Harvest Monday - Feb 26th, 2018

Welcome to Harvest Monday!

I did a bad thing.

So much chard.
So many fava greens.
So much shame.

Technically, I did harvest them. But then I composted them. I'm sure there are at least twenty calories wasted in that pile there. There are starving kids in Africa, Day. How dare you.

-- that's what my brain's been yelling at me since the Wednesday chop.

Michelle told me in a different conversation that I lack the ruthless gardener gene. I think she's right. Though on a GOOD NOTE I did finally rip out the chard!



no i didn't
 
Oh jeepers, don't look...

I grow cinder block pineapples now, in case you were wondering. AKA: shaved cat chard.

Either way, they look ridiculous.

Yeah yeah, I'm sure they look perfectly normal to you, but you don't understand. Did you not see how many chard leaves were on that table? These weren't plants, these were shrubbery. Topiaries. I could have trimmed them into fawns, or built tree houses in them. It was a psychedelic LSD jungle of elephant ears. I'd forgotten there were cinderblocks under there.

Now they're all just glaring at me like...

...yikes. Sorry.

The second picture at the top was supposed to highlight the fava devastation, but honestly... it wasn't that devastating. On the plants, at least. All those clipped above were from just from jaywalkers, non-bloomers, or weak spindly side shoots trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame.

And I know I complained I wouldn't be getting any beans this year, but after thinning out the herd I found about 1/4 of the stalks had at least one pod near the base. Which is great, except now these suckers also get a reprieve from rip out. Because I want those beans. Dried, please, for seed. Because I've decided I will always grow favas from now on -- and you should too. (Something I'll discuss in a future post.)

For now, back to Harvest Monday -- and on to some harvests I actually did eat!

just kidding.

Looks good though, right? Everyone loves a galactic black hole of lettuce fresh from the garden.

Aphids included.

This came from the second, smaller patch of  accidentally dry-farmed lettuce. Sure, it's gotten copious water since I returned in January.... buuut I was still impressed by it's survival for five weeks with no water, yaddda yadda, you know the story.

Up until last week, it's also been completely pest free. Famous last words.

I was sorta hoping that our crazy fluctuating temperatures lately would cause it to bolt (I know, what gardener begs their lettuce to bolt?) because I'd love to replant more of this miracle seed across the garden in patches, to act as a living mulch. Annnnd because I need the bed it's currently in... so the sooner it bolted, the better.

This lettuce doesn't want to bolt.
And then the ants found it, which means the aphids own it now.

...but I ain't even mad

because Ladybug eggs! Yellow blop = eggs.
My phone's camera won't focus any closer than this, so this is as macro as it gets I'm afraid.

It seems my summon horny ladybugs spell from a few weeks ago has proved fruitful. Though the dandy red buggers were spending so much time of the favas I figured that's where they'd be hiding their eggs. Wrong. They've picked the favas clean of aphids (which is awesome) and have now located the smorgasbord of food hiding in the 'lettuce forest.'

Un-thinned lettuce forest, inside look.

So ultimately, even if I had the energy to wash off the aphids and reclaim my lettuce, I certainly don't have the desire to lose these golden beauties and their promise of a spider mite free (ha!) tomato season.

And since they need food when they hatch, well... I guess the lettuce dodges the compost noose once again.

---

So: Did I eat a damn thing from my harvests this week?! 

I ate the cat.

Wait no --  Fava tops. I ate fava tops. 

oh and that there wee laddie of basil, on top.

Unlike the ones in the first two pictures, these fava greens came from prime, healthy, un-tripped-over-and-stepped-on stalks. I only took the top two inches or so, and here were the parameters:

1. They'd already set beans lower on the stalk, however small. Apparently cutting off the growing tips encourages them to ripen what they have, instead of focus on putting out more flowers. And we need to hurry this along.
2. They'd put out lots of flowers in the past, but had never set any of them into beans. Time's ticking - no slackers allowed. Ain't got time for just a pretty face.
3. They hadn't started putting out flowers yet. So i definitely wouldn't have gotten pods from them before those beds need to be cleared for 'summer' stuff.

