Bean and Melon Harvest Time

I can't begin to write about this week's harvest without first mentioning all of the smoke and heat in our area. Like all of the West, we had a very warm August that sparked fires all across Oregon. There are major fires burning in my county and many others in nearby counties. As the winds shift, our air quality drops and more smoke moves in. The picture above was taken at 2:00 PM yesterday. Our air quality dropped from Very Unhealthy to Hazardous in that hour. While it is making gardening and all outdoor activities nearly impossible, my thoughts go out to the firefighters working around the clock and the poor folks who have been displaced or lost their homes. We desperately need some rain.

I did make it outside to work in short one-hour increments this weekend. On Saturday I picked all of the dried pods from my bush "Titus" cannellini beans and shelled them inside. It would guess a little over 1/2 of the pods were fully dried on my three rows, so I think I will be able to match this harvest again in a few weeks.

• "Titus" Cannellini Bean - ( 3 cups) 1 lbs. 4.6 oz

It wasn't just dry bush beans that were ready for their first harvest of the year. My very late planted "French Emerite" pole filet beans were also ready to pick this week. It wasn't a huge harvest, but I wasn't sure I would get anything this year with such a late sowing date. They also aren't loving this current heat wave, so this might be the largest harvest that I have this year.

• "French Emerite" Pole Bean - (43) 8.9 oz.

Continuing with my theme of "first of the year" harvests, I picked my first melon last night. I am growing a small patch of "Pride of Wisconsin" melon this year. It is a "new to me" variety. The plants seem to be doing pretty well. My melons do seem to be much smaller than the 4-8 lbs size melons described in all of the catalogs though. But that said, the melons look perfect. This one smelled heavenly when I sliced it open tonight. Taste results will have to wait as it is getting saved for breakfast!

• "Pride of Wisconsin" Melon - (1) 1 lbs 15.8 oz.

The tomatoes on the other hand are loving the heat. This is my biggest weekly harvest yet.

• "Ukrainian Purple" - (49) 9 lbs. 7.6 oz.
• "Wapsipinicon Peach" - (19) 1 lbs. .9 oz
• "Blush" - (37) 1 lbs. .2 oz.
• Galina" - (108) 1 lbs. 4.7 oz.

And lastly, I harvested another batch of potatoes from my first grow bag. We had family over for a last minute dinner. It was so nice to go right outside to the Kitchen Garden and harvest a nice bunch of brand new potatoes. It took only a few minutes to clean them off and they were enjoyed simply steamed with a bit of butter. Nothing better!

• "Dark Red Norland" potatoes - 3 lbs. 6.1 oz.

The First Tomato, Potato and Blackberry Harvest

There is nothing that makes you see that incredible late Summer growth in your garden more than leaving for 9 days on vacation! After a wonderful week in Michigan I returned home to find there was a lot of change in the Kitchen Garden. We had a heat wave while I was gone. Two days hit 102 and three more were 95 or warmer. My poor Nephew earned his keep watering my garden! But all of that heat meant that I was greeted by a garden with things ready to harvest!

This weekend I dug the first of my potatoes. They were planted back on May 7th in four grow bags and have done really well. I have had problems storing red potatoes in past years, so this year my game plan is to only dig what I am gong to use in the next few days. I think this will work much better for me, as the potatoes seem to do fine being "stored" in the grow bags, in the soil, until I need them. My first harvest was ;

• " Dark Red Norland" ; 3 lbs. 10.2 oz.

I was also excited to find color in the tomato plants when I returned .Not all of them have ripe fruit yet, but I was able to harvest from 4 different varieties yesterday. I was also pleased to only find blossom end rot on fruit in one variety so far. It plagued almost all of my tomato plants last year, so I can happily deal with one bad plant. Yesterday's harvest;

• "Ukrainian Purple" ; (10) 1 lbs. 5.1 oz
• ""Galina" ; (7) 1.4 oz
• "Wapsipinicon Peach" ; (6) 9.2 oz
• "Blush" ; (2) 1.1 oz

Thanks to Mother Nature, I was also able to harvest the first wild blackberries of the year. I knew from driving up and down the road that there were ripe berries to be had. But I was very surprised when I came hope with a completely full bucket. The final tally for this first picking was 4 lbs. 4.1 oz. A great start to the season!

Garden Project

This morning, with a lot of help from Dad, I completed a fencing project that desperately needed to be done. We removed the temporary fencing and cage that were protecting some of the plants in this "overflow" Kitchen Garden area. Then Dad drove in 6 fencing stakes and we surrounded the whole are with 5' fencing. So MUCH better!

The "Magnificenza" melon now have all the room that they need without any worries of the deer getting at them. The vines on these  plants are going crazy and are covered with both male and female blooms right now.

My cut flower area also has so much more room to spread and looks so much nicer. Those "County Fair Blend" zinnias better get growing - the melon are coming!

