The Week of September 13-19
Monday I picked a 21 oz. butternut, the smallest one of the year. I forgot to photograph it before we ate it!
Tuesday was a good harvest day, giving me red bell peppers, a few strawberries, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, butternut squash and the last of the bush beans. The bush bean vines have all been pulled and added to the compost.
Friday I harvested tomatoes, Gonzales cabbage, pole beans, lots of cucumbers, sweet peppers, jalapeno peppers, lettuce and parsley.
Saturday it was all about the butternut squash, plus a few cucumbers and two zucchini. There were also a few tomatoes that didn't make it into the picture.734 ounces (46 pounds) butternut squash
487 oz. (30 pounds) tomatoes
24 oz. bush beans
14 oz. pole beans
100 oz. cucumbers
16 oz. lettuce
91 oz. sweet peppers
62 oz. zucchini
5 oz. strawberries
12 oz. cabbage
2 oz. hot peppers
5 oz. parsley
Total for week: 1552 ounces = 97 pounds
Year to date: 794 pounds
Daphne's Dandelions is the host for Harvest Monday, where everyone can share links to their harvest for the week. Please visit her blog and leave a link, so we can enjoy your harvest photos!
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Heavenly Blue morning glory finally gave me its first blossom of the year, a full two months later than last year's first blooms. The vines are loaded with tiny buds, so I'm hoping to have a glorious show of flowers before it freezes.It's getting closer and closer to time to leave for Arizona, so I'm trying to kick my harvests into high gear, and do some fall garden cleanup in the process. I've pulled many of the tomatoes. I'm down to just five of the full sized indeterminates; 2 Brandywine, 1 Kellogg's Breakfast, 1 Market Miracle and 1 Amish Paste. I've also left 1 Black Cherry and 1 Cherry Roma. There are still a few of the dwarf plants that are refusing to give up. Mini Gold, the first one to bear, looks as though it will be the last to quit bearing! What a work horse that little plant has been, and the foliage is extremely lush and green. The flavor of the tomatoes isn't particularly special, but they sure taste better than store bought, and they are pretty in salads. I will probably plant this one again next year.
Mini Gold is a tiny work horse. It's only about 2 feet tall, and has been bearing small yellow fruits nearly non-stop since June 24. At first, the tomatoes weren't very flavorful, but became much better later in the season. The plant slowed down for a couple of weeks, while it put forth a new flush of blossoms. It's now giving some ripe fruits, and loaded with green tomatoes and hundreds of flowers. If the roots haven't gone through the bottom of the pot, and if it will survive being moved, I may cut it back before it freezes and try to move it south with us.I've harvested most of the butternut squash, and cleaned out the vines. There are still four large ones left in the garden, three of which were accidentally pulled with their vines. I've left them there, but I don't know if they will continue to ripen.
A basket full of butternut squash was harvested from the garden Saturday.
This week's butternut harvest joins all of the others. They have all been scrubbed with a soft brush and water, then given a dip into a sink filled with water and a small amount of bleach. Once they had air dried, they were all placed on the patio table, where they will remain for the next week or two, maybe longer, depending on the weather. They'll be brought inside and stored for the winter. While we are gone for the winter, our thermostat is set at 45F, which should be an excellent storage temperature for them. We have already eaten four, and given away two, so 24 squash have been harvested from two plants, a total of 79-1/4 pounds. If the remaining four ripen, I should get a total yield of about 95 pounds.Today (Sunday) it rained hard all day, so I decided to do something with all the tomatoes I'd picked this week. When they were all washed and cut up, they completely filled my 8-quart soup kettle. I added an onion and some spices, simmered them until everything was soft enough to puree with the stick blender, put it all through the chinois and returned it to the stove to simmer for three hours. When it had reduced to a fraction of its original amount, I added sugar, vinegar and more spices, cooked it down a bit more, then ladled it into pint jars and put it in the boiling water bath. That was practically an entire day's work for......
Three pints of ketchup.
Three pints of ketchup.
Phew! Glad you explained about that first photo, I thought you were robbed of your squash for a minute! My goodness you harvested a lot of squash this week. Great haul :)
ReplyDeleteGranny- Congratulations on your first morning glory bloom! There are two pluses to such a late flush of bloom, the blooms last longer during the cool weather and the color seems more vivid. Ed
ReplyDeleteThat squash harvest is amazing. I got two out of one plant. Then the SVB got to it. I got the sucker, buried the damaged stem and the plant has come back to life with three new fruit about the size of an apple. I just hope there is enough time to for them to get bigger and ripen. it would be so nice to say I got a mere 5 from one plant. 24 from two is amazing!
