August 15, 2011 - Harvest Monday




8/8 - Fortex pole beans are slowing down, but beginning to blossom again, while the one row of spring planted bush beans is beginning to produce a second crop. I picked the first cucumber that actually looks like a cucumber.


8/8 - The carrots are sizing up nicely now, and the strawberries are getting larger.


8/8 - A lovely big bowl of sweet, crisp lettuce.


8/9 - Slim pickings, just a handful of pole beans and a few tomatoes.


8/11 - The last two heads of cabbage were harvested. They were smaller than the Cherokee Purple tomatoes! Today's harvest was varied enough to make me happy with it. The large tomatoes were peeled and diced. Half went into the freezer, and the other half went into a pot of goulash for Sunday's dinner.


8/13 - I picked the first zucchini of the year. Strawberries are producing enough to pick about every other day. More stubby little pickling cucumbers for Mr. Granny's salads. I'm not counting on getting enough for more than a jar or two of refrigerator pickles.


We've had strawberry shortcakes twice in a week, put a bag or two in the freezer, and made another batch of jam. That makes 16 half-pint jars, enough for the year, so all the future berries will be eaten fresh or frozen for winter meals.


8/14 - Sparrows swooped down on the garden this week and ate my new lettuce plants right to the ground. The older plants, under mesh, were getting leggy so I pulled out half the bed and will replant it this coming week. The lettuce was still in really good shape, and not a bit bitter.


8/14 - It's not as big as it looks! I needed a green pepper for my dinner, so I found a nice fat one. It did weigh 5 ounces, so not bad for only the second one from that variety.


8/14 - The bush beans are really producing again. They aren't nearly as good as they were earlier in the season, but I'll continue to harvest them until the newer plantings begin to produce a crop.


Harvest Totals August 8-14

Beans, bush - 1.44 pounds
Beans, pole - 1.63 pounds
Cabbage - 1.56 pounds
Carrots - 1.31 pounds
Cucumbers - 1.06 pounds
Lettuce - 3 pounds
Peppers (sweet)- 5 ounces
Strawberries - 2.63 pounds
Tomatoes - 11.06 pounds
Zucchini - 11 ounces

Total harvest for the week: - 24.69 pounds
Total harvest for the year to date: - 276 pounds

Please join in the Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions!



32 comments:

  1. Great harvest. Your carrots & strawberries look delicious. I'm going to try planting carrots & peas here shortly. Wish me luck.

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  2. Rhonda, I just passed my final planting date for carrots, so I hope I have enough. The strawberries should bear off and on until frost, so hopefully I'll get a few more in the freezer...IF I can find room! I didn't have a spare spot for fall peas, as I put the pickling cucumbers and a summer squash against that fence.

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  3. Nice harvest there. I have had a single bean yet (broad beans aside); loads of flowers but no beans!

    I have a theory on the stumpy carrots; did you put anything - feed wise - into the soil before planting?

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  4. I'm sorry the sparrows tried to eat your lettuce, but with laundry baskets full, do you really WANT more??
    Probably yes--because I swore off strawberries and yours are looking YUMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Have a great week!

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  5. Those carrots and strawberries look yummy Granny. I didn't have much success trying to get my fall carrots going. They kept dying due to the heat. I think that there may be a few that made it though.

    I'll be over for some strawberry shortcake this week :)

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  6. You had a nice varied harvest this week. I know you would rather be buried in tomatoes right now, but still a good harvest. My beans are finally picking up just as I'm leaving. Sigh. I did eat a whole pile of beans yesterday and I will again today. Yum! And your cabbage are so cute. Just enough for one for a salad. Hmm or maybe you need both for one salad. At least you got something. Mine never headed up at all.

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  7. The harvest looked great this week, Granny. Very varied, and all of it good for the makings of delicious salads :)

    Congratz on a great year so far!

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  8. Lovely! I am jealous you still have strawberries and your carrots look great!

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  9. I know you are swimming in the lettuce and don't know what to do with it all but I wish I could just have a fraction of your luck with the lettuce.

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  10. I can hardly believe the great harvest your getting, all that long hard work is paying off..now the rest of the year you will sit around eating it and get fat like me :o)

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  11. Everything is looking great. It is so funny to see many talking about their second planting and I am barely starting to harvest my first and only planting.

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  12. TIG, I used the same (purchased) compost in all the beds, only those earliest carrots looked just like yours.

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  13. Sue, the longer I can keep that lettuce growing, the longer I can go without buying $5 containers of spring greens for Cookie. He's a very picky rabbit.

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    Robin, my fall carrots germinated pretty well, but they seem to have slowed down considerably in top growth. I hope they mature and are pretty and straight.

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    Daphne, those two heads of cabbage were from the same bunch of seedlings as the huge ones I harvested earlier. They were planted on the opposite end of the garden, right next to where the big onions and big broccoli plants grew. They just refused to grow, and the green one was splitting, so I decided their time had come. I really think I'll go back to growing those miniature heads though, we just can't seem to finish off the big ones.

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    Thanks, Ben.

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    Allison, this variety of strawberries is just getting warmed up. They are about 3 weeks late though, so I'm not expecting as many as I harvested last year.