So I topped maybe a dozen plants, with infinitely more to go. I'm trying to do it in small batches, as the favas flowers are the only bee food in my garden right now, and I'd really like to keep the pollinators aware of my little urban oasis.

The recent cold snap we had (my zone 9b garden hit mid thirties at night -- yet across town, Jane's zone 10 birdbath was frozen - go figure) has made all the hot loving crops I planted in January go bug eyed and cross. They're not dying, but not growing either. Just staring at me accusingly and shivering. So I'm unsure what my next 'bee bloom' vegetable will be now... as a result, I'll try to keep at least some of the blooming favas around as long as possible.

---

Now, normally I'm not a big 'food photo' poster, but I did use up some of my 'stores' from last year's harvest:

I cooked up some extra Mayflower and Calima seed stock that I had surplus of, and what remained of  the Purple Teepee beans which were useless and I'm not growing again. I thought I already got rid of the Purple Teepee beans, but then found another little bag of seed I'd saved from last summer. Apparently, leaving seed in baggies to randomly discover later is a trend with me.

All together, that gave me only a cup of beans... wow. So I had to combine them with a cup of store bought white northern whatever beans. Boo. People always comment on how many plants it takes to harvest a decent amount of dry beans, but yeah... nothing puts that into perspective quite like a measuring cup.

Which is the opposite of corn, I swear. I'm pretty sure dry corn multiplies when you're not looking. I've been eating from my corn stores for weeks now. The volume of the bowl has gone down, hm, maybe a centimeter.

Here's a tiny bowl of the end result of the slow cooker bean corn meat onion baked bean soup shlop thing.
I've made it before, and I love it.

Buuuuuut I screwed up this time... I forgot to soak the corn overnight with the beans. Oops. Suffice it to say, the above bowl was a bit... chewy. But luckily, good shlop gets better and better than longer you cook it, ad infinitum.

And the quickest way to my food heart is through quick cooking leftovers that get better with age.

So I put it all back in the slow cooker the next day and did my run, chores, yadda yadda, then in the afternoon I cooked up half of the fava greens from above with some store bought mushrooms and whatever random spices I was craving... (I think turmeric? I've been on a turmeric kick lately. That, or I've been feeling masochistic and enjoy trying to scrub clean my once white spatula again and again).

Anyway, when the favas and shrooms were ten seconds from being done, I added a couple ladles of shlop to the pan, mixed, bowled, whallah -- food. The rest stayed in the slow cooker, getting more and more tender in time for dinner.

And tomorrow's breakfast...

And tomorrow's dinner.... 

and overmorrow's breakfast...

GHOSTS OF HARVESTS PAST:

It's aliiivee...

So the first cutting of golden sage (one of the jars I've been using fresh) has recently grown skeleton legs and now wishes to rise from the dead. Normally my necromantic powers pale in comparison to my other forms of garden magic, but it seems this week I had a mind to reincarnation. Perhaps after killing all that chard. Hm.

Suffice it to say, I definitely don't need more sage in the garden. But they are lovely. Tasty and decorative. So I think I'll stick a few of these herb zombies into solo cups and see how they do. If they live, great -- they'll get gifted to the neighbors who wouldn't take my chard >_>

On the contrary, the second cutting of sage is staying dead, as it's supposed to, and drying nicely on its perch above the back of the fridge.

 Oh, and just in case you were wondering...

Wee man the pea man still going strong.

~*~*~

That's it for this week at the Shandy Dandy! Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave @ Our Happy Acres: make sure to swing by and see what's he's harvested, and link up if you have harvests of your own.

Happy Planting!

Harvest Monday - Feb 19th, 2018

Hope you like Chard...

...because my stomach doesn't. I've been trying to eat down my dozen plants so I can tear them out. Did I honestly think I could eat a dozen swiss chard plants? By myself? Because that... well, that was some ridiculously optimistic thinking Day.

I mean, cripes, this is one of the plants I have to tackle. See that center leaf, the one facing us looking all pretty?

