Harvest Monday - December 10, 2012

Tomato season is nearly over, I pulled out the last plants yesterday and gleaned what good fruits were left on the vines. I only kept the largest of the green tomatoes and those will be included in the tally when they ripen. I did include the pink Martian Giants in the tally, the pink ones that I harvested before ripened up very nicely indoors. I also lumped the green and ripe Sunshine cherry tomatoes into the tally. I think the green ones will be pretty good when they color up. The Sunshine Cherry tomato plant was full of new little green tomatoes. In an area with a longer season for harvesting tomatoes I think it would be possible to get a nice second wave of tomatoes from this variety, but with the late start to the harvest season here that isn't going to happen. I'm lucky to have been able to pick any tomatoes in December, the plants generally get whacked by frost by this time of year.

The final tomato harvest.

Mostly Martian Giant 

Martian Giant

A mix of Sunshine Cherry, Wheatly's Frost Resistant,
Jaune Flamme, and Nyagous

These Martian Giant tomatoes were harvested earlier in the week.

Martian Giant

Martian Giant was amazing. My one plant produced 75 pounds of good tomatoes! Now that tomato season is essentially over I'll show you what the total production was:

	Pounds	August	September	October	November	December
Amish Paste (2 plants)	85.0	0.2	16.4	51.7	16.6
Fiaschetto (3 plants)	71.7	2.7	48.3	6.7	14.0
Jaune Flamme	15.8	0.4	7.9	5.7	1.1	0.6
Martian Giant	74.9		1.5	50.6	14.7	8.1
Nyagous	28.5	0.6	15.8	10.1	1.8	0.3
Rosabec	39.5	1.0	26.2	9.9	2.4
Sunshine Cherry	30.3	0.8	19.4	7.5	1.0	1.5
Wheatly’ Frost Resistant Cherry	13.2	0.0	3.9	6.7	2.0	0.5
	358.9	5.8	139.4	149.0	53.6	11.0

The one variety that I definitely won't grow again is Wheatly's Frost Resistant. It wasn't very productive, but I might have been able to overlook that if it had been tasty (not enough). On the other hand, Jaune Flamme was also not very productive but has a wonderful flavor so I'm definitely giving it another chance. Amish Paste and Fiaschetto have earned pretty permanent places in the lineup. Nyagous was tasty enough that I may try it again, but perhaps not next year. Martian Giant has certainly far exceeded my expectations and will be returning again. Rosabec was a very good tasting and productive variety, however, it was prone to blossom end rot and cracking so I will be trying a different pink variety next year. And Sunshine Cherry was a good cherry tomato, not too productive and very tasty, but I'm tempted to try something different next year. But, I will grow it again, I just want some variety. I did a more detailed review of my tomatoes earlier on this post.

This bunch of Lark's Tongue kale went into another frittata. The broccoli was added to the previous little harvest of shoots to be used when I finally accumulate enough shoots to feed two. I harvested a few Aji Angelo peppers but didn't weigh them.

Lark's Tongue kale, Apollo Broccoli,
and Aji Angelo

Yesterday I harvested more Lark's Tongue kale, a "scallion" and some celery to make soup that also featured fresh Amish Paste tomato puree, some Reboso beans from Rancho Gordo, carrots from the farmer's market, some sausage, and dried Sigaretta Dolce pepper flakes.

Lark's Tongue kale, Parade "scallion",
and Dorato di Asti celery

And I finally harvested the first Purple Peacock broccoli. This came in at a whopping .8 ounces (yes, there is a point before the 8). I'm hoping that now that the plants aren't overshadowed by the tomato plants that they will grow a little better and send out some decent side shoots. I will try this variety again in the spring and give it a more favorable spot with more sun and see what happens. It's too pretty to give up on. I'll serve that up that one shoot with the Apollo broccoli now that I've accumulated enough of that to make a decent serving of veggies for two.

Purple Peacock broccoli and Apollo broccoli

Not photographed this week was a large handful of Pimento de Padron peppers and a couple of Large Sweet Antigua peppers. The peppers plants are hanging in there through the cold nights and haven't been hit too hard by fungal diseases so I'm still able to harvest a few peppers here and there, at least for now...

The temperatures have been surprisingly mild for December. It wouldn't be unusual to see the same range of temperatures in June around here. Too bad the days are so short, it really cuts down on the time I can be outside enjoying the good weather.

December temperatures!

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Apollo broccoli - 3.9 oz.
Purple Peacock broccoli - .8 oz.
Dorato di Asti celery - 9.8 oz.
Lark's Tongue kale - 1 lb., 1.4 oz.
Parade "scallions" - 1 lb., 6.5 oz.
Large Sweet Antigua peppers - 5 oz.
Pimento de Padron peppers - 3.8 oz.
Jaune Flamme tomatoes - 10.3 oz.
Martian Giant tomatoes - 8 lb., 1.1 oz.
Nyagous tomatoes - 5.3 oz.
Sunshine Cherry tomatoes - 1 lb., 7.9 oz.
Wheatly's Frost Resistant cherry tomatoes - 8 oz.

The total harvests for the past week came to 14 lb., 15.8 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for the year up to 748 lb., 7.6 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.