Harvest Monday

It feels like the past month or so, I've only been posting about my harvests and CSA shares... Things are growing along out back, not a lot of changes, but I realized a few weeks ago that I'd been spending way too much time on my computer. Most of my free time was being spent in front of this screen, reading about things that interest me like cooking and baking, canning, self-sufficiency, and best of all, all of your blogs! I've decided to cut back on the screen time to get through a few books I've purchased (about said interests), and also getting back into crocheting the blankets I'm making for the boys. Once Boy Wonder goes back to school in three weeks (Do I squeal with excitement, or faint from the realization of having an 8.5 year old going into third grade?), I'll have more free time (ie brain power) to think of creative things to talk about and write about.

In the mean time, here's what I brought indoors this past week...
Wednesday... I still have one plant producing a few nasturtiums. The others have all died from the heat.
Did you know you can pickle nasturtium seeds? Me neither! I had a lot that I saved for next season, and stopped gathering them up. Here's another way to pickle them from Old Fashioned Living, with other nasturtium recipes.

I couldn't remember if I'd purchased red or yellow Tumbling Toms, and now I know! The yellow tomatoes are the first Tom's of the season. They were sorta bitter. Par for the variety's coarse? We shall see...

There wasn't time on Wednesday to weigh the harvest, so I ended up combining that day's harvest with yesterday's harvest, shown below.

The beans are separated into two piles to show the difference between production based on where they're growing. The purple and few green beans are from 12 plants (south facing, sunny most of the day) growing in front of my melons, and the spindly pile is from 50ish plants (west facing, 6-8hrs of afternoon sun) in their own bed. Crazy, huh?

Oh, and those red specs next to the tiny orange sweet pepper? They're my first Thai Hot chili's. They were fruits that were on the pods when I brought the plant home. I popped one of those lil guys in my mouth, and they pack quite a punch for being so small! I can't wait to have more! I see a Spicy Thai Shrimp dish in my future...

I decided to remove them so the plant would produce more.

Below are my first cut flowers. Zinnias and "10 week stock" (I think). I thought I'd bring some indoors before they bit the dust. Like the vase? It's a cleaned up tequila bottle, lol.

This week's harvest total...

Bush Beans:  4.8 oz

Basil: ~1 oz

Baby Belle Peppers: . too small to weigh, doh!

Viva Italia tomatoes: 9.3 oz

Tumbling Tom cherry tomatoes: 1.7 oz

I didn't bother weighing the nasturtiums or Thai Hot's.

I used the basil to make this Basil Vinaigrette (I halved the recipe, used white balsamic, and only 1/2 cup oil). It's a very nice dressing that is low in actual vinegar flavor, so both boys are enjoying it too. Today the purple basil had "stained" some of the roasted garlic pink, so it looks a little better than this picture.

Remember that melon plant I'd successfully saved? Yea, well, I ripped it out yesterday in an attempt to allow more sun to reach the Thai pepper plant. Priorities, ya' know?

Last Monday I mentioned a new addition to the melon family--the melon in the upper left of the below photo, and when I was peaking at my plants from the dining room window (the only way I can see their backsides w/o climbing back there), I noticed a second newcomer hiding behind leaves! Now the total is 6 pantyhose-slung melons growing on 4 plants.

I'm feeling the urge to do another video update... The next set will be more detailed, and I'll try to go slower, I promise. It's a lot quicker and easier for me to do right now than take pictures and write about them, so stay tuned!

Please stop by the wonderful blog of our Harvest Monday hostess, Daphne, to see what she and other gardeners are growing and harvesting this season.

Harest Monday

This week was a fun harvest for me because I was able to get a few small harvests over a couple of days. Having such a small garden means my harvests are going to look mostly the same for the rest of the season, just more of everything as the peak draws nearer...

Here is what I picked on Tuesday...

Then again on Friday...

This was the first of the Siam Queen Thai Basil...

All of the purple beans were from the set that's growing in front of the melons. These plants are huge! I swear there is some symbiotic relationship going on between the melons and beans, because the beans growing in their own bed are half this size, and scraggly. Maybe it's that they're soaked in the sun all day vs the other bed of beans only gets afternoon sun. Who knows...

