Harvest Monday

It's Harvest Monday again over at Daphne's Dandelions, a great place to go and check out how gardens are doing all over the country and the world!
Although I still don't feel as though I am really bringing in much from the summer garden, I do have some steady harvests, mostly from the beans, good old dependable beans! Good thing I like them as much as I do!

 My photos are not the best! I really need to learn a thing or two about digital photography. Above are the two types of bean currently coming in: Gold Marie Vining, a flat yellow pole bean and my usual bush bean, Fresh Pick. I am really pleased with the Gold Marie's. The vines are extremely prolific and the pods are huge. Some are as much as eight inches long while still remaining flat and they taste good. I'm still picking nice amounts of broccoli shoots and that yellow squash you see is the first from my second planting of summer squash! Very exciting considering the terrible showing of my first planting. I also planted Chinese Red Noodle beans. I have not seen so much as a blossom on them. So imagine my surprise, when I went to pull a strange looking weed and found instead that they were this:

 Yup. Two GREEN noodle beans. Just two. And not red, like they're supposed to be. But there still have been no blossoms or signs of any other beans, red or otherwise. These two tasted good nevertheless and I hope to see some more before the summer is out.

 Slower than molasses in January the tomatoes are ripening. I have disease ramping up quickly in the plants. Every day I feel like a surgeon with a diabetic patient, lopping off diseased limbs (or in this case, leaves and branches) in the hopes of prolonging life, at least until the green tomatoes ripen up. I'd give a lot to find a dependable way to prevent tomato diseases in my garden.

 Here are most of my Lutz Greenleaf beets, which I harvested this week. I left a few smaller ones in the garden to grow a bit more. While there are two more beet beds, they don't look wonderful and odds are these are about the last beets I'll harvest. At least they were big and tasty! And I do mean big:

 I also picked the last of my Kossacks. I planted out a new batch for fall, hoping to get a few more before the frost hits in October. We'll see.

 And we're still getting some lettuce from my small patch of heat-tolerant lettuce. I think this is the latest in summer I've ever had lettuce still going. I need to start some for fall very soon!

 Later in the week there were more green beans, more yellow beans, broccoli shoots, little tomatoes and a second yellow squash from the new plant. Already a better squash harvest than I had from my early plants!

And, finally: the cucumber harvest has begun to kick in. Two years ago I was swimming in cukes. Last year there were hardly any. This year may be right in the middle. The Lemons are scant, but the Double Yields are starting to produce nicely and I do have a second planting that is just beginning to blossom. 

Our August weather has been remarkably temperate so far. Eighties and dry as compared to July's intense heat and humidity. It actually feels more like September and when I went out to walk this morning at 6am, it was only 54F! Certainly makes for easier working in the garden. Happy August harvesting!