Harvest Monday - September 10, 2018

What a difference a year makes. Last year on September 11 my harvest post featured a parade of tomatoes, a trickle of peppers, plenty of squash, and a few cucumbers. And this year? Well, take a look.

Thank goodness rats don't dig for potatoes. I could have dug these back at the beginning of August but didn't have time to deal with them so I turned off the drip lines to that part of the bed and left them in the ground. Upstate Abundance certainly lived up to its name, that basket was part of the 30+ pounds that I dug up on Saturday. With the addition of the early potatoes that I harvested my investment in 1 pound of seed potatoes gave me 34 pounds in return.

Upstate Abundance Potatoes

French Blue Belle potatoes weren't quite as generous, in total I harvested about 28 pounds from 1 pound of seed potatoes. This variety seemed to be more prone to disease and a few of the plants were hit pretty hard by nematodes. Some of the Upstate Abundance potatoes were infected by nematodes but overall they were healthier than the French Blue Belles. It's a lot of potatoes to deal with and I don't have an optimal place to store them so I'm experimenting with dehydrating some of them.

French Blue Belle Potatoes

The Baciccia bush beans were just starting to produce when it was time for me to leave for vacation so I harvested everything of reasonable size and got about 2.5 pounds of fresh beans, some of which we enjoyed and the rest went into the freezer. Upon my return the plants were loaded with beans that were swollen with mature and maturing beans. I harvested everything that was on the plants and used most of them as shelling beans. They were better than expected, actually quite tasty, especially since these beans are not intended to be harvested as shelling beans. I've since removed the plants and will try some snap and snow peas in their place.
 

Baciccia Beans

The Pink Plume celery had a growth spurt in my absence so now I'm able to start harvesting it stalk by stalk. I also sowed some cilantro seeds just before I left and it has grown to harvestable size.

Pink Plume Celery
Cilantro

I think the peppers are starting to ripen just on schedule or just a bit late, the first ones are just trickling in. Both varieties of long thin Turkish sweet peppers are excellent eating when green and we've enjoyed the first ones pan fried and roasted or raw in salads. The roasted peppers make a tasty accompaniment to smashed potatoes. Oh, and I didn't photograph the 2 pounds of green Jalapeños that I rescued from the rats. I decided to ferment those to make a green hot sauce.
 

Turkish Pimentos
Sweet Turkish and Mehmet's Sweet Turkish

The spring sown beets held well in the garden but it's time to clear them out. I remembered to photograph this harvest just before I popped them in the oven.

Renee's Golden and Sweetheart Beets

It's not exactly a bounty of summer veggies but I'll take what I can get.

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.