This is for scale. The leaf behind it is an elephant ear. You could make a burrito the size of a baby with it.

So this Harvest Monday post is also me coming to terms with the fact that most of this chard is going to end up in the compost pile in the near future. I'm genuinely ashamed of that. It's true I need more green layers in the compost right now, seeing as it's full of dry leaves, but I prefer to use inedible sources for my nitrogen kick.

But I can't help it --  my body just can't do anymore chard and nobody else wants to take it.  
("Swiss... what?" they say, peeking cautiously over the fence and staring dubiously at the green stuff.)

And when I say my body can't do anymore chard... I don't mean it's a taste bud thing or a lack of inspiration on how to prepare it. What I mean is -- my GI tract is in full rebellion, torches and pitchforks, marching down main street level unhappy. It does not like chard. At all. Beets, cool, no problem. But chard? Burn the witch to the ground.

I'll save you the details, suffice it to say I thought it was the fava greens (above) so I stopped eating those for most of the week, and doubled up on chard instead. That... was a mistake.

Awkward 'on the trellis' photo. I need a potting bench.

I only took harvest photos of the endless chard when I also had something else to show, however small. See that pea shoot on top of the pile?

It attacked me.

I was just checking on the favas, minding me own business, and wham! punched right in the earlobe. Now, I didn't mean to break his arm off entirely, but c'mon... if something's poking around in my earhole, you can be damn sure I'm gunna go full ninja about it.

Anyway, the offending shoot was supposed to get cooked with the chard, but he got lost during meal prep. When I eventually found him while doing dishes, he was collapsed by the sink, wilty and sad. Aw.

Oh heartstrings, you pluck for the strangest reasons...

So he got a teeny vase. And a toothpick to hold. For whatever reason, I feel much better now.

Apart from chard, my biggest harvest this week was Golden Sage.

I mentioned a while back that I had two plants that needed to be lopped back. Cutting the first one gave me two jar vases of fresh sage that I'm still trying to use up. But I couldn't stand staring at the second, leggy, scraggly sage anymore. So I sheared him too, and I decided this batch was going to be dried straight off.

After a wash (evicted: 1 cabbage looper, 1 startled moth, and lots of dust) the sage made three hefty bundles that are now hanging to dry above the fridge.

Up until planting sage, I didn't cook much with it. I associated it with 'meat cooking,' and though I eat meat, I don't cook with it all that frequently. And while I do bake with eggs a lot, I don't prefer them alone. I've never been an eggs for breakfast person, bleh.

Last week however, I got distracted with life and didn't make it to the grocery store when I needed to. The cupboards were bare. Boo. I did have eggs, though, so I scrambled some up. Fine. I threw in some sage. Why not.  

Oh my. It's strange how some things smother sage's flavor, and other's highlight it. The eggs definitely highlighted it, in a very good way. And while I'm still not a convert to scrambled eggs, I'll remember the sage next time I'm forced to eat them alone.

Mitoyo Eggplant, tiny Paul Robeson Tomato, Swiss Chard

And while I'm on the topic of food conversion, I decided to try eggplant again.

Last summer I grew half a dozen eggplant plants (plant plants?) of two varieties: Mitoyo and Casper. Well, the spider mites had a fucking holiday on them, and at the end of a long and bloody war only one stood victorious: a single Mitoyo plant, since named Moriarty. But victorious is a very generous word... he lived. Barely.

During the battle I ate a lot of small and tender eggplant  from both varieties. I didn't find them insipid, but I couldn't fathom why people got excited about them. The plants were difficult to germinate, grew slowly, attracted every pest on the planet, and for all the care they required, they returned the favor by producing lots of flavorless oil sponges.

Hm.
I didn't get it. I tried cooking it a lot of different ways, and the appeal alluded me.

But it's been half a year since my last bite, so I decided to try again. I'll save you the cook&prep hoohah and get to the point: nope, not converted. I did nibble on some of the raw flesh while cooking, and it reminded me of a grocery apple when it gets spongy and dry and old. Still, it was very faintly sweet. Not the worst thing I've ever tasted, but not something I'd snack on. Though I did prefer the raw to the cooked, to be perfectly honest. 