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    Vanessa, surprisingly enough, I haven't had to throw any of it away. A couple of times I've had to give some to my son, but between us and the rabbit, we manage to consume most of it.

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    You've got that right, Ginny. If only I could leave out the whipped cram and butter!

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    Wilderness, your one and only planting is doing so well! My poor garden has really struggled this year. I've chalked it up as my very worst garden EVER!

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  14. So much variety. I just can't wrap my head around lettuce and peppers and tomatoes and carrots and cukes all at the same time. LOL. I'm thinking SALAD!

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  15. Barbie, it's funny, but I only want lettuce in my salads, along with walnuts and sometimes craisins. I do love a hot bacon and onion dressing over leaf lettuce, too. Mr. Granny likes cucumbers and tomatoes, but no peppers or carrots. I always have to make separate salads for us, unless it's the hot bacon one. We'll eat huge bowls of that. In fact, it's been a while. I think I'll make that for dinner!

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  16. Wonderful Harvest! Your strawberries are producing like crazy.Just love all the pictures!

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  17. Granny - What's not good about your green beans? They look green and fresh to me. I will keep picking beans until frost. I've never noticed a difference in taste! What variety of carrots and strawberries are those? They look so good.

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  18. Thanks, Mrs. Pickles....but notice the lack of cucumbers! Unlike somebody I know who has like tons and tons of them :-)

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  19. Random, this particular variety gets tough and kind of rubbery during later harvests. They just bend, not snap when I remove the ends. I usually pull them when that happens, but there are a lot of new blossoms so I'm thinking I might leave them and see if the next flush of beans is any better. In the meantime, Annie and Otto don't care if they have rubbery beans to eat, so I'm still picking and cooking them. I'm not fooling with freezing them though, the Fortex are being preserved for winter, and I have three more plantings of bush beans nearly ready to bloom.

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  20. Your harvest still looks good. I should be getting beans soon after such a late sart for them. I wish I had some of that lettuce to go with my tomatoes.

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  21. Ed, I just hope I can keep the rest of the lettuce edible until the new seeds germinate and mature. This morning it looked like some of it was getting ready to bolt, where yesterday it still looked OK.

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  22. Looking good granny. I never get a second harvest out of my everbearing strawberries and this year I have lost many to the heat. Think next year I will replace with June bearing, then I will a some of both. But still can't figure why my everbearing never give a second crop.Ummm

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  23. Envious of those beans! I was hoping to get enough to pickle this year but so far very slim picklings.

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  24. Granny your beans look great. So do your strawberries. You sure do get a lot! I keep trying, maybe I'll succeed one of these years. I just moved one plant over by the blueberry bushes to see how it would do. It is growing nicely, but still no strawberries on it! You have a good variety of harvest this week!

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  25. Spectacular harvest (as per usual) this week. Our lettuce has just kept going this year too. Not enough heat to stress it I guess? I am just now getting zucchini as well. What is up with that?! I guess I have about six weeks more that they can produce before most things will go down from the chill rains and darker/shorter days of September. Six weeks is plenty of time to get sick of zucchini - which is an annual event of summer it seems.

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  26. Lorie, sometimes I really think I'd like to replace these strawberries with June bearing. It's nice to have them bearing all summer, but in a way I'd like one big harvest and have it over. I never had very good luck with everbearing varieties until I got these, so you aren't alone there!

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    David, it had definitely been a year for beans! I've picked over 32 pounds so far, and have 3 new plantings that will begin bearing soon. I'm still short of last year's 55 pound harvest though. I guess I'd better use some for dilly beans for my daughter, as the freezer is bulging now.

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    Shawn Ann, growing strawberries is not one of my strong points! I moved a few runners into the flower bed around the patio, and they are doing better than those in the garden. The ones I put in the half-barrels aren't doing much at all. I'm trying to talk myself into trying a different variety next year.

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    Kitsap, I'm sure we'll be inundated with summer squash before long. I have a second zucchini to pick today, so others shouldn't be far behind. The crooknecks are full of male blossoms now, and we have almost two months of good weather left for them to put forth fruits. The summer squash are one crop I want to be a bit stingy, as I don't need a lot frozen, and we get tired of zucchini real quick. Well, I do. My husband would have fried zucchini for breakfast if he could!

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  27. Hmm, this is your worst garden ever and you've already harvested 276 lbs or produce? Ha! I didn't get that much all last year and it was one of my better gardening years. I had hoped to reach 300 lbs this year especially with my new community garden plot "on-line" but the harvest is looking to be much less than last year. Maybe this was just not a good year for gardens on the west coast.

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  28. Lou Murray, not a very good year at all. I've had more garden failures this year than ever! Of course, it's producing all we can eat and more, but no tomatoes for canning, very few peppers and squash and weird carrots! Lots of beans and lettuce, though!

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  29. Yum! Those beans and strawberries look delicious!!

    Any suggestions on a good place to get some strawberry plants? I rec'd a small box full from a GW member but when we had the tree fall and all the debris they were under all that mess for such a long time they just plain withered up. :((

    p.s. I updated :P

    Hugs!
    ~Wendy

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  30. Wendy, I bought mine from a local nursery as a bundle of bare root plants. I'm not really into sending off for things like that, as I'm too cheap to pay the high shipping and handling prices most of them charge.

    You updated? I'm on my way!

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