Monday, July 24, 2017

Harvest Monday - 24 July 2017

Welcome to another Harvest Monday update from Eight Gate Farm. It was an exciting and fulfilling week, with many first-of-the-year harvests.

We lead off with the Queen of the Garden, our first artichoke:

Imperial Star artichoke
The garlic looked ready, so out it came. From left, in bunches of six, Katterman, Killarney Red, Vietnamese Purple, and Turkish Red.


The Katterman was the star, with super-large bulbs.

Katterman garlic
These dwarfed the Killarney Red next to them. This variety won't make the cut next year. But then, whoever heard of Irish garlic?

Our first zucchini:

Cocozella Di Napoli zucchini
Our first eggplants:

Ping Tung eggplant

Our first Anaheim chile:


The first beets:


This sight greeted us in the potato bed one morning:


A sad, unexpected first "harvest." Voles have tunneled into the bed and devoured from underground five of the ten potato plants. We depend on potatoes, so this is a loss. Here's all I could salvage from the destroyed plants.


The first jostaberries. The birds love them, so it's good to get at least some.

Jostaberries
We also had many "continuing" harvests. First, several pickings of mangetouts (I love that word).

Snow and snap peas
Several pickings of lettuce like this:


Yes, it's strange to be harvesting these "spring" crops in late July!

Some broccoli side-shoots:


Hot Hungarian Wax and shishito peppers:


Turnips and carrots:


A fragrant bouquet of volunteer cilantro:


Blauwschokkers peas for winter soups:

Desiree Dwarf Blauwschokkers
Lastly, blueberries and a few raspberries:


If you've made it this far, thank you for your stamina! It felt really great to finally start hauling in the goods. I hope you had bountiful harvests this week too. Please see all the lovely posts on Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

10 comments:

  1. Nice harvests. I gave up on in-ground potatoes because of vole damage.

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    1. Yes, I'm thinking I'll plant potatoes next year in one of our steel stock tank planters. I'd like to see a vole tunnel into one of those!

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  2. I can confirm that birds like jostaberries I wrote a blog post recently describing how we found out that hedgehogs like them too.

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    1. I'll trade you an adorable hedgehog for one of our big, ugly groundhogs (woodchucks).

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  3. what a nice looking and varied assortment! I don't have voles (at least I don't think we do) but I have had trouble with very other kind of rodent you can name, from mice to squirrels. I feel you pain.

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    1. Thanks, Mary. Voles, followed by chipmunks, are our greatest garden pest.

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  4. It looks like spring and summer all together with your harvests! And that Katterman garlic is huge. Too bad about the voles - they are such sneaky underground thieves! They get my sweet potatoes here.

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  5. Spring and summer, minus tomatoes! We're still waiting for those. The Katterman had large cloves for planting--input = output I guess.

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  6. So fun to see all that you are harvesting! An amazing haul for New Hampshire and that short season. I have never heard of Katterman garlic before. I need to look it up as it looks like a great variety. So sorry about the potatoes. I hate voles. In bad years they eat my dahlia tubers!

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  7. Oh, voles! I lost about 1/3 of my crop a few years back but now I don't plant in that area - and mostly plant in containers with only a few in the ground. What a shame. But a wonderful variety otherwise, nice to see your first zuke!

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