I wanted to like it, guys, I really did. But bleh, pass. Oh well -- you win some, you lose some.

Moriarty and his new best friend.

Moriarty will, however, get a reprieve from the compost pile and continue to live and grow purple sponge grenades despite my taste preferences. Eggplant make a perfect gift to give my neighbor-who-cuts-my-hair. So while I'm not eating them, at least someone is.

And the lacewings love Moriarty, as you can see. Though that's only because he's overwhelmed by spider mites... again. But that's enough about spider mites for now. It's only Monday.

Also, I nearly forgot, in the above above photo, you can see an itty bitty teeny weeny Paul Robeson tomatey.

Ok, it was mealy and tough skinned, but with decent flavor. I don't blame the plant. It's had a rough life. It made better fruit, once upon a time. The fact that it's even attempting to make tomatoes right now makes me happy. So I took my small victory and ate it during meal prep.

Um...
I guess you could call this a harvest... though it wasn't a happy one. And there were many more where this came from, unfortunately.

This year I'm growing four types of peas: Sugar Snap, Cascadia (snap), Golden Snow, and Sugar Magnolia Tendril (snap). As it turns out, my Cascadia gene pool is a disaster. They are supposed to be bush snap peas with white flowers. Well --

Golly gee willikers, I have tall plants, short plants, purple flowers, white flowers, snow pea shapes, shelling pea shapes, snap pea shapes  and way, way, way too many fibrous, inedible pods.
 
That one you see above is the first I discovered, as I innocently bit into it. In this particular one, the peas themselves were also super bitter. The shock and horror of it all had me gracelessly spitting the whole thing out onto the path.  No shame.

Above left: what a cascadia pea is supposed to look like. Above right: one of the many rogues, likely due to accidental crossing resulting from poor isolation practices.

So lot of my un-photographed 'harvests' this week were pea taste tests. When I found a fibrous one, I played the super confusing game called follow that stem! down to the root line so I could pull out the whole plant. And since the peas were growing in a wild mix of bush and pole, it was chaotic pea tumbleweed labyrinth to navigate. I was as delicate as I could be... but one of the patches still looked like this after I was done:

What a mess.

To add insult to injury, when I made my pea crosses last month I may have used pollen from some of these fibrous plants. I tag the females so I can find the pods I've crossed, but I don't tag the males. So despite the best laid plans of mice and Day, I may be culling the fibrous gene out of my pea crosses for years to come.

Once again: you win some, you lose some!

These beans were itty bitty things, grown mostly as a nitrogen ground cover. Most are Purple Teepee, which was a bean that grew poorly for me, set poorly, and produced tiny, scythe like beans.

I tried growing them twice last season, at different times of the year and in different places. Same results. So the few beans I had left in the packet were sown haphazardly before my five week disappearance. This week I pulled all the plants as they were getting powdery mildew.

The bitty baby beans were thrown into a stew. The few green ones are Calima, which is actually a great bean, but the plants were shaded out by lettuce so grew much slower.

The bowl is actually quite full, though not like you could tell: photo bomb courtesy of Greynoodle Noseypants who had to take a quick 'niff in case they were meats and I was holding out on him.

~*~*~

That's it for this week at the Shandy Dandy -- Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave @ Our Happy Acres: make sure to swing by and see what's he's harvested, and link up if you have harvests of your own.

Happy Planting!

Harvest Monday - Feb 5th

Happy Monday!

I tried to invent harvests in January when Michelle was kind enough to host Harvest Monday while Dave was away getting a tan and almost blown up. But alas, the harvest gods were like... nah, you wait. The only harvests I had were cheater harvests like trimming herbs and shelling fall corn. Boo.

So I waited.

That said, inspired by Michelle, I tried several varieties of Fava beans this year, including one that performed very well for her in the past: Extra Precoce a Grano Violetto. So before getting to the main Harvest Monday part, I want to quickly show off a picture of EPGV growing next to Ianto's yellow.

