Harvest Monday - 18 June 2018

It's almost [calendar] summer, but until lately you wouldn't know it here in New Hampshire. The nighttime temperatures were holding in the low 50s. My peppers and eggplants are pouting, and I despair they will ever put on growth. The tomatoes, though, seem to be holding up and growing, but fruit looks a long way away.

This translates to almost everything having the "slows." We are starting to get some harvests though.

The radishes are doing beautifully.

L: French Breakfast, R: Cherry Belle

We took the first turnips (Purple Top White Globe). The one on the right is about as big as we grow them here, maybe golfball size. Thus I have to laugh when I look at the picture in the Baker Creek catalog, where that adorable little girl is holding a softball-sized specimen. Regardless, we get good greens, and tasty roots to add to our salads.

Purple Top White Globe turnips

We are getting a fair amount of salad greens from the mixes I planted.

And the first garlic scapes were ready to be cut.

Strawberries are starting to roll in. Overall, they seem to be much smaller than last year--whether it's the weather or tired vines I do not know. But they're good.

The next two harvests, diminutive though they may be, are also welcome. First up are beet thinnings for greens:

Next are carrot thinnings. Though they aren't really sweet yet, they add a nice carroty flavor to our salads.

The Kitchen Goddess made some more chive flower/tarragon vinegar. Not only is it a lovely color but it adds a savoriness to dressings.

Lastly I present bug notes. The two fennel plants I put in the Kitchen Herb Garden are working well as a trap crop for the Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars, keeping them from the parsley etc. (as least for now). Given the speed with which they defoliate the plants, they clearly like fennel a lot more than I do!

Not much else to report. Thanks for reading, and thanks as always to Dave at Our Happy Acres for hosting Harvest Monday.