Today's Harvest: lettuce, beet, tomatoes

Harvest 11-11-11, baby lettuce, yellow marble tomatoes, a yellow beet

Today's harvest is small compared to how much food I actually eat, but things will get bigger and better as I go along. I picked 8 ounces of mixed baby lettuce, 4 ounces of Yellow Marble tomatoes and the biggest beet in the patch. The beet & greens together weighed in at 1 pound, 3 ounces. The root alone weighed 5 ounces.

The root really is that bright of a golden yellow. When cooked it loses most of the color and is a very pale yellow, almost white.  The ratty outer leaves and the tough stalks went to the rabbits; the tender leaves were part of tonight's dinner along with the root which is super sweet and not quite as earthy as red beets I grow.

I don't know the name of this beet and I'm not sure but it might even be a cross between a couple of kinds.You see I bought a mixed package of Heritage beets from Bountiful Gardens probably about 8 years ago. There were several really huge white beets in the mix, which I let go to seed. There might have been a yellow one in there too, I really don't remember now. That would have been about 2005. I still have more than half a pint of seeds left, but germination is beginning to drop off a tad. Most of the seeds sprout, but instead of several plants from one seed ball, they are tending more to just one. Which is OK, it means a lot less thinning for me.  I will probably let some of them go to seed next year, just to replenish the supply.

Also I'd like to draw your attention to the tabs across the top of the page. These are extra pages I've added to the blog which I'll be updating from time to time, especially the amounts harvested and worth of produce but also the varieties I'm growing. That page will eventually be in alpha order, but for now it's a little random. The worth of produce is the price I'd have to pay for a comparable product at the local market.

And since I didn't harvest anything else since Friday, I'll list this post for Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions, a great place to connect with other gardening bloggers and what they are harvesting from their gardens.

Today's Harvest

Yellow Marble & Princepe Borghese tomatoes

Several tomato plants volunteered in this pot, mostly Yellow Marbles, but surprise, also a Princepe Borghese, an Italian drying tomato. I picked about two ounces of them today.

Lettuce mix, baby carrots, Hopi Purple Pod Beans

Since the days are getting shorter and the nights cooler I know it's just a matter of time until ol' Jack Frost runs by and wipes out the bean plants. So today I picked all the beans and pulled the vines out. I need to get more peas planted. Besides tomatoes today's harvest was 6 ounces of baby lettuce, 2 ounces of baby carrots (roots only) and 5 pounds, 14 ounces of beans in their pods. I don't have time to shell them before I go to work but suspect the shelled weight will be somewhere around 2 1/2 pounds.

Each Monday Daphne's Dandelions has a Harvest Monday post, so I'll add my link over there. Happy Growing! 

but it’s a Dry Heat May 11, 2009

but it’s a Dry Heat

May 11, 2009 at 4:56 am

It has been about 90 in the shade the last few days, so the things that like cool weather are becoming crispy critters but the summer crops are taking off. The Little Marvel peas didn’t make it past the first hot days a couple of weeks ago and The Dwarf Grey Sugar peas were _very_ unhappy. So we fed the Marvel plants to the rabbits and let the sugar peas set as many more pods as they would to save for seed. The Bleushokkers have been very different sorts of peas. They are a purple shelling pea that were traditionally grown in Europe for soup. I had read that they could be eaten pod and all when small and flat. They were tender at that stage, but not sweet like other peas and actually didn’t taste very pea-like.  So I tried them as raw shelled peas. They were actually a little bitter. Today I had some of them cooked, what a surprise. They went from being a bit bitter to sweet and starchy. Very much the sort you might make into soup. So half the row goes for seed saving & half for eating for as long as they’ll last.  The green shellers, Maxi Golt, were ok, but no thrill so I didn’t plan to save seed from them. They hadn’t made any new flowers in a week so I pulled them up and fed them to the rabbits. All the Sugar Snaps are going strong, but I can see the signs of heat stress. The purple snaps, Sweet Magnolia are also still doing well. Again, half the row to eat and half for seed for next year so I can plant a bigger area.
The potted potatoes have also been drooping in the heat, but since they were in pots I was able to move them where they will get a little shade in the afternoon.  So far the tomatoes on the patio seem to be doing well, but the Super Italian paste and the Polish Linquisa have started dropping blossoms.  I found a peice of shade cloth to put over one patch, but really need some more for the rest of them. Tomato pollen dies when it gets to be about 90 degrees so the flower falls off instead of setting fruit. Hopefully a little shade in the middle of the day will help keep them a little cooler.
Different kinds of beans are sprouting up all the squash and melons are doing well. I’m just trying not to think about my next water bill.
Miracle with her sunflower plant in my back garden. The bed on the left is the greenhouse with snap peas. The one directly behind her was planted last fall with carrots, turnips, beets and purple broccoli. The only thing left are the beets which will come out soon so we can plant the baby corn. The trellises in the background aremore peas.