Extra Precoce a Grano Violetto, right of center. Ianto's yellow from flag to flag. Golden Sweet peas intermingling and climbing the wall.

No contest here. Look at all the blooms on the EPGV to the right!

EPGV, apart from being a mouthful (and having a jargon acronym), has done great in my garden - excellent germination, upright, ignored by aphids, and earlier to flower than the other varieties I'm trialing (Aguadulce, Robin Hood, Ianto's Yellow, Sweet Lorane, and Broad Windsor.)

Unfortunately, Favas have a difficult time in my climate. It's just not cool enough or wet enough. Even in winter, like now. Because, see, it's currently 86°... so much for winter. I'm not complaining, but the favas are. Despite the flowers, no beans are setting. The blooms just shrivel and die... and then it puts out more blooms.

I was very much hoping for beans, but I've been settled for eating the growing tips of the less precocious varieties for now. Lorane has since been nommed and pulled, making way for tomatoes in the coming weeks.

Since all the favas must come out between now and March, I don't think any will have time to mature pods, for eating much less for seed. But hey, it's not all bad -- they will provide lots of soil improvement and green manure, and currently feed the beans and my stir-fry dinners.

Fava Bean growing tips

Now, on to Harvest Monday!

Seems only fair to start with the fava greens, above. That was about 1/6 of last weeks harvest, with much much much more to come. Maybe too much. We'll see how the guts like me by Friday!

Here are the cheater, boring harvests -- let's get them out of the way. Firstly, Golden Sage. I have two plants and they both need cutting back. So far one plant has gotten a drastic haircut, and I now have two elegant 'vases' (old jars) of sage to show for it; plenty to use for cooking and tea.

While I don't personally ecommend a cup of tea made entirely of sage, some fresh or dried added to your tea contributes a subtle but pleasant heartiness to your cuppa. Hard to explain, lovely to taste.

Also, I finally shelled out my Painted Mountain Corn. Ended up with a good sized snack bowl (as the ones saved for seed were shelled elsewhere). Yup, I said snack bowl. Painted Mountain is a very soft flour corn, and, no joke, I grab a few kernels and pop them in my mouth whenever I have the munchies. Hey, don't knock it until you tried it.

I still don't have a grain mill, so for now these will be snack food and possibly parched like corn nuts in the near future. Another fun experiment I'll try to remember to document. I added some to my slow cooker baked beans the other day, halfway through the cycle. Delightfully chewy, but probably should have added them from the start. I was afraid they would disintegrate. That fear turned out to be unfounded.

These ears were the ones saved for seed. They've since been shelled as well, but didn't end up in the snack bowl. Ok, I maaay have nibbled a few from that rightmost ear one... hush. I keep your secrets.

Chard. So. Much. Chard. It's an apocalypse vegetable. Humans, cockroaches, Microsoft paint, and Swiss Chard. Everything else will perish. This is about 5 leaves washed and rough chopped. It'll take me at least two days to go through, and that's if I'm not also eating fava greens.  I could harvest twice this amount per day, easy.

See my problem?

I have over a dozen plants (why Day) that need to be completely consumed in the near future. Why completely consumed? Because I just had a much better idea for the prime real estate space they're occupying.

I'm not going to show you a picture of that real estate, however.

Because apart from the chard and a few sad favas, that bed is... well, it's a cinder block raised bed I made in a flurry one afternoon after getting jacked on caffeine and scrolling through too much Pinterest.

Raised bed, cement, hot climate... why I thought that would be a good idea I'll never know -- oh, wait, coffee and pretty pictures. Right.

We all have our weaknesses.



This is the beet bed -- and even the beets are contributing to the Chard glut now. The Mammoth Red Mangels were being impolite and shoving their fingers in their neighbor's faces. And so, in the wise words of Hannibal Lecter:

Whenever feasible, one should always try to eat the rude.

And so they, too, were nommed.

As you can see, Greybooger the curious goober cat decided to sneak in to add scale. Top left you can also see Mr. Stoner the volunteer tomato. He's growing like crazy and putting on flowers and has some forming green fruit already, which unfortunately aren't visible in the photo. I'll post more on him another day.