These were picked this morning...
See the new tomatoes in the middle? Those are my first Pearson tomatoes, with the red coming in at half a pound! The red one was way in the middle and barely visible, and I accidentally pulled the green one off with it.

Does anyone know why the top of the tomato has cracked around the stem? Is it still good to use?

Some of the basil and a couple tomatoes have been used on personal pizzas, and the rest are in the freezer. I have a quart sized ziploc almost bursting with basil leaves now.

I try to make my own breads and pizza crusts as often as possible, but seeing "5 minutes," had me suckered into trying these crusts. They're pretty good for ready-made crusts...

This week's harvest total...

Bush Slicer Cucumber:  4 lb, 5oz

Bush Beans:  3oz

Basil: 1.8oz

Baby Belle Peppers: .5oz

Viva Italia tomatoes: 2 lb

Pearson tomatoes: 10oz

There are three more cucumbers growing, but where I was complaining of only female flowers showing up before, now I only have male flowers. Doh! Next year I think I'll start the plants 2-3 weeks apart to help with this.

I don't know how long it'll take for the Charentais melons to ripen, but they're starting to look really yummy!

There is also a new one, so it will be nice having a staggered harvest.

I didn't think this would ever happen... My White Habanero's are finally starting to fruit!

Each week Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions hosts Harvest Monday. Check out her page to see what other's have been munchin' and crunchin' on this week.

Harvest Monday

Today's Harvest Monday has me feeling like my hard work is finally beginning to pay off. It's the largest harvest I've had at one time--probably in the two seasons I've been attempting this gardening thing. I mean, look at what I harvested around this time last year! I have to laugh at that post. I really had no idea what I was doing--not that I claim knowledge now either LOL...

Just say, "Heck yeah" to variety! Two new firsts for the season are the Bush Slicer cucumber, and Baby Belle peppers.

Although I'm not a big fan of green peppers (I really like 'em red), I decided to remove a few of them to encourage the plant to continue flowering. The day after I harvested the green peppers, I removed these orange peppers...

Beautiful and tasty Viva's!

There are a few more that could come off the vine, but since my goal is to do some canning, I'm going to try leaving them on as long as I can--otherwise I'll end up eating them, lol.

What did the Momma Viva Italia tomato say to all the baby Pearson tomatoes when they were lagging behind? Catch up! Har. Har.

Bush beans are nice because of the small plants, but I haven't been able to harvest enough to serve at once to the family yet. I may be switching to vine/runner beans next season. I've read Scarlet Runner beans like a little cooler weather, so I may even try a few of them at the end of the season...

I laid out all the basil leaves and froze for later use (1 of 2 batches)...

I didn't take a picture of it because it wasn't very pretty, but I sautéed the beans and tomatoes with garlic, and served over whole-wheat spaghetti for DH and I. I've been slicing the cucumbers as sides for lunches, and the peppers will go into salads tomorrow night.

This week's harvest total...
Bush Slicer Cucumber: 11 oz
Bush Beans: 3.8 oz
Basil: 2 oz
Baby Belle Peppers: 2 oz
Viva Italia tomatoes: 6.2 oz

Each week Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions hosts Harvest Monday. Check out her page to see what other's have been munchin' and crunchin' on this week.

What's Growin' On

I just realized I'm a day behind when I said I'd provide you some detailed pictures to go along with my video garden tour... Oops!

With the heat consistently hitting the 90's the past few weeks, production is really starting to pick up. I can't wait to share my largest summer harvest so far with you--but that's not until Monday. ;-) For now, here are a few close ups of what's growin' on...

My lone Isabella Charantais melon so far from three in-ground plants...

7/13

7/17

Below Three Isabella's in the 18 gallon SWP. Production and plant growth are far better in the SWP. I plan on making another one next year, and will skip growing them in-ground.

7/13

The two on the left...

7/13

7/17

Below One of three Baby Belle plants growing in SWPs. They're a lot smaller than Renee's Garden shows them. I wonder if it's because of the small containers (3 gallons of soil), or if it's because I started too early. The third plant was started a few weeks after the first two, and is taller, less leafy, and just now starting to flower. I'm looking forward to comparing the production results.

