Harvest Monday - August 28, 2017

The weather did a quick flip-flop this past weekend going from the persistent damp gray of Faugust to excessive heat warnings. Fortunately for me the worst of the heat is oppressing areas further inland but it's been hot enough to slow me down. 

Petite Marseillaise Pepper

Here's the first pepper of the year, harvested before fully ripe to foil the rodents. I can't say that I've been managing to do that with the tomatoes in spite of deploying a couple of dozen rat and mice traps in the garden every night (except last night, I hope the damage isn't too bad).

Zebrune Shallots

The best of the alliums this year were the Zebrune Shallots, they seem to have recovered more easily from the Downy Mildew and gone on to produce a range of sizes of bulbs, some of them very large.

Baciccia, Rolande, Amethyst Purple, Roc D'Or

I got a few seeds of a bean that is very popular in the Central Valley area, an heirloom called Baciccia. There's only 6 plants that survived so I picked a few to sample and I'll allow the rest of the beans to mature so that I can save the seeds which are nearly impossible to find. Otherwise the bean harvests have been the same as last week.

Broccolini

The spring planting of Broccolini continues to pop a modest but adequate number of side shoots.

Green Fingers and Chelsea Prize Cucumbers

And I continue to harvest a few cucumbers here and there. Those couple of Chelsea Prize cukes were not show stoppers but they were fine sliced up to make a smashed cucumber salad along with their basket mates.

Romanesco Zucchini, Mixed Beans, Batavia Broccoli

The Romanesco zucchini plant shows no sign of slowing down production although it is sporting more signs of powdery mildew. And there's no shortage of Batavia broccoli either. The four plants that were the winter producers and the three surviving plants that were the spring producers haven't been slowed down by "summer" weather. With June Gloom, No Sky July, and Faugust being the norm I guess that's no surprise.

Jumbo Tromba D'Albenga

I've been pretty good at keeping on top of the Tromba D'Albenga harvests but the plants are so overgrown now that I didn't spot that one until it was pushing it's way out of the jungle. At 5 1/2 pounds it was big enough to make a batch of Zucchini Sott'Olio so that was its fate.

Nothing new and creative on the cooking side of things. It's hard to get motivated to do any ambitious cooking when half the contents of my kitchen, pantry, and laundry room are still scattered around the living and dining rooms. Progress on the kitchen upgrades has slowed to a crawl but I think the end is finally in sight.

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.