First Harvest of September

It’s harvest season.  There are piles of produce filling my fridge, tabletop, counters, bootroom and basement.  I have bags and bowls and boxes of fresh food overtaking the house, overflowing the allotted foodstuff spaces, making it so I need to step over it all to just get through a doorway.  It’s definitely harvest season. 

Here is what I’ve harvested from my community garden and home gardens.  While I don’t grow a lot of any one thing, I grow a few of a lot of things.  Over 100 varieties of edibles making this definitive season of plenty.

From my community garden plot:

  • Potatoes: Red Chief, mystery white variety

  • Tomatoes: Black Russian and La Roma
  • Beans: Kentucky Wonder Brown, Kentucky Wonder Wax, Fortex Filet, Orca, and Purple Peacock
  • Grapes

 

  • Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Peas (the last of them this week due to powdery mildew taking over)
  • Beets: Detroit Supreme, Red Ace, Chioggia, and Golden
  • Squash: Small Wonder spaghetti, yellow spaghetti, Little October pumpkins

From my home garden:

  • Tomatoes: Siletz, La Roma, Green Zebra, Red Zebra, Sungold Cherry, Sweetheart Grape, Isis Candy, Gold Nugget, Patio, and Moneymaker.  I recently saw a recipe for roasting them in a dutch oven and now I have one on my kitchen gadget wish list along with a food strainer for making roasted tomato sauce.

 

 

  • Fairy Tale eggplant
  • Basil: Organic Sweet Basil, Thai Basil
  • Peppers: Filius Blue, Thai Dragon, and Garden Salsa
  • Aunt Molly’s ground cherries

  • Wild arugula and lettuce
  • Rainbow chard
  • Soybeans

I took some time this week to reflect on this abundance and the colder months to come.  While the days are long and busy now, I’m growing as tired as my plants are from a healthy growing season.  But the glut of produce is available now to enjoy.  The rainbow of colours and fresh flavours will soon be a fond memory so I best savour this season.  With these thoughts I planted my winter seeds and regained my energy for picking and packing away summer’s bounty.

thanks to Daphne’s Dandelions for hosting another wonderful Harvest Monday.

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Harvesting in Early August

This month my neighbours and I have more growing than we can harvest and eat so there is quite a bit of food sharing going around.  Almost daily I get a delivery of somthing, like a giant bowl of fresh figs, that I turn into some lucious creation.  I have also now organized a farm fresh egg delivery in my city neighbourhood and been out picking wild berries – all making for a crazy first few weeks in August.

I’m currently harvesting the following veg from my home garden and the community garden plot:

Beans: Purple Peacock, French Filet

Peas: MammothMelting Snow Peas

Tomatoes: Black Russian, Siletz, Sweetheart Grape, Gold Nugget Cherry, Sungold Cherry, Isis Candy Cherry, Red Zebra, Tumbler

Sema Fino Florence Fennel

Beets: Detroit Supreme, Red Ace, Chioggia, and Golden

Chard: Rainbow, Fordhook Giant, Rhubarb

Peppers: Filius Blue, Garden Salsa

Basil: Organic Sweet Basil, Thai Basil

Squash: one Gold Nugget was ready at the community garden

Potatoes: Red Chief, French Fingerlings

All this has made for some interesting recipes like carmelized figs, fig ginger jam, walnut pesto, and mixed veggies ragu.  I’ll be sure to share very soon.  If I can get out of the kitchen long enough.  help.

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A Berry Good Harvest Monday

This July I have been harvesting all sorts of things.  I wish I had the time to post weekly like so many of the others that list at Daphne’s Dandelions but at least I’m getting something posted!  In the beginning of July I pulled up my garlic from the community garden plot and it looked great despite the rust.  I think there was definitely an effect on the size but there are still some fair sized heads there and it should last us for a few months at least.

Also in the beginning of July I harvested the rest of the peas and composted the vines.  It’s good because I needed the room.  But I did plant a bunch more Mammoth Melting Sugar snow peas at the community garden for fall.

I harvested some kale from the garden plot as well this month as it is doing fantabulous.  I have many bunches of green onions ready to eat and I harvested a head of raddichio this evening.  I also had some rainbow chard from my home vegetable beds tonight and expect that I will be eating that nightly for a week or so.

All month now I have been snacking on blueberries.  I have 5 bushes located in the front potager / perennial garden and 4 of the 5 shrubs are new as of last year so really I’m only eating berries off of one.  But so far it has produced more ripe berries than I can pick and eat fresh so it’s just right and I still have plenty to ripen still.  I eat them in salad and of course on pound cake and whipped cream. mmmmm.

My yellow alpine strawberries are producing berries but I think that perhaps I put too many (5) plants in the small planter on my patio as they are small and turn brown and hard quickly. the leaves are yellowing a but to despite my regular watering, full sun, and fertilizing.  I’d happily accept any advice on improving these plants as this is my first year growing them. 

Here are 2 of the ripe ones with a red thrown in for comparison.  They have a unique strawberry favour that I can only describe as strong strawberry with a hint of banana.  They also have the texture of a cooked banana – some what starchy and mushy – but the texture is not off-putting, it’s more “melt in your mouth”.

Finally – lettuce lettuce lettuce!  I have been eating Super Gourmet Salad blend since March from seeds I planted in January.  The heads are just now starting to bolt but I’m hoping I’ll keep them going until at least August. 

 

 

 

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