ReplyDeleteNice Harvest. Time to go south? I cann't believe that its almost an year that I started following your blog. Happy Gardening, I cann't wait to see your new Arizona garden starting soon.
ReplyDeleteI'm growing butternut squash in my fall garden for the first time. I hope mine produce like yours. Wow, that's a lot of butternuts from 2 vines.
ReplyDeleteYou know I feel for you. A lotta work for three jars. But...the all knowing "they" say that organic ketchup is one of the better choices to spend your money on because all the goodness in the tomatoes is concentrated in the ketchup (lycopene, which is an anti-oxidant, is increased when you cook tomatoes). So, you didn't just make three pints of ketchup, you made three jars of the elixir of life.
ReplyDeleteYou amaze me. Almost 800 lbs. from your garden. Wow.
ReplyDeleteWe received the keypad this week, thanks! i will post about it tonight I hope. It came just in time for Dan to enter all his students' id numbers into a database for some project, so that will be so much easier! Look for something in the mail from me soon!
Ali
It's rather painful for me to look at all those beautiful butternut squash, a variety that I have never been able to grow...and those giant red peppers. I suppose I will have to be content with living vicariously through your pictures.:)
ReplyDeleteNartaya, I hate it when I forget to photograph before eating the produce ;-)
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Ed, I think you shamed my vine into flowering. It only did it the day after I complained about it to you! I read that one shouldn't fool with Heavenly Blue, as it's such a late bloomer, but it's so beautiful I can't resist. Last year I got to enjoy the lovely masses of blue from late July until October 10, when the vines froze. Even Mr. Granny enjoyed that planting, so I did three beds of them this year. Let's hope for a late freeze.
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Johanna, Waltham Butternut did very well for me last year too, but nothing like this year. The total crop last year was 32 pounds, and it's way more than double that now. I buried the stem of one that accidentally got chopped off. So far the leaves are still looking perky. Two more are just laying out there stemless. I don't know if they will ripen off the vine.
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Sarada, don't hold your breath for an Arizona garden this year. I'm only going to plant lettuce (for the rabbit) and coddle my little lemon tree. The abnormal amount of rain we got down there last spring means I'll have weeds covering the entire 6/10 acre. I'll be spending my winter getting rid of them!
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Char, I hope your butternuts are as successful. The problem with them is that they take up so much space! I'll gladly give it to them, though. The flavor is worth it, and they last all winter.
I just visited your delightful blog, and added it to my blog roll. Catching up on yours will be my project this evening ;-)
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Cheryl, three jars of the elixir of life for dunking my French fries ;-) What's wrong with that picture?
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Ali, I'm just happy Dan could use it.
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Mr. H, I would think butternuts would grow fine for you. I don't plant seeds until May, and harvest long before frost. Your season isn't that much shorter than mine. Of course, my summers are hotter. However, this year was cooler than normal, and my yield nearly tripled.
So it wasn't the groundhogs eating my squash after all was it? You've been here stealing them. Oh how I envy your squash. I don't think I eat that much squash in a year.
ReplyDeleteSo it wasn't the groundhogs eating my squash after all was it? You've been here stealing them.
ReplyDeleteCurses, foiled again.
My goodness, you must be the Queen of Butternut! Do you grow a bush variety or the viney kinds?
ReplyDeleteI used to make ketchup, and while sooo tasty it was a lot of work. I gave most of it away. Then I decided to start giving the recipe away instead. ;-)
Villager, I grow "Waltham", which is supposed to grow vines 6-7" long and bear 4-5 fruit per plant. My vines easily grow to 20' and branch out in all directions. I chop them off to try to keep them contained in an approximate 12' x 20' bed, and they produce way more than a dozen fruits each. I can't tell you how many immature squash I've lopped off those vines, either on purpose or by accident. The vines I removed Saturday were loaded with baby squash and blossoms. I plant four seeds in a pile of composted cow poo the first week in May, thin to the two strongest plants, start harvesting around the end of august.
ReplyDeleteIt had to be ketchup, I only had three empty jars! I'm trying to eat more canned stuff to increase the empty jar count!
Gosh, time just seems to fly between the time you are in one place and the time you are in another!
ReplyDeleteI think I am gonna have to try your variety of butternuts next year...sure beats my two itty bitty's!
Granny, I see that you haven't slowed down any while I was away from the blog world. You CONTINUE to amaze me!!