7/13

A pepper at the top of the above plant, yesterday.

...and this morning...

Below Bush Slicer Cukes in 2 SWP's. The plant growth has been great, but the plants are having problems with producing both male and female flowers at the same time. Since I'm using a paint brush to hand pollinate, I've been collecting as much pollen as I can, and trying to distribute two or three days later when the female flowers appear. I'm losing more females than I'm able to pollinate at this point.

7/13

7/16

Below A lot of the green green beans in the raised bed with only beans are curling, and the non-curling beans are slow to produce. I had this problem growing green green beans last year, so I will probably stick with yellow and purple beans next year...

I've pulled most of the green green bean plants growing in the very front of the bed due to small size and low to no production, and reseeded with Purple Queen. The pulled plants were started in newspaper pots and placed in-ground in the pots, and had very little root growth outside the pots.

Below I have about 12 Purple Queen plants in front of my in-ground melons, and they all look like this. Well, actually, one of them is a green green bean plant (how'd that happen? lol)--see it behind the Purple Queen? It's producing ok too...

Below Here are the two Bush King acorn squash. Notice the size difference between the two?The plant on the left has a squash already, but it's just stalled in growth and flower output. I really don't know what's wrong with it since I'm treating both of them the same. Could it be because of the squash growing on it?

The plant on the right will have it's first female bloom in the next few days.

Since I'm having the same issues with male and female flowers not showing themselves at the same time, I already have pollen collected...

Hope you enjoyed! If anyone has any ideas on what may be wrong with my acorn squash, please let me know! I'm heading over to GardenWeb to see if someone can help me...

July Garden Tour by Way of Videos

I've been wanting to give y'all a video tour for a few months now, but wanted to wait until all the plants were up and growing...

These were the first takes, so I have to apologize in advance for them being so shaky and for the blurry "close-ups." Let me know if you have trouble viewing them or with this post loading. I didn't realize the video file size would be so large.

Video 1 is of the containers...

Video 2 is of the "square foot garden" raised beds and salad table...

Video 3 is of the raised beds along the deck and the rest of the yard...

Hope you enjoyed! On Friday I'll share a few picture updates with you as well.

Gearing Up

Most of the garden is still feeling a little hesitant about throwing caution to the wind and letting loose with producing, but the signs that they're gearing up for all out production mode abound!

My Isabella Charantais' first female! This was taken Sunday, and I spotted two more today. They've been hand pollinated to up their chances of survival.

Looks like this lil one is making a comeback.

I decided to plant the Thai Hot pepper plant behind the melon plant above, along with some basil where the garlic used to be. It took the Thai Hot no time to settle in.

One of two White Habanero's is beginning to flower. These finicky little plants just didn't like the cool start to summer... Bring on the heat (pun intended)!

All three Tumbling Tom cherry tomato plants are beginning to flower, and look like this one...

The Meyer lemons are plumping up as well as putting out new leaves and flowers. My last lemon count was 25, and now it's down to 12 that are looking more and more like green lemons each day.

Although the plants are still relatively small (maybe 8" - 12" tall), both Bush Slicer cucumbers are hard at work...

As are the Bush King acorn squash...

It won't be long before my Purple Queens are added to the Harvest Monday tally.

I replaced all of the bolted lettuces in my salad table with basil I needed to plant. This brings my basil plant total to 4 varieties, and 23 plants. LOL I see lots of pesto in my future...

Two things not shown are my determinate tomatoes and the plums. The Pearson tomatoes are taking their sweet stinkin' time with producing anything, although they're flowering like crazy at the top of the plants. The Viva Italia is doing really well and is almost overtaking the two Pearson's behind it, but this too, is taking it's sweet time in giving me a red tomato. Some of the plums should be ready to pick this weekend. I picked four of the low hanging fruits, and they're still a little yellow around the stem and quite firm.

I fertilized all of the plants in my SWP's with a half-strength water soluble fertilizer (with my history of fertilizing thus far, I'm playing it safe!). With the exception of this and watering, things are pretty self sufficient right now. This leaves me with time for planning the fall garden, yessss!