Harvest Monday - 27 July 2015

Welcome to another Harvest Monday post from Eight Gate Farm. Thanks as always to Daphne's Dandelions for hosting this forum. It was a wonderful week of harvests for us, as I hope it was for you.

Beans and more beans:

 Including last Sunday, our tally is well over eight pounds. Never before have we harvested so much so quickly.

Peas and more peas!

A couple of heads of Green Ice lettuce, just getting ready to bolt.

Our first "Tigress" green zucchini, at a perfect size.

Two more "Yellow Fin" zucchini.

And then later, one of each.

Our first peppers--not red-ripe yet but needed to spice up a delicious Bahamian Conch Chowder. Of course, here in New England conch are scarce, so we used clams. The peppers are "Aruba" cubanelle, and "Big Bomb" hot cherry.

Our crush, two more artichokes:

A bouquet of chard, which went well with zucchini in a quiche.

A bouquet of New Red Fire lettuce:

A bouquet of beets:

And a bouquet of Mokum and Nelson carrots. This year I am growing the fugliest carrots ever. I don't think I sufficiently tilled the bed. But you know, all cut up, they look as good as any carrot, and they taste great too.

After posing with so many bouquets, The Kitchen Goddess reminded me she used to tell me "always a bridesmaid, never a bride." All right, TKG, I eventually manned-up, didn't I?

I took as many of the "Desiree Dwarf Blauwschokkers" soup peas as were fat, maybe about half the crop. I figured they would dry up better indoors. Here's Daisy-Cat, the Chief Produce Inspector, with the pickings.

As you can see, there were some off-types in the seed lot. I really like growing this pea, but my mistake was taking "dwarf" too literally. They got super-crowded at four per square. Next year I think I will grow them on short trellises.

We continue to get handfuls of blueberries and raspberries, which although doesn't seem to be much, does add up nicely over time.

And our first tomato debuted this week. It's a "Taxi," which TKG begged me to grow, wanting some tomatoes of a different color. Fine, but to me, tomatoes are one thing, and one thing only...red.

It does not look big, but weighed a respectable 5.3 ounces. Here is it cut up:

It is very juicy and flavorful. Okay, TKG, you got me.

And the very last picture of peas (collective sigh of relief), as I pulled the vines today. Normally I let the pea bed go fallow after the last harvest, but this year I'm experimenting with a much later planting of cucumbers. Maybe they'll climb the trellises. You also see some Summer Crisp lettuce I'm trying for the first time.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, and apologies for going so long. I leave you with a snap of a lovely Lemon Queen sunflower that opened this week. It was a free seed packet from Baker Creek.