Harvest Monday - July 25, 2016

The harvests were pretty light last week, but I did harvest the first big head of summer broccoli.

Batavia Broccoli

This head has already starred in 2 meals, the first one was a salad of blanched broccoli, tomato (not mine yet), shallots, feta, basil, and pine nuts, with a dressing of red wine vinegar, pomegranate molasses, and olive oil. That turned out to be really tasty, tomato and broccoli are surprisingly good flavor companions. Meal number 2 was a stir fry of broccoli, green beans, onion, garlic, and ground veal with oyster sauce - another tasty combo. And there's still a chunk of the head left.

Green Fingers cucumbers, Mouse Melons, and Romanesco zucchini

The cucumbers, mouse melons, and zucchini are coming in at a pretty good pace now, not a glut, but not too little either. 

Romanesco Zucchini

Assorted Beans and Apollo Brokali

But the bush snap beans have slowed to a trickle. They might be able to produce a second round, but I may not give them a chance because the pole beans have really started to climb their trellis and should be producing before the bush beans even have a chance of producing a second round. I think I can make better use of the space where the bush beans are growing with a planting of something else. The spring planting of broccoli produced a few more shoots after I put up a barrier around the plants to keep the Damn Rabbit out. I actually haven't seen the DR in a few days so I'm hoping it either left the area or perhaps got nabbed by one of the many raptors that hunt here.

I lifted a few of the varieties of onions last week and one of them got used right away so it is in the tally but the rest won't be weighed until they've been cured or used.

On a more depressing note, that ominous cloud is smoke. That's the view from the top of the ridge across the valley looking toward the coast. The Soberanes Fire is an out of control wildfire burning about 8 miles away that has scorched about 11,000 acres and 6 homes so far and is only 5% contained. It's been burning for 3 days and is likely to continue on for days more (hopefully only days). Fortunately for me it's burning away from here and the prevailing winds will probably keep it going that way. But it truly is a depressing sight and I feel awful for the people whose homes are in its path. Wildfires are one of the perils that we face in most of California where summer rain is a rare event and the natural landscape becomes a tinderbox. I haven't seen this much smoke since a large swath of Big Sur and the Ventana Wilderness burned back in 2008 - that fire started in July and burned through October. 

Back to the harvests, here's the details of what the garden produced last week:

Red Swan beans - .5 oz.

Roc d'Or beans - .5 oz.

Rolande Filet beans - 4.1 oz.

Royalty Purple Pod beans - .5 oz.

Slenderette beans - .3 oz.

Batavia broccoli - 2.7 lb.

Apollo brokali - 6.1 oz.

Green Fingers cucumbers - 2 lb.

Mouse Melons - 2.8 oz.

Rossa Piatta d'Italia onions - 1.1 lb.

Romanesco zucchini - 2.3 lb.

Total harvests for the past week - 9.1 pounds (4.1 kg.)

2016 YTD - 278.2 lb. (171.6 kg.)

Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave on his blog Our Happy Acres, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.