Monday, August 5, 2013

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!

32 comments:

  1. I'd love to have all those lovely beans! Your tomatoes look very nice too, and beets are fantastic! I can only wish for them.

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  2. Thanks Jenny! I hope your beans come in soon!

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  3. Funny that you got green instead of red noodles. Well- I suppose that as long as it eats well! ;-)

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    1. Yes, and just two of them! Hopefully there will be more and hopefully red ones!

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  4. Aren't those yellow pole beans nice? I've grown several varieties over the years, and they always seem to bear prolifically. I'll have to check out Gold Marie. You have a great variety of goodies in your harvests!

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    1. The Gold Marie Vining came from Baker's Creek. I'd be interested to know which varieties you've grown. The last ones I tried were Gold of Bacau and they didn't do well at all.

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  5. The yellow pole beans do look beautiful, but I still have memories of meals with canned wax beans from my youth. My wife is similarly phobic about yellow squash, having grown up in the south, so I don't grow it. Yellow vegetables aside, the rest of your harvest looks terrific. Wish I had that many beets and kohlrabies.

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    1. Thanks David! It is funny how much we are influenced by some of our childhood dislikes. To this day my parents only like canned beans, so different from the fresh or frozen ones!

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  6. Lucky you! I had beet failure this year, so I'm hoping my fall beets get bigger than a golf ball, unlike my early ones. Don't get me wrong, golf ball sized beets taste wonderful. They just don't go very far when it takes 5 beets per person!

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    1. Well, the way the rest of your garden grows Granny, I think you'll probably get outstanding fall beets! I seem to only do well with the spring ones, and the very first ones I plant at that.

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  7. Wonderful harvests. I tried growing those long beans before and did get a couple. But they were supposed to be pole beans and they never climbed a pole. They stayed as bush beans. I really need to try them again.

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    1. Thanks Daphne! I hope I get more of the Chinese long ones! Pole beans have an appeal to me because I can grow them along the fence and save the beds inside the garden for other things. But until this yellow variety I have, I've never gotten much production out of them!

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  8. Hurrah for your harvest, wonderful array to preserve and cook from!

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    1. Thank you for the cheer! While I've been disappointed in some things, I really have been getting some good harvests so I need to quit whining, lol!

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  9. I should look into heat tolerant lettuce. Great beans harvest, love the yellow ones. Hope you get some red noodle beans as well.

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    1. Thank you! I have found Anuenue, Nevada and Pablo to be good lettuce varieties for the heat. They don't seem to get quite as bitter and take a bit longer to bolt.

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  10. Hi! I think you are getting a lot from your garden! I thought beans and zucchini were suppose to be easy to grow but I am not having a lot of luck this year. Your tomatoes that you do get are looking wonderful! Nice harvest! Nancy

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    1. Thanks Nancy! I hope things pick up for you this summer. I think I am getting quite a bit, just not always the things I want!

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  11. The yellow pole beans look very nice. Just being easier to see in the foliage makes me want to give them a try. Amazing that you are still getting kohlrabi this time of year.

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    1. Welcome and thanks for the comment! The kohlrabi is a variety called Kossack that gets very large yet stays pretty tender. I just tried it this year and I'm sold on it.

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  12. Loving those Yellow Beans. The best thing to have tons of in my opinion. Love the flat beans the best. I have been using Marconi but will have to check these yellow ones out for next year!

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    1. Thanks Amber. I've really been happy with these beans. I've never grown flat ones like these before (well, at least not any that actually succeeded!)

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  13. Patsy, don't feel bad, I also only harvested 2 green long beans this week, but then again, mine weren't supposed to be red! I need to find out why you called yourself the nutmeg gardener. I'm sure if I read your earlier posts, I'd find out. Do you realize we have the same initials? NG? In fact, some of my friends have started calling me Angie (get it, NG, Angie?) as a joke. But I like it!

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    1. Well thanks for the nice comment NG! Actually, I don't think I ever explained Nutmeg Gardener, because here in Connecticut where I live, everyone would get it. Because Connecticut is called the Nutmeg State. It got that name for a rather shameful reason: the shifty Yankee traders of yore who came from this state had a reputation for cheating their customers by selling them fake nutmegs made of wood!

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  14. The Gold Marie beans look like a yellow version of the Musica beans that I'm growing now, I may have to try them next year. Funny, I just harvested some BIG beets today also and thankfully they were great, not tough or stringy at all. Good luck with those red noodle beans, I hope to see some in a future post!

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    1. Thanks Michelle! Hope your beets turned out great. I know some turn woody. The ones I harvested are called Lutz Salad Leaf (I usually forget and call them Green Leaf) which are meant for storage and do get very large without getting tough.

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  15. I find the Red Noodle beans are a pretty late bean, usually the last to blossom. But once the beans start to form they grow quickly, and they are fantastic just sauteed with garlic and onion.

    You are getting a fantastic variety of vegetables! I've never had luck with beets and yours look delicious!

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    1. Thank you Phuong! I'll definitely be watching out for those noodle beans!

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  16. I haven't heard of noodle beans before - although they look a bit like snake beans to me. Regardless they look a lot of fun. Great harvests.

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    1. Thanks Liz! Chinese Red Noodle beans are very striking, so I do hope I get some red ones. It's my first time growing them. Maybe snake beans is just another name for the green ones?

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  17. I have never heard of noodle beans! What is their texture like?

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    1. Well, they are the only two I've ever eaten, but they seemed about the same as any other cooked string bean. Course, I cut them up into smaller pieces!

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