Speaking of tomatoes, somehow my 'Paul-Robeson-in-a-storage-tub' is still alive from last year, and hot damn is he committed to the cause. Atta' boy. First ripe tomato on February 1st, though technically I cheated since it's from a 2017 plant. But all's fair in gardening and war. Or... is it gardening and taxes?

Who cares, I have a ripe tomato in February.

The other side of the tomato is almost entirely purple, odd since it's the side facing away from the sun. Naturally, I couldn't get a good picture of it, precisely because my phone won't shoot into the sun.
(in full Harvest Monday disclosure, I'm saving seeds from this puppy so I didn't actually harvest it this week. But I could have harvested it. That counts, right?)

Oops. Ok, I cheated. I wasn't going to eat my peas. But but but.... ah... I love peas. And, spoiler alert, I finally learned how to cross pollinate peas! (post to come.) So as a reward, I've now given myself a pass to eat a few here and there... so long as they're not adorned with dangling jewelry tags,

Clearly, I did not have the self control to take a 'before' picture. Nom nom nom.

-----

That's it for this week. I do have two eggplant sizing up nicely on Moriarty, who despite my best efforts is swarming with spider mites again. But the eggplants still need another week and they're going to be given to my hair cut lady anyway. Hm, maybe I can pawn off some of the chard on her too...

Harvest Monday is sponsored by Dave over at Our Happy Acres -- head on over, say hi, and take a gander at what everyone else has harvested this week. Link up if you have harvests of your own!

Happy Planting!

Harvest Monday: 8/14/2017

Harvest Monday! The day when all you amazing gardeners post all your gorgeous harvests in all your gorgeous baskets and then cook gorgeous meals with them.

Also the day when I plop a bunch of over-ripe / under-ripe / butt-rotted / bug-bitten veggie rejects onto a dirty old board and then make hand-guns at the camera.  

Onward!

The Spread: 

left to right, top to bottom: Golden Jenny Melons, Corbaci Peppers, PASS Peppers, Rainbow Swiss Chard, Ajvarksi Peppers, Georgescu Chocolate Peppers, Giant Scissors.

I tried to include me and the hand guns in the pic, but it was kinda hard since I was also the one holding the camera. Merp.

The Breakdown

We're jerks.

These two Golden Jenny melons are a late crop from the pre-heatwave melons. Or an early crop from the post-heatwave melons? Either way, they're little bastards because they started to ripen in the beginning of July and then just... stopped. Ever since then they've just been hanging out together, half ripe, getting sunburns and just, ya know, bonding. In melon years, these guys are ancient.

Their seeds were supposed to be contributing their DNA in the new mixed breed melon bed on the other side of the yard. But noooo... they refuse to ripen. And they've been taking up half a bed of real dirt prime real estate while I've been waiting.

So today I was just like, fuck it, and picked them. Cleared the bed. Feel so much better. Tasted ok, but definitely not that delectable, oh so sweet, perfectly ripe taste of glory that home grown melons can be.

I'll just dramatically over seed to compensate for the likely low fertility from the early harvest. Gardener's version of throwing money at the problem, right?

CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP

These guys, seriously. They mean business. Look at this plant:

He's not messing around.

Truth be told, I have no idea what to do with these Corbaci peppers in the kitchen,  and I find the taste decent, but ultimately shruggy. Damn though... not a single case of blossom end rot (even when all the other varieties were plagued with it) and just pumping out these peppers like there's no tomorrow.

I might have a crush. Just a little one.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't...

...fuck off.

I'm not the only one excited to have ripe PASS peppers apparently. My first taste last week was thumbs up, and I've been waiting for these three to ripen up with excitement.

BUT SEE -- the PASS pepper does this annoying thing where it sticks the pepper butts straight up into the air. And since they're so plump and curvy, it makes it really hard to see what's going on on the other side.

I swear we're still talking about peppers.

Point being -- I've yet again picked these suckers before they were completely, perfectly ripe. I've also had more difficulty grub huntin' on these plants, as you can see by mr. caterpillar and all the webbing crap.

