Harvest Monday - 17 August 2020

Welcome to another Harvest Monday update from Eight Gate Farm. Not to be repetitive, but our drought continues unabated. It's very frustrating. Yet, the harvests continue to be good. I'll start once again with the "first harvests" of the season.

I'm growing a number of beefsteak-type tomatoes this year. All are doing very well, and I harvested the first "Delicious" this week. With a name like that, it has something to prove! It is delicious, no doubt, but not as richly flavored as Brandywine or even Brandy Boy. It was just over a pound.

Delicious

I should note that all tasting notes are based on first impressions. This may change as we try more of each variety.

Super Beefsteak is another new tomato for me. This one really is almost on a par with Brandywine.

Super Beefsteak

I also got the first "Porterhouse," weighing just under a pound. Of all the beefsteak-types we've sampled, we liked this one the least. Still pretty good, but not compared to the others.

Porterhouse

I took the first Plum Regal paste tomatoes. This variety has done pretty well for me in the past, having a good disease resistance profile yet still with high quality taste.

Plum Regal

I got the first San Marzano paste tomato. It's my first time with this, and I like how productive it looks, with fruit twice the size of the Romas I always grow.

San Marzano

I got the first "Jet Star" tomatoes. These came from a plant I purchased at a garden center, to replace a different variety that had died in the garden.

Jet Star

I also got the first Rutgers tomatoes. This familiar tomato is another workhorse for us, both for canning and fresh eating.

Rutgers

With this accumulation...

...The Kitchen Goddess had enough to can up 7 quarts of chopped tomatoes.

Offering to assist, I promptly cut my finger cutting up the first tomato! Just a scratch though. I honestly was a "little" help!

I got the first Cornito Rosso hybrid sweet peppers. I grew this for the first time last year and was very satisfied with it.

Cornito Rosso

After many years of dismal harvests, winter squash is looking extremely good this year. I took the first "Sugaretti," a hybrid spaghetti-type that looks like a delicata. This baby weighs over 5 pounds, much larger than I was expecting.

Sugaretti spaghetti squash

Dry beans, normally a good crop for us, never really established itself well, then was bothered by rabbits. This basket contains the first picking of nearly-dry pods of "Kenearly Yellow-eye." There is maybe the same amount still in the green stage.

Also this week the first pickings of the second batch of sweet corn occurred. On the left below is "Temptress," a bi-color synergistic variety. It's shown with the last of the Illusion white corn I love so much. Temptress is every bit as sweet, but lacks the good tip-fill that Illusion has.

Left: Temptress; right: Illusion

For a sampling of continuing harvests, artichokes are still coming in, but are winding down in the home garden. It's been a tremendously successful crop this year. Not to worry, TKG's community garden plot is just now ramping up with her artichokes.

Tavor artichokes

I got a good picking of Anaheim peppers, which of course means more delicious chiles rellenos. This time she stuffed them with ground smoked pork, dried apricots, and cheese. Wonderful!

Anaheim

I took some more sweet Jimmy Nardello's peppers, and fiery Serrano peppers.

Left: Jimmy Nardello's; right: Serrano

And some more chard and turnip greens.

And here's an excellent morning's harvest from the community garden done by TKG and her mom, who went home with it. She was thrilled, and rightly so.

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and thanks as always to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.