Late Summer Harvest 2009

With our events starting up this month, school, baseball, and piano lessons underway, and the spring catalog copy deadline looming, it's a safe bet that I won't be spending as much time in the garden or in blogland. Still, we can't let the season pass without a harvest update. My last veggie garden update was way back in July when everything was still green.

I can't say that I really had an abundance of anything but cucumber and zucchini (I was even able to share a few with friends), but I doubt I spent more than $20 on non-fruit produce these past few months.

When I returned from vacation, the Kentucky Wonder pole beans had grown up, and the tomatoes continue to ripen steadily.You can see the pole bean teepee on the right in this photo.


The Purple Rain carrots ( or should I call them Purple RainBOW) were small, but gorgeous.
Look at them sliced. They retain their purple color when cooked, too, unlike some of the other purple veggies.The purple peppers are "Lilac" and the red/green ones are "Carmen." Neither produced as well as I'd hoped - maybe the location was too shady. Check out the canteloupe - this variety is Minnesota Midget. I got three of them about the size of a grapefruit.

My theory about why the carrots are stubby: The bed was very shallow and the soil underneath was dense and clay-like. Next year the beds will be deeper and hopefully that will encourage the carrots to be a little longer!

The zucchini varieties included "Cashflow" and "Jackpot". A couple of them petered out in late August, but two of the vines may have a few more fruits coming! The cucumbers seem to be getting a second wind, too.

Here are my first figs. There are about 8 more still to ripen.

In this photo, from mid-August, I was still harvesting lettuce. It got pretty bitter toward the end of the summer. I tried different methods and discovered that by soaking the lettuce in cold water in the fridge overnight, some of the bitterness could be reduced. I should have sowed continuously throughout the summer, to keep the plants young.

Other things I'll do differently next year: plant the broccoli and tomatoes in a sunnier place, put the lettuce in part shade and sow continuously, find another staking system for my tomatoes (everything keeled over!), stick with the standard (not burpless) cucumbers, grow Swiss Chard, start arugula earlier, order kale and collard seeds, put in more onions, keep the dog away from the snap peas, no more morning glory teepees. I plan to get me some San Marzano tomatoes, Brandywine and Sungold. I won't be growing Jet Star, Ponderosa, or large red cherry - they didn't have good yields here.

Purple Cherokee and Celebrity here, my two star producers.

To be honest, I don't find the Purples as appetizing looking. There's something about a deep red color in midsummer..... these didn't quite cut it.

Some things I'll repeat: red lettuce, surrounding beds to prevent slugs, Midget varieties of pumpkins and melon, herbs in the bottle bed, more edamame, For tomatoes, repeat Vintage Wine, Italian Tree, Super 100, Celebrity and Purple Cherokee, all good varieties.

A Purple Hyacinth Bean pod.

Tricolor beans and edamame.

In the raised bottle herb bed, clockwise from noon: Italian oregano, Vietnames cilantro, Anise Hyssop, Purple Opal Basil, Genovese Basil, Giant Leaf Parsley, Lovage, Sage (purple and green), Lemon thyme, lemon verbena, Catmint, and in the center chocolate mint and spearmint in a container. Since this photo was taken I've added marjoram and garlic chives.

A long shot of the yard. In the foreground you can see the raised bed with the red lettuce, the raised bottle herb bed and then the cuke trellis.

Here's my deck at the end of August, waiting for the sunflowers to bloom.

Time to hang the birdfeeders back up!