Harvest Monday - July 20, 2020

I'm trying to get back into the habit of blogging which means that I need to rejoin Harvest Monday! Normally I would be writing up my post on Sunday but I forgot yesterday so I'll be joining the fun a bit late. It's summer which means summer squash and zucchini. I got a little carried away this year and planted 3 different varieties all at once. I guess I just couldn't wait to try a couple of new varieties that I had planned on growing last year but didn't bother with because I was anticipating another battle with the rodents. So new in the basket are Tatume (aka Calabacita) and San Pasquale. Tatume is a rampant grower and prolific producer, it's the oblong squash on the left. San Pasquale is a zucchini from Southern Italy. And then I had to have my long time favorite Tromba d'Albenga squash.

Tatume, Tromba d'Albenga, and San Pasquale

I am always searching for new things to do with zucchini and I found a winner in this recipe for a Zucchini Ricotta Tart. The Tromba d'Albenga squash was great for this because it stays firm and doesn't get watery so the tart doesn't get a soggy crust. Another recipe that I loved is Yottam Ottolenghi's Crushed Zucchini from his book Simple. The zucchini is roasted with herbs and whole garlic cloves and then lightly crushed with the soft garlic pulp and then seasoned with more herbs and lemon juice. The tatume squash shone in that preparation.

Zucchini Ricotta Tart

This basket features all the different varieties of beans that I'm growing. I'm not dealing with much of a glut of beans because the plants have had to compete with tree roots that invaded their space. There's also the last of the Oregon Giant snow peas in the basket. The pea plants were the least impacted by the tree roots so I got a generous harvest of them that lasted a few weeks. I also grew Oregon Giant over the winter. It's proven to be a resilient variety that endured light frosts with minimal protection and it has stood up well to powdery mildew which can be quite devastating to other pea varieties in my garden.

Oregon Giant Snow Peas
Brinker Carrier, Roc D'Or, Purple Amethyst, Rolande, Gold Nectar Beans

I gave onions another try this year. My experience with onions has been rather mixed over the years. The biggest problem that I have is that most varieties tend to bolt. One very wet winter ruined most of the onions with Downy Mildew. In spite of that I decided to give them a try again. I bought some seeds and then I didn't get around to sowing them until mid-December which is a full month later usual which also delayed the time when I planted the seedlings in the garden. It seems that it might have been a fortuitous delay. The white variety that I grew is Sierra Blanca which is actually the renamed Superstar that I used to grow. A lot of the Superstar onions bolted on me in the past and this year only 3 or 4 of them bolted. The red onion, Cabernet, is new for me and it too only had about 3 bolters. I guessing that the delayed planting meant that the seedlings escaped the occasional frosty nights that we have in January and the more mild February temperatures didn't trigger the plants to want to bloom. Or perhaps it had something to do with daylength. I'm not sure but I'll be trying a later sowing again this year. It's true that the onions are smaller than what I got with an earlier sowing but they are still plenty big.

Sierra Blanca and Cabernet

That about it from the garden for now. I'm trying to not get too ambitious in the garden because I am still leery of tempting critters back and quite frankly I'm enjoying spending time doing other things. 

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.