RAINBOW SWISS CHARD

CLOSE-UP THAT I FORGOT TO TAKE 

GOES HERE

And here, just pretend I said something witty and insightful.

  (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Ajvarski! I just... can't I... seriously all I want is... ONE. 

One ripe, un-poopy pants Ajvarksi pepper. 

But to avoid going on a a repeat rant like last Harvest Monday, I'll just leave this here and walk away, shaking my fist dramatically as I go.

I got my eye on you, lefty.

Despite the worrisome diaper-pepper on the left, Georgescu Chocolate peppers are just starting to come into their own and have been relatively unplagued by pests and blossom end rot. This is the first example I've seen on Georgescu. And, alas, the one on the right got a bit too sunny on the bottom. 

As for taste, these peppers have a very distinct flavor profile that only really emerges when very ripe. It's hard to describe, not unlike trying to describe the difference between, say, a black tomato and a red one. It's mostly sweet pepper taste, with a little hint of... something else.

I'm going to sample a few more before I pass a final flavor judgement, but so far... I quite like them.

~~~~~~~~~

Sorry for the quick report, my life is like a Rihanna song right now: work, work, work, work, work, and the rest I don't really understand.

So while I'm not harvesting much, I'm doing a lot of breeding projects, new plantings, and general garden overhaul this week, so check back for more posts on that if you're interested. 

However, if you're still craving more harvest goodness (and who could blame you), head on over to Our Happy Acres and check out what everyone else harvested this week. Happy Monday!

Harvest Monday - August 7th, 2017

It's Monday! That means I've scavenged, scrounged, and scraped through my veg-lab to find something edible to share with you all this week for Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave over at Our Happy Acres.

And since learning that our Harvests don't technically have to be from just Monday, the main spread below was actually picked yesterday. Because I sit on a throne of lies.

Tally ho!

left to right, top to bottom: Corbaci Peppers, Mitoyo Eggplant, Mary Robinson's German Bi-color Tomato, Black Vernissage Tomatoes, Blush Tomatoes, Ajvarski Peppers, PASS Pepper, Georgescu Pappers.

Like my table? You might have seen it last week. It's actually my newest work of art, entitled: board held up by two blue buckets, 2017. It's high concept. You wouldn't understand.

In other news, this week's harvest is sponsored by: Spider Mites! Spider mites everywhere. But that's a story for another post. For now, here's the breakdown:

Like shootin eels in a barrel.

I have such mixed feelings about these Corbaci peppers. I'll save my full list of feels for the end of season review, but basically while I'm not the biggest fan of them, it sure is nice to have one variety that's actually producing ripe and plentiful peppers without kicking and screaming. (*coughAjvarksi).  Despite some claims that they're really seedy, there haven't been many seeds at all inside most of mine. They're just a little difficult to get out because these peppers be all long and noodley. I've found that if you slice them in half all the way down, the seeds and flappy peel out with very little fuss.

...and then there were none.

Oh Mitoyo. Sad to see you go. Sorta.

I'm pulling the plants. Before this season, I'd only ever eaten eggplant at restaurants where they had chefs who knew what they were doing. So it's been a fun experience to grow and cook my own this year! But, alas, I'm just not that passionate about them: neither for veggie-hack nor culinary purposes. So tomorrow these spiney sponges will be cleared out, both to help get the spider mite population back under control, and to free up prime garden real estate.

While the child in me keeps screaming 'gotta catch 'em all!' in regards to growing as many varieties as possible, I've got to be more diligent about culling less inspiring plants and only keeping those that really excite me. We have enough tolerated baggage in our daily lives, nay? I must be careful not allow my garden to become a dusty museum of spring sown misadventures.

P.S. Any clever advice on how to cook those two extra pokey, rock hard, green ping-pong balls would much appreciated. 

...basically, unripe tomatoes.

Oh gawd, don't look. Just, look somewhere else. You don't see these. These rocks. These green, Frankenstein stitched loser stones. Ugh.

