Monday, July 25, 2016

Harvest Monday 7/25/16

My exciting harvest this week is my first big tomato of the year, a 1 lb 2 oz Mr. Stripey:


Mr Stripey will get a dedicated post later this week.  As a preview, it was one delicious tomato!

You can see that the tomato is almost as big as my little Rocky Ford melon:


I also harvested the first Striped Armenian Cucumber.  They are technically more closely related to melons than cucumbers, but they taste like cucumbers.  The great thing about them is that they never get bitter in the summer heat and they are pretty cool looking!  The downfall is that they are a bit fuzzy, but you can always peel them.

The other big harvest this week is the first winter squash, a Green Striped Cushaw weighing 10.3 lbs.


This is a great squash to grow in the south because it tolerates heat very well and even more importantly, the squash vine borers don't care for it.  It can be substituted for pumpkin in recipes.  Another great thing about cushaws is that they store well- up to four months and they are surprisingly easy to cut through.  

I've been harvesting lots of other summer veggies here: Cubanelle peppers, Roma tomatoes, Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, Red Noodle beans, okra, zucchini and yellow squash.  The summer squash wilting has begun.  I've pulled two plants and a third one is looking like it is on its way out.  I do have back-up seedlings that I will plant.  We are having some really hot weather, so I was hoping the hundred degree days would pass before planting the new seedlings.


My green bean pile was getting large, so I froze my first batch for the year.  In doing so I discovered a freezer tragedy.  Last Sunday we had a thunderstorm that briefly knocked out the power.  I didn't think anything of it and then on Tuesday I was blanching and freezing green beans.  I took the beans out to the freezer in the garage and find that it is far from cold.  The power outage had reset the outlets in the garage.  All I had to do was press the little reset button on the outlet and the power was back.  The freezer was without power for two days in a 90 plus degree garage and everything was thawed.  The temperature was up to 68 degrees.  The good news is that there wasn't too much in there.  This was probably the best time of year for me to have a freezer crisis.  The only loss from this year's harvests was some cream of broccoli soup that I had put in the freezer on Sunday before the storm.  The rest was leftovers from last year's garden that I hadn't gotten around to eating.  So now I have a clean and empty freezer!


I also harvested the last of the New Mama Super Sweet corn.  I have a second round of Honey Select corn that will hopefully do better, although I find that the insects on and in the corn tend to get worse as summer progresses.


The cucumber harvest continues and in an effort to avoid having too many jars of pickles, I've been experimenting with cucumber recipes including cucumber bread that you can read about here.

My garlic harvest is now dry and cleaned up.  It wasn't a great harvest, but it was a last minute crop planted with grocery store garlic.  This fall I plan to order some varieties to plant.  There are lots of small heads, but any garlic makes me happy.  They will come in handy very soon when the tomato sauce making begins.

Weekly harvests:

Summer squash 5.89 lbs
Peppers 2.94 lbs
Okra   0.63 lbs
Corn  2.35 lbs
Cucumber  11.66 lbs
Green beans  2.98 lbs
Tomatoes 7.57 lbs
Eggplant 0.25 lbs
Melon  4.13 lbs
Cowpeas 2.56 lbs
Garlic  2.90 lbs
Winter squash 10.30 lbs

Yearly harvest: 275 lbs

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

5 comments:

  1. Too bad about the freezer glitch. That's something to keep in mind because we get a lot of power fails but I never check the fridge in the basement which is on a GFI outlet. At least your freezer is ready for the new harvest. That's a beautiful Mr. Stripey. I like that varoety and others like Striped German. They are tasty tomatoes.

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  2. Gorgeous harvests and your photos certainly do them justice. When you say big tomato, you mean a BIG tomato! I'm still waiting on anything larger than a cherry and my first harvest of those was only yesterday. And wow to the first winter squash - I would think that I would be ahead of last year as we have had so much heat, but it seems mine are still taking their sweet time to set any fruit.

    We've had our share of freezer panic attacks as power outages are not an infrequent event around here - I'm glad to hear that not much was lost. In a way it was a good thing that this happened in that now you know that you have to reset the outlet and that bit of knowledge didn't cost you a freezer full of food :)

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  3. Ooh, bad news on the freezer but it sure could have been much worse, especially after you had it full. I can imagine Mr Stripey tasted great too! I would love to have a 1 pounder here. I guess I really need to give the cushaw a try. I know folks who grow them around here, so I know they do well, but I never tasted one. If they get to be 10 pounds it wouldn't take many for us! I have seen them at farmers market so I could pick one up there and try it.

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  4. Look at all your peppers, tomatoes, and snap beans. So great! And that is a beautiful big tomato. That must have been a horrible shock to find the freezer defrosted, but you've really taken it in stride. I've grown Cushaw squash before, they are a true pleasure and their roasted seeds are delicious.

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  5. I see you are into stripes this growing season, so cool. My red noodle beans are flowering, should see beans soon, they are loving the hear wave we are experiencing.

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