Monday, July 18, 2011

harvest - summer's bounty

I was being good last week.  I remembered to keep my camera nearby and took pictures of the harvests.  It was also a good week because we had several "firsts" in the garden.

harvest

Black Krim and Beefsteak tomatoes, Big Bertha peppers, patty pan, strawberries, green onion, KY Wonder and yard long beans.  Oh yeah, and our first Japanese eggplant for the season!


a basket of blackberries

The peak of blackberry production is over, but I still haven't grown tired of them yet.  I want more!


garlics

These garlics were harvested about 2 weeks ago.  I laid them on a table outside, away from direct sunlight to dry a bit first.  Then last week, I bunched them and hung them up to cure.  The hardneck variety is Chesnok Red, and I bought the seed garlics from Hood River Garlic.  The softneck variety was organic garlics bought from the grocery store.


harvest


harvest

You can't really see in this photo, but the basket was full of different kinds of herbs (oregano, thyme, sweet basil, purple basil, lemon basil, garlic chives, green and red shiso).  They were used to make a light, aromatic penne pasta.


Harvest

The green tomatoes are Aunt Ruby's Green Tomatoes.  After trying to grow them for two year, these were our first harvest.  Aren't they beautiful? 

In the picture are also our first lima bean and edamame harvest for the season.  The edamame were immediately cooked after picking.  They were sweet and nutty.  Yum!


first pumpkin

Our most exciting harvest for the week was this beauty.  On Sunday, we decided it was time for our first Japanese/Delica pumpkin harvest.  It came in at 5 lbs 6 oz.  I heard the taste of of this type of pumpkin improves after keeping them a couple weeks to a month.  I'll try to wait!


proud gardener with pumpkin

Here's the proud gardner holding the pumpkin.  And, yes, those are PJ pants.  He says they are comfortable to work in.


pumpkin stem

This is a close-up of the stem.  Here's the post on how to determine when to harvest pumpkins and what this stem looked like 3.5 weeks ago.


pumpkin plants

The pumpkin plants are hanging on to the powdery mildew attack.  We have done a few applications of milk spray and seaweed feeding.  We cut off leaves with PM on them and yellow, dying leaves.  The plants are growing new leaves and new fruits.  I don't know if the plants will hang on long enough for those new fruits to ripen though.

6 comments:

Daphne Gould said...

I wish I had your blackberries. I would so love to make some blackberry jam. Yum. And your tomatoes look beautiful.

Jody said...

You have a very lovely garden with lots of great harvests. I'm glad I stopped by and thanks for commenting on ours. We have powdery mildew on our winter squash plants. What kind of milky spray do you use? I've never heard of it.

Sherry said...

Thanks, Daphne! I love my cane-ripe blackberries. There's nothing like them!

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Hi, Jody~ Thanks for paying us a visit! The milk spray is simply milk diluted with water. As far as the ratio, I've read anywhere from 10% to 50%. I think we do 20-25% (1 part of milk to 4-5 parts of water). I hope that will help your winter squash plants!

Mark Willis said...

Fabulous photos of some great-looking veg! I'm a tomato fanatic too, so I do admire those lovely specimens you have grown. Hope the blight is not too severe. I'm worrying about it striking here too, because our weather conditions are very damp at present.

Malay-Kadazan girl said...

Lovely harvest! I like your blackberry very much wish we have some too. Those pattypan squash are really cute. What variety is that?

Sherry said...

Thanks, Mark! I wish our garden is as neat and lovely as yours though. It's a never ending process for us to get rid of those weeds!

Sigh, the blight actually got worse. I had to pull a tomato plant on Sunday because the blight symptoms showed up on the stem and the fruits. I hope you are luckier than we are.


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Diana~ I'd imagine you can grow blackberry in Australia if we could grow it here. You should grow them if you have the space. They don't take a lot of efforts and the fruits are delicious.

The patty pans are Golden Scallop and Bennings Green Tint. They were "old" seeds that I purchased from Botanical Interests 3 years ago. I was surprised they still sprouted well.