ReplyDeleteHoly Butternut Batman! That is an amazing haul from your plants. Well done! I was actually planning to grow butternut this year but I had bad seeds that did not germinate (not my usual seed source and they will NEVER get my business again either!). I think I may give them another whirl next year.
ReplyDeleteShawn Ann, the summer did fly by this year. It doesn't seem like it should be nearly time to go south. Sometimes I feel like I'm going "up" on the "down" escalator, not enough time to get everything done!
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Debiclegg, I'm so happy you're back....I missed you!
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Kitsap, I like the variety a lot, as it seems to be quite resistant to powdery mildew. I overhead water mine and the don't seem to mind at all. I also like that it is so darned prolific!
Maybe the butternuts grow so well for you because you're such a nut yourself. :-) And I mean that in the nicest possible way, Granny! You know I just adore you.
ReplyDeleteWow, two plants in a bed as big as 12'x 20'? I had no idea they needed that much room. I must now scour your blog for pictures of your butternut bed. Or perhaps you can point me to the right posts with the pictures?
Thyme2, this photo was taken back in July, so it grew a lot after that. It probably shows it the best:
ReplyDeletehttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Di5FEUV8sqI/TFRr1JuiQCI/AAAAAAAAGAI/c-WZJptIn-c/s1600/2010-07-31+Cosmos+Gone.jpg
The 2 plants take up the entire width of the photo, and go back from the lawn into the flowers by the fence. I hadn't started cutting it back yet when this was taken, I removed a LOT of it in August.
Oh, I'm thinking some squash butter would travel well south with you! Besides- that isn't putting it into a pie! ;-) *snicker* Amazing harvest this week Granny!
ReplyDeletethat is one respectable butternut harvest and I understand forgetting to photograph them. They are so good.
ReplyDeleteBarbie, a few butternuts are on the "take" list already, along with the new bread machine, flour, yeast and a dozen jars of assorted home canned goods. We're trying to keep the list smaller this year. We always take too much stuff, and it all has to come back in the spring.
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Ottawa Gardener, at least Mr. Granny and I agree on the goodness of baked butternut! That's not always the case with some of the stuff I grow ;-)
Amazing butternut crop! I can never grow pumpkin as the place isnt big enough
ReplyDeletewhooooooooooohooooooooooo my very first tomato see sprouted this morning. I was so excited. Significant Other thinks ive gone mad.
This one was planted direct in the garden as a seed. In Sydney I think i can do that. Accidentals keep coming up so i figured what the heck.
Its a Black Krim tomato.
When someone said they were looking for your pumpkin bed article.. i realised you dont have any tagging or labelling on your blog. so that articles pertaining to pumpkin or tomatoes can be quickly browsed. i think thats possible. YOu do such a marvellous job on your blog overally you continue to amaze me.
from Sydney, Downunder.
SidneyGardener, congratulations on the first tomato plant. Join the rest of us who go mad over "our babies"!
ReplyDeleteI don't add tags or labels, because it takes so long. I used to, but it got to where it took longer to label than to blog. There's a little search box up in the top left corner, just type in "butternut" or "pumpkin" and it does the same thing.
Wow! Sounds like your garden is doing amazing! Mine here in the valley is so pathetic. I think I've gotten some green beans, a handful of tomatoes, and bushels of jalapenos. So funny that those did so well and everything else did terribly! I planted them to make salsa, but without tomatoes I ended up canning them by themselves in slices for later. Oh well!
ReplyDeleteAmy, it's too bad we couldn't get together! I had the tomatoes, but no hot peppers. I ended up using red pepper flakes for the heat in my salsa, and it's really, really HOT! Even though I reduced the amount in each subsequent batch, the last of the 40 pints is almost as hot as the first. I have to add extra tomatoes to be able to tolerate it.
ReplyDeleteahh i didnt know about the search bar.. what a klutz i am.
ReplyDeletethanks Annie!
my baby is still growing and ive made 60 newspaper seedling planters care of YouTube instructions. What did we do before the internet?
im thinking about investing in a soil blocker but probably for next year as its 14 days delivery from USA to Australia and No one retails them here . its too late for the seedlings and i only really need them for tomatoes thought maybe i can experiment for other things. just so warm here that things like lettuce can be planted straight in the garden all year round.
SydneyGardener, my soil block makers are the do-it-yourself kind. One is made from a Tupperware container, the other from a pill bottle. They work great, and they were free!
ReplyDeleteTry putting "soil block maker" (with the quotes) in that search bar ;-)