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| November tomatoes! |
And I was actually thinking - when are they going to be done? 327 pounds for the year is plenty! I've got canned tomatoes, dried tomatoes, slow roasted tomatoes, frozen tomato puree, sauce, paste, and jam. Enough.
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| Fiaschetto tomatoes and one pod of Fagiolo del Purgatorio beans |
The Fiaschetto tomatoes really surprised me, there were another 5 pounds of tomatoes ready to be harvested. But you can see in the photo above that they have been infected with something that is producing some spots so they have to be used up quickly. The bean pod is one of the first Fagiolo del Purgatorio bean pods to dry on the plants. I need to start harvesting the dry pods before they start to spoil from the rain that we've had lately. Not all the pods have matured enough, which actually is not because of the weather, the plants were suddenly and almost completely overtaken by spider mites. The leaves all yellowed and dropped off before I could figure out the problem and intervene, but there are enough mature beans so that I can at least save enough seeds to try again next year and perhaps even get enough for a white bean salad.
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| Apollo broccoli shoots |
The Apollo broccoli plants are still pushing out a few shoots. I have to remember next year that I need to grow more plants for the fall harvest, the plants just don't get as big at this time of year so they produce smaller main heads and fewer side shoots. Four plants were plenty for the spring planting but I think I'll grow six for the fall planting next year.
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| Parade "scallion" and Flamingo chard |
I harvested the first picking of chard from the fall/winter planting. And I used a couple of my huge overgrown scallions to make some tomato soup. The "scallions" are quite good for cooking so I harvested another one to add to the sauteed chard along with some pine nuts, currants, garlic and fish sauce (as a substitute for anchovies).
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| Salangana eggplant, mixed tomatoes, Christmas Bell peppers, Kamo and Diamond eggplants and King of the North bell peppers |
Salangana was the winner of the eggplant production competition this year, the 3 plants have produced nearly 19 pounds of fruits, compared to 13.5 for Kamo and 11.3 for Diamond. The one Sicilian plant produced 2.5 pounds of eggplant, but I allowed the first fruit that set to completely mature so that I could save the seeds. I'll see how it compares next year when the fruits are harvested regularly.
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| Dorato di Asti celery |
The Dorato di Asti celery is finally getting large enough that I can harvest some stalks. I think it was slowed down a bit by an aphid/ant infestation. I treated the plants with a Pyganic (an organic approved treatment extracted from pyrethrum chrysanthemum) and insecticidal soap combination a couple of weeks ago and haven't seen any new aphids so far. I generally don't like to use pesticides of any sort, even organic ones, but I couldn't get the aphids under control because the ants were "farming" them, so I resorted to the Pyganic with a small amount of insecticidal soap to use as a surfactant. The plants have really started to take off now, probably because they aren't as stressed by the aphids and the weather has cooled off and we've been getting moderate amounts of rain.
Speaking of weather, I've been retrieving weekly weather graphs from the National Weather Service for my locality. It would be great if I had my own weather station (maybe I'll put that on my birthday wish list next year), but I can get data from just a couple of miles away which is nearly the same as what I experience at home so that will do for now. It's easy to see when we get rain, the graph flattens out with lower highs and higher lows. When it clears up the nighttime temperatures dip deeper. So, there wasn't anything really extreme for the past week. The roller-coaster weather that we had for the few weeks previous seems to be over for now.
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| Temperatures - November 12 to 19 |
Here's the harvest totals for the past week:
Apollo broccoli - 4.2 oz.
Dorato di Asti celery - 2.9 oz.
Flamingo chard - 1 lb., 6.6 oz.
Diamond eggplant - 11.8 oz.
Kamo eggplant - 7.1 oz.
Salangana eggplant - 1 lb., 13 oz.
Parade "scallions" - 2 lb., 3.2 oz.
Christmas Bell peppers - 5.4 oz.
King of the North bell peppers - 5.6 oz.
Pimento de Padron peppers - 3.2 oz.
Amish Paste tomatoes - 3 lb., 14.5 oz.
Fiaschetto tomatoes - 5 lb., 1.8 oz.
Jaune Flamme tomatoes - 5.4 oz.
Martian Giant tomtoes - 2 lb., 11.9 oz.
Nyagous tomatoes - 7 oz.
Sunshine Cherry tomatoes - 6.1 oz.
Wheatly's Frost Resistant cherry tomatoes - 10.4 oz.
The total harvests for the past week came to - 21 lb., 8.1 oz.
Which pushes the total harvests for the year up to - 703 lb., 3.7 oz.
Woo hoo, over 700 pounds of produce for the year! I'm truly amazed what my garden can produce. 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.
Seven hundred pounds!!!!!! That's amazing!
ReplyDeleteYou are doing great at over 700lbs. I'm hoping to hit that next week. I think I have more than enough carrots to do that. My aphids were bad this year too. I might have to try some insecticidal soap next year. I haven't had to do that in over a decade. My last garden had a better insect balance, but this urban one just doesn't seem to have it.
ReplyDeleteHow funny that your husband would say, "Is that all the tomatoes?" That looks like a lot of tomatoes to me, and, as you say, you have harvested over 300 pounds. That's a great year's harvest of tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of the white beans with the white pod.
Send me some of those extra tomatoes please (just don't tell you husband). :D
ReplyDeleteYour garden has been very productive for you this year - even with the recent roller coaster ride of weather. Must be those lovely new beds you put in.
We had rain in biblical amounts this last few days and my garden is swimming. Thankfully everything drains well and all should be right with it agan once the rains ease up.
I really like your choices of varieties for the vegetables you grow. Some like the Padron peppers intrigue me, but I'm not sure I would have success with them here in New England.
ReplyDeleteWe had aphids in the garden this year for the first time. I noticed a lot of ants, then a lot of lady beetles this year. Sure enough, some of the crops showed signs of aphids. I'm with you, I don't like to spray if I can avoid it, but sometimes you have to.
Impressive as always. I do find ants farming aphids fascinating. Does broccoli not grow over winter for you? Perhaps your winters are cooler than ours?
ReplyDeleteLiz, I think it gets just a bit colder here in winter. We usually get at least one good overnight freeze that knocks the summer vegetables out completely. The winter vegetables grow, but they slow down a lot, especially things like broccoli. I have to give the winter vegetables a good head start in late summer/early autumn otherwise there isn't much to harvest when they stall out when winter sets in.
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