Harvest Monday - July 28, 2014

A couple of new items hit the harvest basket this week. First up is Golden Gate pole beans which are new to my garden. They are sharing space on a trellis with my old favorite Musica beans. Musica is a bean of similar shape and size but it's green. Golden Gate seems to be running about a week ahead of Musica.

Golden Gate pole beans

The other new veggie this week is my first ever successful attempt at growing cauliflower. I probably should have wrapped the outer leaves over the head as it matured to keep it from yellowing a bit, but there were aphids in the leaves and I didn't want to give them a cozier spot to proliferate and I didn't want to spray them either. A quick blanch and shock treatment got rid of the aphids and then I braised the cauliflower in a tomato sauce with sweet onions and capers and I don't remember what else, I neglected to take notes. Dave declared it to be delicious.

Amazing Taste cauliflower

The cauliflower was part of a harvest that included a Tasty Treat cucumber, Royal Burgundy and Slenderette bush beans, and of course zucchini. The bush beans have turned out to be more productive than I had anticipated since they got off to a rather weak start but after a while they recovered and grew well.

The cucumbers come in a few at a time, just enough to keep us in salads of various sorts. Here's the first sizable harvest of Pimento de Padrons. Let the pepper season begin!

Yet more beans, another cucumber, and strawberries. The strawberry harvest has peaked for now but I see more blossoms forming so I anticipate a few more harvests.

I've been weighing the onions as I use them. Here's one of the few Candy onions that didn't throw up a flower stalk.

The broccoli is rolling in now, these are all side shoots.

This was the final main head of broccoli accompanying another basketful of zucchini. This head of broccoli and one other head went into a salad with Royal Corona beans (from Rancho Gordo), dried cherry tomatoes, roasted sweet peppers (last year's from the freezer) and sweet onions. Yum.

And more zucchini.

And here's what happens when you don't get around to harvesting the zucchini one day. This was the harvest in the morning and I harvested another 3 zucchini at the end of the day and then another 3 zucchini the next day. I know, you all must be getting tired of reading about my prolific zucchini monster, but at least you just have to read about it...

That basket above had some big batons that were perfect for turning into what Dave likes to call Zucchini boats, or stuffed zucchinis. So yesterday I developed my own recipe for zucchini stuffed with lamb and rice. Dave loved it and demanded that it be included in the Zucchini Top Ten. I did take notes for that dish so I'll be posting the recipe later.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Speedy arugula - 9.3 oz.
Golden Gate beans - 4.5 oz.
Royal Burgundy beans - 10.7 oz.
Slenderette beans - 12.8 oz.
Di Ciccio broccoli - 1 lb., 10.6 oz.
Tokyo Bekana - 12.7 oz.
Amazing Taste cauliflower - 2 lb., 4.1 oz.
Garden Oasis cucumbers - 1 lb., 1.9 oz.
Tasty Treat cucumbers - 1 lb., .2 oz.
Baby Portuguese kale - 2.9 oz.
Ruby Streaks mizuna - 1.4 oz.
Candy onion - 14.4 oz.
Purple pac choi - 4.7 oz.
Padron peppers - 4.6 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 10 lb., 8.6 oz.

The total harvests for the past week were - 21 lb., 7.4 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for 2014 up to - 394 lb., 7.1 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.