Monday, August 8, 2016

Harvest Monday 8/8/16

The theme of this week is tomatoes and more tomatoes, a total of 48.9 lbs of tomatoes to be exact.  This is a record amount of tomatoes in one week for me.  Besides picking tomatoes this week, I've made batch after batch of my favorite roasted tomato sauce.  I've also been eating tomato sandwiches for lunch everyday- cream cheese, slices of delicious tomatoes on bread.  Very simple, which I desperately need with all the harvests coming in, but tasty.

Mr. Stripey, Jubilee, Beefsteak (unusually small this year) and some Cherokee Purple Tomatoes hidden beneath

Other harvests this week include summer squash (4.3 lbs),  peppers (4.7 lbs), okra (0.7 lbs), cucumber (4.7 lbs), green beans (2.3 lbs) and soybeans (3.2 lbs).  It seems the pickle worms have arrived and despite their namesake are attacking the summer squash more than the cucumbers.  It is looking like the squash and zucchini harvests will be dwindling.  I do have six more seedlings in reserve that I should plant soon, although I'm not sure how well they will fair with the onslaught of late summer bugs.

A typical summer bounty
This year I planned for the loss of zucchini.  As my zucchini alternative, I planted an edible gourd, Serpente di Sicilia, and this past week I ate them for the first time with the conclusion of meh.  I did learn that the skin gets tough, so you do have to pick them when they are small.  Strike one against the gourd is I really don't care for the smell of the plant, so searching the vine for gourds isn't a pleasant smelling activity for me.  For the smallest gourds, I tried them sauteed with egg for breakfast.  They look very similar to zucchini, but the taste and texture is definitely different.  They have a denser texture than zucchini and the taste is hard to describe, but has more of a green grassy taste and not as mild as zucchini.  It wasn't bad tasting and I can certainly get used to it.  For the gourds that I picked larger, I cooked them using a zucchini pie recipe.  I was hoping that the combination of sauteing and baking them would help combat the tough skin, but it didn't.  However, besides the skin, I really wouldn't have noticed a difference in the taste of zucchini pie versus gourd pie with all the cheese and flavors.  I think peeling the gourds would improve the texture.

Serpente di Sicilia Edible Gourd Pie
This week I also shelled and cooked a bunch of soybeans.  Most of them got frozen.  I'm always impressed at how productive soybeans are in comparison to my other bush beans.

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Shelled Edamame 

The other big harvest this week was my second Dickinson pumpkin weighing in at 8 lb 8 oz.  One vine has produced 16 lbs of pumpkins so far and there is currently a very large one on the same vine and another smaller one.  I will be waiting until the tomato harvests calm down before cooking up this pumpkin.  I also harvested some small acorn squash this week as well.

Dickinson Pumpkin

My kitchen counter is still buried under a pile of harvests despite my efforts to cook and preserve.  I have the added challenge of being out of town this Wednesday to Sunday.  I don't think J is looking forward to the never ending harvests.  Everyday I tell him that I think the tomatoes are slowing down only to come in with more and more to add to the growing pile.

Weekly Harvest (lbs):

Summer squash  4.3
Peppers 4.7
Okra   0.7
Cucumber  4.7
Green beans  2.3
Tomatoes  48.9
Melon 19.6
Winter squash 11.0
Soybeans 3.2
Gourd 2.0

Yearly Total: 506 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.

15 comments:

  1. Very impressive harvests. I'm glad you've had success with soybeans--something that has never produced for me for some reason.

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    1. I wonder if it is too cool in your part of the world for soybeans to do well.

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  2. Your pie looks delicious Julie, and it looks to me that you also made the pastry from scratch. Doesn't home made pastry taste miles better than shop bought? Tomato sandwiches made from home grown tomatoes is one of my favourite lunches. You have harvested so much food this week!

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    1. I sneak in whole wheat flour and coconut oil into my pie crust, so I feel less guilty about eating pie :)

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  3. Nice harvest of tomatoes and peppers. That's quite a pile of edamame. My problem with them is they require warm soil and still germinate poorly, they take a long time and I don't get a large amount of beans from 1 plant. So I never got the kind of yield you got. When they were a novelty it was worth growing them but now I can easily buy bags of frozen beans so it is not worth the effort.

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    1. Edamame can definitely be tedious to shell! I did learn that blanching first and then shelling is much easier. It's strange how they do so well for me- I guess it's one thing that thrives my climate.

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  4. We always chicken out and grow enough courgettes (zucchinis) in case plants die but we usually end up with a mountain of fruit.

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  5. We always chicken out and grow enough courgettes (zucchinis) in case plants die but we usually end up with a mountain of fruit.

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  6. Tis the season for veggies on the kitchen counter! 48 lbs is a lot of tomatoes though. I used less than 20 pounds to make my ketchup and tomato sauce. I am thinking of making paste next, which will let the dehydrator do some of the work. I like your oven roasted sauce idea too. It sounds like you will come home to some tomatoes for sure!

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  7. I'm loving those soybeans! Those are on my grow list and were in fact on the plan a couple of years ago, but I didn't get around to growing them. I didn't realize that they had such a good yield...I must make sure they are back on the list for next year.

    I feel as if I'm looking into a crystal ball as I read your post as I'll likely be swimming in tomatoes fairly soon too.

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    1. Based on what others are saying about soybeans, they may not do so well up north. I'd see if you can find someone growing them locally. Here they are grown commercially, so it must be a good climate for them.

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  8. Yikes! That's a lot of tomatoes! But I'm with you ... I just love tomato sandwiches when fresh from the garden.

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  9. Incredible tomato harvest! I wish I could grow soybeans, I love edamame but don't want to buy them since they all seem to come from half way around the world, usually China, even the organic ones (organic in China, I have my doubts). Soybeans just don't thrive in my cool climate and the few times I've tried they seem to have been bunny magnets. What wonderful harvests.

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  10. So is this your best tomato season ever? Your pumpkin and piles of vegetables are gorgeous as is that pie. I hope you're getting help with processing the tomatoes. We had a banner year in 2013 and are still eating salsa we canned from that year.

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    1. This is the most tomatoes I've had in a single week, but the overall amount was more last year. However, there's still plenty of time to beat last year's record.

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