it seems quite similar to Spigariello broccoli. The only thing that I don't like about this broccoli is that it takes quite a while for the shoots to get to harvestable size, long enough for the aphids to get themselves established in the flower heads so I have to be extra vigilant about cleaning them. Fortunately, the looser flower heads are somewhat easy to clean but it is a bit tedious to have to inspect each and every head and wash the aphids out. The Piracicaba broccoli grows so quickly that the aphids don't generally find the flower heads before I harvest them so it tends to be much cleaner.



The Slenderette green beans have finished producing and the plants are looking ratty. With a little TLC they might be coaxed into a second crop but I can't be bothered so the plants will be pulled and replaced with some lettuce seedlings that are nearly ready to be transplanted.

The harvests for the week were:

Musica green beans - 5 lb., 10.7 oz.
Slenderette green beans - 8.4 oz. (the final harvest)
Chioggia beet thinnings - 3.3 oz.
Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli - 14.3 oz.
Piracicaba broccoli - 1 lb., 11.7 oz.
Golden Chard - 1 lb., 4.6 oz.
Black Beauty eggplant - 14.3 oz.
Diamond eggplant - 16.6 oz.
Orient Express eggplant - 1 lb., 8.4 oz.
Pimento de Padron peppers - 4.5 oz.
Aunt Ruby's German cherry tomatoes - 8 oz.
Chianti Rose Tomatoes - 14.4 oz.
Galinas cherry tomatoes - 5.3 oz.
Gigantesque tomatoes - 7.2 oz.
Japanese Trifele tomatoes - 7.2 oz.
Katja tomatoes - 1 lb., 3 oz.
Zucchini - 12.3 oz.

The total harvests for the week were - 18 lb., 10.2 oz.
The total harvests for the year have been - 340 lb., 14.6 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.

7 comments:

  1. Wow those are some super tomatoes you are getting! Everything looks very nice! Always nice to see varieties other people grow and get out heads full of ideas!

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  2. What an interesting variety of vegetables. I will have to check out the types of broccoli you are growing for next year. Fortunately aphids are not a problem here, but in mid-September we still have cabbage moths flying around and my collards and kale are starting to get chewed up again.

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  3. oooooo I want to eat Eggplant bruschetta now! Can I just say I hate aphids too! I refuse to grow broccoli anytime after winter because as you say clean the heads is just too painful.

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  4. I had to do a soap spray on the broccoli this past weekend because the mealy bug aphids are settling in as is there wont during the fall. I think I managed to catch it early and got it taken care of because the plants that were showing infestation are looking tremendously better early this week.

    Your harvests look good and hurrah for you getting some of the tomatoes away from the rats! Our bush beans are fizzling out too but still producing and are healthy enough I am reluctant to pull them quite yet.

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  5. Tomatoes just don't taste as good when you have to bring them in early to ripen. They are much better then store bought though!

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  6. Good-looking harvests! How big is your garden? The rat patrol data on the sidebar is interesting. People think there are no rats in their neighborhood, but put in a garden and watch them come! We no longer have a cat so I resorted to using enclosed and locked bait stations strategically placed around the perimeter of our yard. They've worked well to keep the rat and mouse population down. When they were here, they sure caused a lot of damage to my veggies. Then there's the opossums and racoons! It's like the wild kingdom! And we're in a big city!

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