Monday, August 30, 2010

Harvest Tuesday

Happy Tuesday! With the changing of the weather comes a slowing of yummies from the"summer" garden and waiting for the "fall" garden to start getting under way.The main goal for this week - get the goods out of the garden so we can eat them. Tomatoes are picked as they just start to turn and allowed to ripen indoors. And I have no idea why, but nothing was weighed the past two weeks! Lots of cherry tomatoes, the last of the cucumbers, some beans, eggplants, thai chili peppers, and a couple of figs.

My oldest has managed to get some more radishes from the garden again, so he's a happy camper again! I think his favorite growing seasons will be fall-spring when he can eat as many radishes as I can find space for. According to him they are sweet, not exactly what I think of when I think of radishes.

Big news from the garden... we successfully grew corn! WHAT??? Yeah, maybe not exactly big news since there was a photo of the corn above. The first picking was a little too soon, good, but very small ears. The ones we had on Labor Day though were YUM!





First harvest - the ears were a little immature, but yummy.


Second harvest was much better. We at least got great pollination!




And "harvested" nut not eaten.... mushrooms. Lots and lots of mushrooms. Check out the size of these babies.



Well, it's late, so happy gardening in the morning!












Sunday, August 22, 2010

Harvest Monday August 23, 2010

Welcome to Harvest Monday, hosted by Daphne's Dandelions! Harvest Monday is an excellent opportunity to see who is growing what and find new and interesting varieties of plants to lust after....


We spent a lot of this week playing tourist. Yes, the week after my In-laws leave town we played tourist. I know that is backwards. But what can I say, the 3 year old picked our agenda. Tuesday we spent 6 hours at Seaworld and Wednesday we spent 8 hours at the Zoo. And what is the first thing Kiddo tells Dad when we get home? "Daddy, the Orangutan had poop on his hands..." *sigh* Kids.


Still battling the varmit and losing lots of yummy tomatoes. I think I might have to start picking them before they get totally ripe to be able to eat them ourselves! Here is what we did manage to bring in:

Harvest for the week:
Celebrity Tomatoes: 3 3/8 oz
Super Sweet 100's: 4 3/4 oz
Bush Burgundy Beans: 1 7/8 oz


Unweighed:
Black Beauty Eggplants
Scarlett Runner Beans
Fig
TomatoBerry


That basket is super small, so don't be fooled! AND.... my first FIG!!!!


And it was a beauty, and super delicious.



Some Scarlett Runner Beans --- Check out this big one!


Hmmm, green bean salad. Hot, tangy deliciousness.
Some more Super Sweet 100 tomatoes and Black Beauty Eggplants -
I snagged the eggplants and quickly threw them on the grill.

In my garden check-up, I saw something I had forgotten about... I planted a couple
of Okra in a container and basically have neglected them since. I found an okra pod.
Wonders will never cease.

Finally I managed to make some time to pull up dying and struggling plants, re-amend the soil and replant. It's only about a month late, but hopefully I will get a decent fall garden going. Arg, now I am impatient to see little sprouts and get some new plants in the ground.




Sunday, August 15, 2010

Harvest Monday - August 16, 2010

It has been soooooo hectic here lately. And to tell you the truth, I'm really not sure why. We had an estimate done on remodeling our kitchen, recovered from the sticker shock and now I have to get more estimates...

We just returned from vacation, and apparently all kids (or at least mine) do not like to travel in backwards facing car seats. I have a house to clean, laundry to do and heavens only knows what else lurking and waiting. AND I have made no progress on the fall garden. But enough griping, it's Harvest Monday!!!! Let's see what happened the last 2 weeks. I have no idea if these numbers are for the last week or the last 2 weeks. I just know that this is my most recent tally.

Harvest totals:
Scalloped Squash: 2 pounds 1 1/2 oz
Tomatoberry Tomatoes: 2 1/2 oz
Super Sweet 100 Tomatoes: 4 1/8 oz
Cucumbers: 14 1/8 oz
Hansel (or is it Gretel?) Eggplants: 7 3/8 oz
Thai Chilis: 1 5/8 oz
Fairy Tale Eggplants: 2 5/8 oz
Japanese Eggplants: 7 1/4 oz
Beans: 2 7/8 oz

Scarlett Runner Beans and Burgundy Bush Beans

Cukes, Thai Chilis, Eggplant, SS 100 tomatoes

Scalloped Squash, Scarlett Runner Beans, Burgundy
Bush Beans, Cukes, Japanese eggplant, Fairy Tale Eggplant


My newest order of seeds arrived right before we piled in the car to head to the lake and I had to take them with me so I could drool all over what I want to plant. I have seeds, seeds, seeds galore, now I have to make time to plant everything. Did mention I am in the midst of training for the Marine Corp Marathon and I should be squeezing in a 14 mile run either today or tomorrow. Oh joy...

