Harvest Monday - October 17, 2011

Oh, it is so nice to be back in my garden after a couple of weeks away on vacation. Vermont was beautiful even though the fall colors were nearly a no-show and a week in the din of Manhattan was enough to last me a lifetime. What I miss most while traveling is fresh vegetables, well, really any vegetables prepared in an interesting way. I find it to be tremendously difficult to find vegetables on a restaurant menu that aren't indifferently or downright poorly prepared. Even when a restaurant boasts about the local seasonal fresh vegetables that they prepare they are usually a tiny portion paired with a big hunk of protein rather than my typical meal of a plateful of veggies with a bit of protein added for flavor or substance. So it was a huge relief to find plenty of fresh vegetables to harvest from the garden yesterday.

The tomatoes haven't given up yet and the rats seem not to have been too greedy. Counter clockwise from the top left the tomatoes shown are Amish Paste,  Japanese Trifele, Galinas cherry, Aunt Ruby's German cherry, one Chianti Rose, a couple of Gigantesque (not at all giant), and a few Black Krim. And on the far left is a carton of Pimento de Padron peppers. I also have a bunch of tomatoes that I harvested the day before I left for vacation and left for my house sitter to stash in the freezer as they finished ripening (after she took as much as she wanted or gave to her friends with my blessing). Those aren't included in the harvest totals yet.

The Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli had a lot of side shoots that were ready to harvest, a couple of Green Fingers Persian cucumbers weren't too huge, one of the napa cabbages was starting to spoil but I was able to rescue a good portion of it, and the celery is growing like crazy and still not completely thinned out so I harvested another head of that.

Wow, the Neckarkönigin vines were loaded with green beans that were ready to harvest. A lot of the beans were very large and starting to get a bit lumpy with developing seeds but all except the very largest turned out to be not at all stringy and still tender and tasty.

I used the cabbage, about half the celery, some of the largest beans, and some of the tomatoes along with some frozen favas and pantry onions and garlic to make a big pot of vegetable soup last night. I also whipped up a batch of pesto with basil fresh from the garden to stir into each bowl of soup.  Mmmm, that satisfied my vegetable cravings and also seemed to be therapeutic for the cold that I dragged home with me.

Not included in the totals this week are the vegetables that I harvested the week before I left because I lost my notes for that week, dang it. I might have broken the 500 pound mark this week with those vegetables and the still unweighed frozen tomatoes.

Here's the latest harvest totals:

Neckarkönigin green beans - 8 lb., 15.5 oz.
Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli - 2 lb., 5.8 oz.
Hybrid One Kilo napa cabbage - 1 lb., 9.5 oz.
Dorato di Asti celery - 1 lb., 5.5 oz.
Green Fingers cucumbers - 5.7 oz.
Pimento de Padron peppers (excluding the over sized ones) - 15.4 oz.
Amish Paste tomatoes - 7 lb., 13 oz.
Aunt Ruby's German cherry tomatoes - 2 lb., 12.7 oz.
Black Krim tomatoes - 2 lb., 1.7 oz.
Chianti Rose tomatoes - 7.8 oz.
Galinas cherry tomatoes - 1 lb., 5 oz.
Gigantesque tomatoes - 7.1 oz.
Japanese Trifele tomatoes - 6 lb., 9.5 oz.
Unidentified tomato variety - 8 oz.

The total harvest for the week was - 37 lb., 9.7 oz.
The total harvests for the year have been - 457 lb., 2.4 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.