Harvest Monday - 1 September 2014

Welcome to another Harvest Monday report from Eight Gate Farm. As you already know, Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, and we are grateful for the opportunity to participate in it.

For this, the last week of August, the weather finally warmed up to where we would expect it to be, and that has boosted productivity.

There was 6.6 pounds (~3 kg.) of sauce tomatoes on Wednesday, not including the grape tomatoes. We do add those to sauce if we have more than we can eat fresh. Also filet beans and zucchini, both slowing down but not done yet.

And a good handful of Danvers carrots:

On Thursday, another 7 pounds (~3.15 kg.) of tomatoes of all varieties we've planted, again not including grape.

 

There's the first "Rosita" eggplant, of beautiful color. But beware, it has nasty thorns on the calyx! It's an 84-day variety, a little late here, and more than 6 weeks behind the black "Amadeo" variety I've shown in the past, and which is still producing for us. Rosita also has lovely white flesh.

On Saturday we took the last of the spring-sown carrots and beets, as well as zucchini, cucumbers, and a few potatoes for dinner.

Funny story about the beets. They had lost almost all their foliage to something chewing them, and I could not figure out what it was. On a visit the the garden, The Kitchen Goddess came back and told me "goldfinches were eating the beet greens." I really did not believe it until I saw for myself a pair land and begin munching. I did a little research and found this is known behavior for goldfinches. In some areas they're known as "The Salad Bird." As if I don't have enough problems with bugs!

As many others are experiencing, this is a terrible year for tomato blight. All our plants (except the grape) have basically stopped flowering and setting fruit. So what we see out there is what we will get for the season, as they slowly ripen. At this rate, we might have all tomatoes ripen before first frost, something I've never seen before. Here's another large (for us) haul, 18 lbs. (~8.16 kg.).

I picked all the Mt. Hood hops from the two year old vine. It doesn't look like much, but it is easily 5 times what we got last year, so the vine is progressing as it should.

They were dehydrated, vacuum-sealed, and put in the freezer for a future batch of beer. They smelled heavenly.

I'm trying an experiment this summer--growing spring lettuce in semi-shady locations. I set a few seedlings out July 18. The varieties are "Green Ice" and "New Red Fire." As this shows, they are doing very well: tender, delicious, no bitterness. So maybe I don't have to try Summer Crisp to get late summer salads. It's a treat to get our own tomatoes and lettuce at the same time!

On Sunday we picked all our grapevines. While we lost a lot to black rot, we got a much better harvest than last year. Let the winemaking begin!

And another batch of "Honey Select" sweet corn. Not quite at full ripeness, I think, but very tasty nonetheless. But if I keep taking large samples like this there might not be any left!

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and happy harvests to all!