Harvest Monday: Slowing Down

Sunday was my first visit to the garden in almost two weeks, and after we had 4.5 days of horrible rain. My rain gauge was almost overflowing! I felt bad for neglecting my plot and was not sure what condition the plants would be in. I had to pull out my popping corn that had gotten totally devastated by...squirrels? Otherwise, left growing are: tomatoes, basil, peppers, watermelon, eggplant, butternut squash, carrots & potatoes. The butternut squash look great! I have about 5 that are almost ready! Yumm, I can just taste the soups!!

I harvested a few cherry tomatoes, one Roma, lots of short n' sweet carrots and two Italian Pepperocini peppers. In addition, I pulled some of the seeds out of the dried pole beans, hoping to save them for next year!

a small harvest 8/29/30

Black-seeded Blue Lake Snap Pole Bean seeds

Clean Garlic

I am back...and I finally got around to cleaning my cured garlic!! I harvested it back in mid-July, so it had been curing for a good month! Since I used some of the garlic heads/cloves immediately, I now have 11 nice looking heads for storage, which I hope will keep into the winter.

Organic German White Garlic, hardneck

A while back I saw this article on thekitchn.com about onion storage and vegetable keepers. I thought these three bags were great, as I was trying to think about what I would do with all the garlic and potatoes I was going to get from my garden! However, time passed and they stayed on my "wish list." Fast forward a few weeks when I had to go to Crate & Barrel to get a wedding shower gift for a friend. I was just going to get her the kitchen composter that she registered for but next to the composter on display were...the storage bags! I had forgotten that Crate & Barrel carried the garlic & potato bags! So, I decided to get one of each for the bride-to-be...and one of each for me!!

my new storage bags!

cute images on the bags

Harvest Monday: Watermelon!!

I have to confess, I am not a die-hard watermelon fan. However, in my quest like more things, I figured that growing one would help! I picked my first Sugar Baby watermelon today, with one still left in the garden. It was definitely the sweetest and most flavorful one I have ever had!

Additional harvested items include lots of tomatoes and basil (small varieties not shown). The dry, hot weather and my inconsistent watering are taking a toll on my large tomatoes, where they have developed many cracks. However, I am just happy to have so many this year. Last year, my plants did not produce as many and critters always selected the ripest ones to munch on right before harvesting!

My Green Zebra variety is being very neglected. The fruit are so hard to see within all the greenery from neighboring tomato plants, that I keep leaving them too long on the vine. I have to make a more conscience effort to look for them since they are not as easy to spot as the red ones.

Green beans were plentiful, along with some of the last pickling cucumbers. I harvested my first red Giant Marconi pepper and four small Italian Pepperoncini.

It is sad to see signs that the garden is slowing down, but so am I. Sunflowers were pulled and the weeds are starting to win. However, I still have a lot to look forward to...like potatoes (fingers crossed) and butternut squash!

A crooked garden overview, 8/8/10

Harvest Monday: Color Diversity

The beautiful summer weather has been keeping away from blogging, but the veggies continue to come in! I had a great harvest yesterday with lots of tomatoes, green beans and carrots!