Harvest Monday - 29 July 2019

Hello again from Eight Gate Farm. We were very pleased with this week's harvests.

Starting with the underground dwellers, we harvested all the garlic, 30 heads. Once they have cured and been cleaned I will show them and describe the varieties. Now they just look like dirt.

We dug the whole crop of Red Norland potatoes; three 4-foot rows yielded about nine pounds of these attractive spuds.

Above ground, my wish last week for ripe tomatoes was granted, albeit in a limited way.

Taxi and Oregon Spring tomatoes

We also got the first cucumbers. This variety, "Dar" produces small blocky fruit that has a unique taste in my opinion. Although they look like it, they aren't considered picklers.

Dar cucumbers

We got the first eggplant, Ping Tung. The Kitchen Goddess prepared them that night by sauteing with crumbled sweet Italian sausage in a butter/EVOO blend, with finely chopped garlic scapes and winter savory. Simple and delicious!

Ping Tung eggplant

I picked the first jalapenos. This variety is Early Jalapeno. It sounds like a hybrid but actually it's an open-pollinated strain with earlier maturity than the normal ones.

Early Jalapeno

We got the first green zucchini, Cocozelle di Napoli.

Also the first yellow wax beans, "Carson." Only three seeds germinated successfully this year.

For ongoing harvests, we got more artichokes.

Green Globe

And shishito peppers.

A trifecta of berries: blueberry, jostaberry, and raspberry. There were many similar pickings this week.

Kohlrabi, broccoli, and filet beans.

And we're still picking salad greens and snap peas.

TKG and her mom are again sharing a plot at the community garden. Mom went home with a nice harvest of leeks, cucumbers, ground-cherries, kohlrabi, peas, beets, carrots, celery, tomatoes, beans, and new potatoes.

Finally, here's something interesting from Notes From the Field. I went metal-detecting in our woods and unearthed this cool axe-head up against a stone wall. I don't know what vintage it is, but I think it's pretty old (still sharp though!). The bigger question is, how did it get there? I can imagine an old-timer giving a mighty whack, and the head flying off never to be seen again (by him).

Thanks for reading this long post! Please check out HappyAcres.blog for more Harvest Monday reports from around the world. Thanks for hosting it, Dave!