For the fall garden, I am thinking about planting Asian greens, collards, kale, carrots, peas, radishes, mustard greens, beets, spinach, lettuce, and maybe I will attempt a second crop of tomatoes. The darn ground hog/gopher has successfully eatten all of my heirlooms. I am not happy. Has anyone grown tomatoes as a second summer/fall crop? The seed description says that some CA areas can do this...

The container grown edamame are going great! I think we might have a great harvest in about 2-3 weeks. Very exciting. We munched on the ones originally grown a few weeks ago, and we all had 1 pod, except for the little one, he got 4! It was delish and we can hardly wait for the others to get ready for picking.

We have corn! The hubby said that he thought it would be cool to look out the kitchen window and see corn, so now we can. I have no illusions that these will break any size or beauty records, but it's fun, and that's all that matters. We have cute little ears and the stalks are tall!


And, to add insult to injury, the darn rodent/varmit has a new dirt mound within 2 feet of the rodent deterrent, time to seek other options. My Early girl tomatoes (in addition to the heirlooms) have fallen prey to this creature and we are no longer able to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Darned Varmit.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Harvest Monday!


It's that time of the week again when gardeners around the country show their bounty. Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions.

For some reason I always think that I will have more time to garden when my In-laws or parents are here since will have someone to help with a kid or two...but I never do! Probably because I take shameless advantage of them and go for extra runs or do some extra yoga sessions. We played around a bit this week and found different ways to get into side crane/crow.

And of course, good old crane/crow. I'm not going to lie, I have the ugliest crow pose ever, but I get up, and I can hold it, which is much better than when I started going to yoga in February. http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/468

So now that I've told you all excuses of why I couldn't get out to the garden much, let's see what we managed to harvest this week!

Cucumber: 15 5/8 oz
Magda Squash: 9 5/8 oz
Scalloped Squash: 13 3/8 oz
Ronde Squash: 1 7/8 oz
Hansel Eggplant: 2 3/8 oz
Black beauty eggplant: 11 3/8 oz
Jalapeno: 2 7/8 oz
Early girl tomato: 4 oz
Celebrity tomato: 3 7/8 oz
Super Sweet 100 tomato: 3 1/8 oz
Green Zebra tomato: 5 3/8 oz

A small but varied harvest.
Early girls, SS 100's, black beauty eggplant, cukes, squash, and Green Zebras

Magda squash, Hansel eggplant, Black Beauty eggplant,
EG's. SS 100's, Jalapenos, scallop squash and of course, cukes.
I could have used a different picture, but I kind of like the fact that he
was trying to sneak something off the plate!


What's happening in the garden:

Hmm, yummy, the Thai Chili's are getting red! Now I have to figure out the perfect dish to serve them with. The Pad Thai we had tonight might have been a good one... hind sight is always 20/20 isn't it?

The beans are starting to look "beany"!!! I found little beans on the Scarlett Runner beans! So cute.

And on the Burgundy Bush beans.



And new to the garden is........ a Fairy Tale Eggplant!!! Woohoo!!!! I love it when friends go to the nursery and go plant shopping for me while I am stuck at home!



As my oldest was digging around in the dirt, he found this little treasure.

I did the basic new gardener faux pas..... I stuck a sweet potato into the ground that has started to get sprouts. No research, no separating... just plop. I really didn't think I would get any sweet potatoes, but figured one of these days I would have to dig around and see if anything happened.... and look!!!! It's small, but I hope it has some friends down in the dirt.

And... well, that's all that's going on. I'm sure I should start thinking about fall plants, but I haven't done that yet. Ideas? Suggestions? Also, what should I put on my MUST SEE list for my trip to DC? So many things to do.

I'm going to leave you with this picture of my youngest.... Don't you just want to eat him up???