Harvest Monday - November 25, 2013

Summer vegetables are still trickling in from the garden. I've been letting the peppers sit on the plants in the garden because they seem to be keeping quite well out there, the cool short days keep them from spoiling or ripening too quickly. The first sugar snap peas from the fall planting were ready to harvest last week. I harvested more tomatoes, some when I pulled out a few of the plants and others that I didn't want to crack from the rain but those didn't get photographed. 

Happy Yummy Peppers, San Jaun Tsile peppers, Pico de Pajaro peppers,
Sugar Daddy snap peas, Cochiti peppers

Here it is, the zucchini that pushed production over 100 pounds from one plant. I also harvested 3 more small zucchini later in the week but didn't photograph them. It's official, the plant has produced 101 pounds of zucchini so far this year.

Romanesco zucchini

The Lacinato kale is producing well, staying relatively aphid free, and is recovering from the bird pecking.

Most of the leaves that look like this have been harvested now. The new leaves are growing under the protection of a veil of Agribon fabric. This doesn't look very appealing but it's only the top quarter to third of the leaves that are holey and I don't lose much by whacking the pecked parts off.

I've shelled and weighed most of the dried beans now. These are Pavoni beans that Stefani gave me the seeds for.

Stefani's Pavoni beans

True to type Pavoni beans

Off type Pavoni beans

Most of the Pavoni bean plants had white and apricot colored flowers. One or two plants had scarlet flowers and another one had bi-colored scarlet/white flowers. The off colored flowering plants produced different colored beans.

Pavoni beans of different colors.

I also finished shelling my Purgatory beans (Fagiolo del Purgatorio). The jar on the left contains beans from the earliest sown plants which struggled with cold soil and then an infestation of spider mites. The harvest was light from that planting and many of the beans are smaller than they should be. The jar on the right contains beans from later sown plants that thrived and produced more beans per plant and of better quality. I'll be using beans from the late sowing as my seed stock next year. And I won't be tempted to start them too early again.

Fagiolo del Purgatorio

Look at the difference in size between the Purgatory beans and the Greek Gigante beans. The Purgatory beans are absolutely wonderful for making bean salads.

The weather continues to be mild and mostly clear and beautiful. We did get a bit of rain last week, less than 1/2 inch, but it's better than no rain. We're up to .98 inches since July 1. More rain is supposed to be headed our way... maybe.

Here's the harvest details for the past week:

Purgatory beans (Fagiolo del Purgatorio) - 1 lb., 13.7 oz.
Stefani's Pavoni beans - 2 lb., .8 oz.
Di Ciccio broccoli - 1 lb., 2.3 oz.
Lorz Italian garlic - 3.7 oz.
Red Janice garlic - 3.5 oz.
Lacinato kale - 2 lb., 6.6 oz.
Sugar Daddy snap peas - 4.2 oz.
Cochiti peppers - 6.7 oz.
Happy Yummuy peppers - 11.9 oz.
Volunteer orange bell pepper - 10.2 oz.
Pico de Pajaro peppers - 1.1 oz.
San Juan Tsile peppers - 1.1 oz.
Andine Cornue tomatoes - 2 lb., 2.2 oz.
Martian Giant tomatoes - 11.8 oz.
Potiron Ecarlate tomatoes - 3 lb., 5.3 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 1 lb., 4.7 oz.

The harvests totals for the past week were - 17 lb., 9.8 oz.
Which brings the harvest totals for the year up to - 894 lb., 5.7 oz.

I do believe I may break the 900 pound mark before the end of the year!

A lot of readers have asked how we manage to eat all that produce, and to be honest, not all of it gets consumed, sometimes it does go bad before I can do something with it. But the vast majority of it does get eaten. My husband and I LOVE our veggies and our meals revolve around what's coming out of the garden and/or what I've preserved. We long ago abandoned the typical western meal formula of protein-starch-vegetable and I long ago abandoned the notion that a meal should revolve around a "main" course whether protein based or vegetarian. It's not unusual for us to dine on two or three or four different vegetable dishes that most Americans would consider to be all side dishes. We've also adopted a fairly low carb diet and we no longer rely on "filler" carbs like rice or pasta or potatoes, the "filler" these days is just more vegetables. But no, we are not vegetarians, we often times dine on poultry, pork, or seafood, it just doesn't necessarily have a starring role in every meal. We consume a lot of eggs and dairy products as well. But veggies rule, even at breakfast, at least for me. I love to sauté a variety of vegetables (with perhaps some lardons of bacon), crack a couple of eggs on top, cover the pan and cook on low just until the eggs are set. Sprinkle with some za'atar or a dried pepper spice blend, or smoked paprika - voila, it's breakfast. Another version of that is to stew some vegetables in tomato sauce, crack a couple of eggs over the top, cook until the eggs set. Or, saute some veggies and scramble the eggs into the mix. And a little cheese melted over the top of any of these preparations is pretty tasty too.

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.