Unfortunately, the fencing project happen a week too late for the "Red Chieftain" potatoes. Finn, our resident pest of a deer, discovered the two grow bags last week and has been happily browsing on them ever since. Even spraying the plants heavily with deer repellent didn't stop her. I am not sure if she has done too much damage for the plants to recover from at this point.

Working on the Kitchen Garden

We ended up with about a 2-3 hour window of dry weather between more serious rainfall today. While I certainly didn't get anywhere close to as much done as I had hoped, I still was able to make a little gardening progress on this wet, wet weekend. I focused today on the area I call my "overflow" kitchen garden. I began by giving it another quick, complete weeding. Then Dad helped me and we added 6 buckets of fresh Natures Best to extend and build up the bed.

Then I placed my two large size grow bags and planted the "Red Chieftan" potatoes that I had ordered from High Mowing Seed out of Vermont. The minimum order was 2.5 lbs and that was really more than I needed. But of coarse I had to plant all of the seed potatoes that they sent. So 6 went into the largest bag and 5 into the slightly smaller one. 

As you can see they were definitely ready to be planted! I also stuck a small volunteer potato plant of "Red Norland" into another pot placed between these two bags. It had sprouted up in the middle of this bed and I couldn't stand to toss it into the compost pile.

Next to the three potato bags I planted a row of 9 "Redwing" onions. I purchased these storage onion plants at the Farmer's Market a few weeks ago and I am glad to get them in the ground.

After I got the whole row planted and water in, I covered the row with two hoops and remay fabric. This will provide some protection from both the deer and the birds.

When I was weeding the bed I was pleasantly surprised to discover 3 small plants of Cosmos "Bright Lights". I had some plants of this variety growing here last year and apparently they self seeded. So I moved the 3 starts to the front of the bed where they can happily grow in front of the Zinnias I am also growing for this area.

And speaking of those Zinnias, guess what starting germinating today? When I looked inside the greenhouse this afternoon I discovered that the first 8 "Country Fair Blend" Zinnias had come up!

When I checked the other flat I found the first 5 Cosmos "Xanthos" and the first 11 Cosmos "Rubenza" had also germinated. Since I had only planted this seed Wednesday night, and the last two days have been cool and rainy, I wasn't expecting the seed to germinate quite so soon. So even though I planted my seeds a little later than I had hoped,  I am off to a strong start with germination rates this year.

An Unexpected Harvest

The star if this Spring has been my "Heirloom Cutting Lettuce". It has produced and produced, while the temperatures have climbed and climbed. Finally, this last week, with triple digit highs, the plants began to bolt. I was able to take one last, large cutting and then pulled the plants.

I also had a fun surprise harvest this past week. I was cleaning out my potato grow bag. I harvested from it last year, but didn't replant any potatoes this year. I wanted to use the space in the garden for something else, so I first emptied the bag of all of its dirt. Much to my surprise, there was a small crop of potatoes growing once again. I felt bad, because I haven't watered them at all but they still persevered. There are a few that grew big enough to eat and I might save the rest to use as seed potatoes for next year.

Not bad for a completely neglected crop!

My third and final harvest of the week was the rest of my garlic scapes.  As you can see in the picture below, the scapes had mostly straightened out and looked like a row of exotic birds to me. So I cut off the remaining scapes, washed them off, cut them up, and stowed them away in the freezer for later use when I have more time. So this week's total harvest consists of:

• "Heirloom Cutting Lettuce" - 10.7 oz
• "Dark Red Norland" Potatoes - 2 lbs. 4.2 oz
• "Chesnook Red" & "Russian Red" Garlic Scapes - 12.9 oz.

Garlic Scape & Potato Harvest

Another grey, overcast day but it was very mild out. Since I was concerned that the big garden would still be too wet to work in, I decided to turn my focus on the kitchen garden next to the house. After I gave the whole garden a quick weeding, I removed the remay tunnels that were covering my 3 varieties of Winter Squash. It certainly wasn't any too soon. All of the varieties were pushing against the fabric and starting to crawl. Pictured above, my one huge and one small "Delicata".

Here are my two plants of "Queensland Blue".

And here are my two "Butternut" squash.

 

Later in the day I harvested all of the scapes from my "Chesnook Red" garlic and 3 scapes from the "Russian Red" garlic.

Then I set about trying my hand at pickling the garlic scapes. Since this was my first attempt I turned to the book Preserving by the Pint by Marissa McClellan. She has a nice small batch recipe that filled just 2 half pint jars. The scapes are quickly boiled in a brine of cider vinegar, water and pickling salt. Then red pepper flakes, dill seeds and black peppercorns are added to the jars. I made a note that 4.7 oz of cut garlic scapes nicely filled two jars. That's a little less than 5 scapes per jar.

I made two batches today so I have 4 half pint jars that will now need to sit for at least a week before I get to taste my pickled scapes for the first time.