I got exactly one partially ripe fruit off Mary Robinson's German Bi-color Tomato plant this year. That's a mouthful. Both literally and linguistically. This is another variety that I have a lot to say about, and will be saving most of for the main review later this year. At the moment, Mary is engaged in all out war with the spider mites and is losing, badly. Lost, really. I'll be cutting her web covered mass down to about 8 inches, washing what's left with soapy water, and seeing if she's got a second wind left. She was never particularly vigorous. Still, the one not-even-completely-ripe fruit I did get was pretty good... so I'll give her a second shot.

we're not ripe either

Ah yes, the Black Vernissage Tomato. This was a free gift from Baker Creek because I ordered a metric stupid ton of seeds and they must have thought I'd be crazy enough to plant more.

They were right.

About these tomatoes... these are... well... they're kinda... they're really bad tasting, actually. Quite mealy. Vague flavor. 

HOWEVER, this plant can take a beating. I started one dinky seed out of a weird obligation complex. Germinated super quick. Almost mad, I left it in four inch pot forever because now I didn't know where to put it. Didn't care, kept growing. Finally, I gave up caring and planted it in a 5 gallon bucket. Happy as a clam, branches everywhere. Even in un-ammended native dirt  (which is to say, sand) it hasn't so much as whimpered all season

It even held out the longest against the spider mites. This is one of only two tomato plants that won't be required to undergo the dramatic haircut treatment. So despite the fruit being super blah, I'm pretty excited to do a few crosses with "Vern" and one of his tastier neighbors.

And in case you were wondering, the tomatoes never actually turn black. They just get a little darker red, with burnt orange/dark green streaking.

Blush, with a Corbaci photobomb

Blush! Everyone loves Blush tomatoes. And they are pretty good. I've talked too much about Vern, so we'll keep it short and sweet for blush. Get it, short and sweet... like the fruit? Ha! Well, actually they're sorta long... but not the point. Point!

I disgust myself.

Though tasty, Blush will also be getting a sever haircut to deal with the mite issue, since mites also seem to find her delicious. Which is why the above are not the prettiest specimens.

With friends like these, who needs enemies. Dammit Corbaci, keep your noodle to yourself.

 I'm watching you Ajvarski... always watching. 

They really do look like something out of Monsters, Inc. I just need some googly eyes to stick on them. I was really excited to try a ripe Ajvarksi pepper at the start of the season. And now... well, I'm still really excited about it SEEING AS I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN ONE. Tantrum.

As I've mentioned previously, my garden had some serious issues early in the season with blossom end rot. Even in things I didn't know could get blossom end rot, like watermelon. But while everyone else seems to have grown up and gotten over it, Ajvarksi is still sniveling in a corner and wetting his pants. Between that and the sunburning, the left pepper is the closest I've gotten to ripe.

And I hate green peppers.

In other news...

it's ripe!

Well, mostly at least. The PASS pepper (hover for birth certificate) really likes to stick its fruit ass up into the air. And so it wasn't until I cut this bad boy off that I saw his green shoulders and realized he probably could have used a few more days with mom. Oh well. Though a hint of dreaded green-taste still remained, it was still pretty tasty! Thick walled, few seeds - a bit funky to cut, and kinda small, but ultimately a tasty raw bite-and-a-half while I chopped up his neighbors for the pan.

 nnnce nnnce nnnce

I dunno what techno-color rave these two went to last night, but they were certainly out past their bed time. Similar to Ajvarksi, I've been waiting for a taste of a ripe Georgescu pepper for far too long now. Last week I got a wee nibble on one the size of a bouncy ball. I've been watching these two sizeable gents for a while now, waiting for them to ripen.

They were fine yesterday... So I dunno what shenanigans they get up to last night, or in the hot afternoon before, but it must have a been a doozy. I'm kinda jealous, actually.

Though I was moving some metal objects around near the pepper bed. Perhaps I left one sitting at the perfect angle to the sun. Pre-cooked peppers, anyone?

~~~~~~~~~~

That's it for this week! If you haven't already, head over to Dave's and see what everyone else harvested this week. I mean, you don't want to hang out here all day, do you?

Happy Planting!