Monday, June 28, 2010

Harvest Monday

This is the first (hopefully of many) Harvest Monday posts! Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, and other harvests can be found here at Daphne's Dandelions

What a great garden week it was! Things are really starting to look edible. I am trying to decide when to start thinking about fall plants here, but we haven't even hit the hottest part of the summer yet. Last year when we were house hunting, the mercury hit 101.... and I am dreading the heat! (But the plants will probably love it).

On to the good stuff...this week from the garden we had fresh Swiss Chard, zucchini, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, strawberries, green beans, and jalapeno. That sounds like a big haul, but in actuality it was pretty small!

Eggplant: 6 7/8 oz
jalapeno: 1 1/4 oz
zucchini: 4 oz
scalloped squash: 3 1/4 oz
Celebrity tomatoes: 10 oz
Super sweet 100's tomatoes: 1 7/8 oz
Green Zebra tomato: 4 1/4 oz
Strawberries: 7/8 oz
Swiss Chard: 13 1/4 oz
Green beans: I don't know, the kid grabbed them from me and ate them...

I managed to get the strawberries inside to wash and weigh them before they were consumed. We've had a pretty good strawberry harvest so far this summer considering that we only have 3 plants that have been in the ground for 3 months and 3 more that we just planted 1 month ago. The hubby and I have not eaten a single berry... my goofy boy gobbles them up as soon as I let him find them.

The goofy boy has been asking me the last few days if we can eat the purple eggplant. So I finally caved this weekend and we harvested the largest of the 3 that are edible sized. Since we were finally going to eat one of the eggplants, I decided we might as well eat the scallop squash I picked earlier this week and the zucchini that was sizing up. We can't eat just 1 squash/zucchini, so might as well combine them all for a side dish. We washed them up, sliced and tossed them on the grill with the rest of dinner, and they were so good! Hubby's response to the eggplant was "I didn't hate it." True praise indeed.

The jalapeno below (1 of about 4 good sized ones on the plant) was used in a last minute batch of black beans.

Hmmm..... Dinner was grilled chicken legs, rice, grilled eggplant/zucchini/squash, braised collard greens and some black beans. Yum! Summer is here and the garden will hopefully produce us lots of treats.
This huge bolting plant is bok choy. I've been letting it grow with hopes of saving seed. It was such a great producer this spring, we probably cut and ate over 4 pounds of bok choy. I know at a single harvest we had 2 pounds, 9 oz! It's taking forever though, I really want the space as planted the watermelon next to it and it really needs the room to grow now. I also have some Blue Lake bush beans behind it that have been lacking for sunshine and space and are already producing some beans. I hope that once we get the bok choy out the beans will shoot up and produce like mad. I have some beans there I need to pick soon, and hopefully I will be able to get a taste this time.
The squash and zucchini have been really odd lately, lots of female flowers and I have to hunt for male flowers. And there has been some cross-pollinating so the females will develop. I figure that is ok since I am not saving them for seed and really just want them to eat.

12 comments:

  1. Welcome to blogging and congratulations on your first "Harvest Monday".

    It's great when the kids eat the veggies right out of the garden I have yet to taste one of the cherry tomatoes. My grandson eats them as soon as they have any color.

    I think that bolting bok choy is rather pretty. Your garden looks very happy and healthy.

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  2. Welcome and Wonderful Harvest! That's a decent size of produce ;)

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  3. I think grilled squash and eggplant are hard to beat! It's not quite time for eggplant in our garden yet.

    San Diego is a beautiful place to have a garden. I ran RNR marathon there in '98 (the first one). It wasn't my best but I managed to finish. My marathon days are behind me now but it was a good de-stressor.

    Welcome to Harvest Monday!

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  4. I wouldn't knock lots of female flowers as long as you are getting fruit! I have a small corner of bok choy in seed too. Takes several months for the seed harvest here.

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  5. Welcome to Harvest Monday and the blogging world. This is my second year for my square foot garden but I have only blogging for a few weeks.

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  6. Robin - Thanks! It's definitely a work in progress. And my son is so great at what he will try (when he's in the mood to try new things).

    Allison - Thank you! I have been enjoying your blog too =)

    Holly - I can't take too much credit for this one, I had the simple stuff and my husband manned the grill, always a nice change of pace for me.

    Villager - I have no idea why I haven't tried grilled squash/eggplant before. It's awesome! I just ran RnR, they changed the finish so it is no longer at the Marine base and I wanted to see how it was this year, not as good. Now I get a small rest before starting up training for Marine Corp Marathon in October.

    Ottawa - Oh no, I'd never complain about the female flowers, just the hunting for the males to pollinate. But, if they don't get pollinated I can just harvest the mini squash early and toss them into a salad or something fun! I really hope I don't have to wait too much longer to get seeds...

    Debiclegg - Thanks!

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  7. Congrats on the nice harvest! So cool that you already have eggplant. Our plants are growing soooo slowly.

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  8. It seems like a nice harvest to me, but then again I don't have to share with my hubby much. Your dinner looks wonderful.

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  9. Looks like a great harvest to me, I tend to prefer a little bit of a variety of things over tons of a few things. We are lucky enough to be able to grow veggies year round. I find that I don't aim for a super abundance of summer veggies to preserve anymore (other than tomatoes and peppers), I would rather devote garden space to winter veggies and have fresh vegetables to eat in the winter. I bet you could have an amazing winter garden, your winters are milder than mine.

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  10. I missed your first harvest post last week, but belated congratulations on your first Harvest Monday post! I think we have the same first Harvest Monday post dates. Your harvest is certainly more varied and bountiful than mine so far. Looking forward to more from you!

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  11. Welcome to the blogging world, and to Harvest Monday. I enjoy hearing when the kids eat the harvest before it reaches the house! I live in N. Ca, and had a winter garden for the first time this year. Will definitely do it again. Your harvest looks great, keep up the good work! Thanks for sharing.
    ~~Lori

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