After dinner, I harvested my two grow bags of "Nicola" potatoes. These potatoes have an interesting "history". I originally planted the grow bags on May 9th of 2013. I planted one bag with two seed potatoes and the other bag with three. Due to a very busy Fall I never got around to harvesting any of them. Our Winter was very extreme, with two snow episodes and temperatures that hit below zero. I figured that everything in the grow bags was frozen and lost. But this early Spring fat potato sprouts appeared. Somehow some of the potatoes had survived! Since they got such an early start this year, the potato plants had already turned brown and were dying back by this past week. It was time to harvest...before 4th of July!

The "Nicola" potatoes are a really nice golden yellow. Interestingly enough, the grow bag that was planted with only two seed potatoes not only produced bigger potatoes but it produced more potatoes. I harvested 5 lbs. 2.8 oz  from that bag but only 4 lbs. 6.8 oz  from the bag that was planted with 3 seed potatoes. My findings aren't 100% foolproof, since I don't know if each bag experienced the same loss of parent potatoes over the Winter. Now I have the fun task ahead of finding creative ways of cooking 9 lbs. 9.6 oz of freshly harvested new potatoes.

Early April in the Kitchen Garden

Back on March 25th, we attended Plant Nerd Night at the Eugene Garden Club. As always, I was most excited to see what Alice Doyle from Log House Plants brought to sell. After a lot of mental comparisons and hard decision making, I came home with this "new-to-me" Kale. Kale "Fizz" is described on the Log House Plants website as "tender, finely lobed, light green leaves deepen to emerald green. Use baby greens in salads or full size leaves in steaming, stir-frying. OP."

Log House Plants had so many new and interesting kale varieties for sale that night. It was really difficult to pick only one to bring home. I was taken with this variety's lovely cut leaves and the promise of tender leaves to eat after the first frost.

After I was done planting the Kale, I took stock for the rest of the kitchen garden. The garlic has grown like gangbusters this last month. It is now taller than the hoops which use to support the remay cover.

Just like last year, the "Russian Red" garlic is attaining an immense size. Each plant stock looks like bamboo!

Next to it, the "Chesnook Red" plants look small but they are perfectly normal. Their stocks are now thicker then a finger and they too have outgrown the metal hoops.

It does look like one of the "Chesnook Red" plants had dwarfed, so I will have 14 plants to harvest this year instead of 15. I certainly don't want to save the cloves from a misshapen plant. Fortunately, all the other plants look great.

My real surprise this Spring are the potatoes. Last year I planted 4 grow bags with 2 varieties of Potatoes. Because of an incredibly busy Fall, I only ended up harvesting one of the bags. The other three bags remained outside in the kitchen garden all Winter, exposed to negative temperatures and two snow storms. So I was more than a little shocked when I noticed that the two bags containing "Nicola" potatoes started to grow a few weeks ago. And now, pictured below, the "Dark Red Norland" have just begun to sprout in the remaining bag. So I guess I will have potatoes this year after all!

The Kitchen Garden in Early September

It's now September. The kitchen garden has hit its peak. Many of the vegetables are nearing or ready to harvest and the morning glory are in full bloom. The days are getting cooler and the nightly lows, lower. 

With cooler nights come an increase in the moisture in the air. This leads to powdery mildew in the Winter Squash patch each year. Normally I don't see my first breakout until mid-September. This year however, the "Guatemalan Blue Banana" squash developed powdery mildew in August. It quickly decimated the two plants and jumped over to the "Butternut" & "Delicata" plants. As you can see in the above picture, the "Delicata" leaves are now a snowy white. I am hoping the plants can hang on long enough to finish ripening their fruit. The "Butternut" in particular needs another ten or more days for its fruit to reach that perfect butternut color.

While the "Guatemalan Blue Banana" did get powdery mildew first, it also set and ripened its fruit first. I like this photo. The "Delicata" rambled right over the "Guatemalan Blue Banana".

Here's a nice big "Butternut". As you can see, the fruit is still very green.

In contrast, this long "Delicata" looks ready to harvest.

The foliage on the "Nicola" potato plants is finally starting to die back. They will be ready to harvest in a few weeks. I am anxious to see how this variety did planted in the grow bags.

The few "Good Mother Stallard" beans that survived the rabbit are just now setting pods. We are going to need a warm, dry September if I have any hope of harvesting some dried beans from these plants.

My three "Red Bull" onions look good. Their tops haven't fallen over yet so the bulbs are still growing.

The tops have all fallen on the "Frontier" yellow storage onions. It's time for me to pull them and then let them cure. It looks like a nice harvest this year.

My volunteer "Galina" yellow cherry has been busy pumping out the ripe fruit. So far I have harvest 30 little gems off of this plant and there are many, many more yet to ripen. It's turned out to be a favorite of a co-worker of mine.

Here is a nice cluster of "Early Cascade" and below, a "Black Krim". The rain has been causing the "Black Krim" to crack.

All of the morning glory plants are producing beautiful displays of color each morning. It really is "peak" season for them right now. I certainly love the cheery color splash that the morning glory plants give to the kitchen garden. And the hummingbirds love them too.