Harvest Monday

This has been a good week for harvest here. I surpassed last year's total August harvest by quite a few pounds already and there's still another six days to go with beans and tomatoes really kicking in. I'm very happy to be getting the tomatoes, but the plants are all diseased and dying fast. Thankfully they had set a large amount of fruit so I hope to be able to can enough pints to get us through the year. We use a lot of tomatoes in our cooking!
I pulled the last of my beets, the remaining Lutz Salad Leaf. They didn't seem to be getting any bigger, so it was time. I have two beds of beets that were planted later, but I have yet to successfully grow such later plantings. They never seem to grow healthy and bulb up and this year isn't looking to be any different.

 There was more kale from my original spring kale plants, more broccoli side shoots and finally some carrots.

 My second planting of yellow summer squash is producing nicely, which is great since the early bushes did nada.

 The green beans are in full swing, the yellow pole beans keep on producing and tomatoes of all varieties are ripening at long last! And what's that? Two small zucchinis from my second planting of four zucchini bushes. So out of a grand total of twelve zuke plants in 2013, I've gotten maybe five small zucchinis. Amazing. The second run bushes are just about dead, so I'm not likely to see more.
The big green bouquet you see is celery, a mixture of Afina Cutting and Tango. I also got a lot of cucumbers, both Lemon and Double Yield.

 And lookee here! My very first Chinese Red Noodle beans! I haven't tasted them yet, but they sure look pretty!

 I harvested the last of the spring-planted cabbages yesterday. They are a variety called Bartolo that produce relatively small dense heads, but are really excellent keepers. Kept in a refrigerator last year, I was cooking with them in January. I have a bed of fall cabbages, hoping they mature before it's too cold.

 My peppers, which did so fantastically last summer are a pathetic lot this year. So it was nice to pick one nice fairly good-sized green one yesterday. And the trombocino is still making up for my zucchini lack. I counted eight babies coming down the pike. So I celebrated with chocolate zucchini cake made with shredded trombocino, which is the most delicious way to use up summer squash.

 This is the last of the lettuce for a bit. It's getting a little bitter, but still useable. There are eight small plants in the garden just trying to get large enough to take leaves from and I have some tiny seedlings that I hope to plant out in a few weeks. Hoping to stretch out the salad days more than I've managed in the past.

I'm joining in the Harvest Monday postings over at Daphne's Dandelions and looking forward to see what goodies everyone else is getting from their gardens this week!