Monday, August 30, 2010

Harvest Monday - 30 August 2010

The harvest this week was small. And it was a singular harvest. Most of the beginning of the week as cold and wet. Nothing was growing much except the fall seeds that sprouted. The rain stopped on Wednesday, but I waited until Friday to harvest. I was hoping waiting a day would make the cherry tomatoes not burst open when I picked them. I'm not sure it helped much. I lost about half the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and all of the Principe Borghese tomatoes. The Gabrielle Ann did fine. I lost a few here and there, but overall most of them stayed intact.

So my harvest was small this week - barely over 10lbs. However I continued to can tomatoes from the week before. I made one pint of tomato juice and about four pints of tomato sauce. I put most of it into smaller jars, one cup and 1/2 cup jars, because then I will have whatever size a recipe calls for.

  • Beans 0.09 lbs
  • Cucurbits 1.63 lbs
  • Pepper 0.26
  • Tomato 8.44 lbs
  • Spent this week: $0
  • Total harvested this week 10.43 lbs
  • Total for the year 215.05 lbs
  • 2010 Tally $603.00

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

38 comments:

  1. I also like to have my tomato sauce in smaller jars. That way when I open it, I use it all.

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  2. I personally wish we could schedule the rain to fall a few hours every three days at dawn...now that would be gardening nirvana. Sorry about the tomatoes that fell victim to the rain.

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  3. Daphne, your definition of "small harvest" is nowhere near my definition of small harvest. :-) Your harvest still looks so beautiful with all the different colors. Sorry to hear that you lost so many tomatoes to the rain!

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  4. I do small amounts of tomato sauce too. It is so nice to have homemade for cooking!

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  5. Sorry that this week was a small harvest. We were glad for the rain but only got it on Sunday into Monday. Hopefully it will help your fall crops get a good start.

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  6. It may have been small, but it was beautifully displayed! We needed the rain, but I am glad of a week of hot weather, as I have lots of green tomatoes in need of some heat!

    If the Gabrielle Ann taste as good as the Sungolds, you have a rel winner. My Sungolds tend to split (and therefore volunteer like crazy) but they are so delicious and prolific I don't care.

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  7. I agree with Cheryl, size is relative.
    It looks beautiful and you surely had previous weeks of bounty.

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  8. A smaller harvest, but still a very good one. The season is winding down. I love your basket.

    -Brenda

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  9. Your cherry tomatoes appear to be still producing quite a bit. The harvest basket is a beautiful combination of colors - gold, chocolate red, bright red, and greens. So pretty.

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  10. Even though it's a small harvest, it's still a good one in my book.

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  11. That is a drop-dead, gorgeous basket of tomatoes. Beautiful photo of a lovely crop!

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  12. 10lbs of anything coming from a garden in a week sure doesn't seem small to me! I look forward to some day having those 'small harvests.' :)

    With how many tomatoes you are harvesting and processing, will you have enough to last you through the entire year?

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  13. The season is certainly coming to an end. I'm happily watching the fall crops come in though.

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  14. Photos of your harvest are so beautiful. Cherry tomatoes are so prolific, they refuse to go down easily :-)

    It is certainly less than the harvest you posted last week. But, I'm sure you'll have more time to process your harvest this week :-)

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  15. I lost about 30% of my cherry tomatoes because of the rain. Poor things exploded wide open. What a let down indeed!

    My harvest total dropped off a bit this week as well. August sure was bountiful this year. I guess all good things must come to an end.

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  16. I love this photo. I have admired your tomatoes before, particularly the variety of colours and types, and this is another vintage year.

    My harvest is only apples so far, but what a harvest!!!

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  17. PS Thomas, our tomatoes had popped open with the rain too. Gutted. We had a whole bed covered in beautifully red and ripe split tomatoes.

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  18. Gorgeous basket! I'll join the chorus: This is a good harvest and it is only small if you compare it with your earlier harvests.

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  19. Oh my, what a shame to lose all those beautiful tomatoes. Your harvest still looking wonderful in spite of the losses.

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  20. Your basket of vegetables looks lovely. I'm at the point where I'd be happy with a ten pound harvest for the week. I'm tired. Doesn't help that both dogs decided to consume half the pile of stinky grass clippings I was supposed to have spread over the garden paths this week. I've spent two days cleaning up after barfy pups. The carpet shampooer and I are on a first name basis this week ;-)

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  21. I'm celebrating some small harvests (within the larger harvest anyway) myself...most notably the 2lb cucumber harvest yesterday which marks the end of the cucumbers. Garden fatigue is setting in for me.

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  22. I love how you mention that your harvest is small. If that's small, I'll take it! Hahaha

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  23. Beautiful basket, colorful harvest.
    I like small harvest and preserve in small batches, a little bit at a time works best for me.

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  24. I soooo wish I had a better tomato harvest this year. The weather has just not been cooperating here in the Pacific Northwest.

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  25. vrtlarica, me too. Though I do sometimes freeze the excess, I'd much rather just have what I need.

    Cheryl, now wouldn't that be nice. I was wishing the same thing during our 11' flood this spring. And then we had such a dry year. If I took that rain and spread it out over the summer, it would have been perfect.

    thyme, Well I should have said smaller harvest.

    villager, I love homemade. I think it is sweeter, but then again I add my cherry tomatoes to it so it really is sweet. But the flavor is richer too since I use my black tomatoes and my red tomatoes.

    Emily, I hope so. I've been having trouble keeping them watered these last couple of hot days. The heat just sucks the water out of the soil.

    Ali, I was pretty happy about the rain. But I'm with you. I have a second flush of tomatoes coming from the ones I didn't pull out. Usually my plants would all be about ready to come out but this year they are doing so much better. It is hard to say with GabrielleAnn, she is a bit more sour than a sungold, but the chocolate cherries were sour this year too and last year they were very sweet. She is tasty though and very prolific. I'll have to save seed and grow her kids next to a real sungold to see the difference.

    johanna, it is relative, but to me it was relative to last week when I had four times as much. So it seemed small.

    Sense of Home, thanks

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  26. Laura, The GabrielleAnns just won't quite. they are still producing about as well as before. The Principe Borghese has slowed down as had my Chocolate Cherry (which is just about dead, but has so many tomatoes still on it I can't pull it out).

    EG, its not bad to me either.

    Martha, thanks.

    Prairie Cat, I would have killed for 10lbs in July. I don't know if I will have enough to last the whole year or not. I know I don't have enough to make paste, or at least not yet. I'm hoping I have enough salsa already. I'm not sure though. I eat a lot of salsa over the winter. I'm going to count my jars in the fall and see how many I have and then I'm going to see when I run out. I've never had this many tomatoes before so I've always run out and never had to worry about making too much.

    The Mom, I wish I had more fall crops. I started them late and don't have many. But if the weather keeps up being warm, I'm sure they will grow fine.

    RandomGardener, I've got all my things processed. This week I'm saving the tomatoes in the freezer to collect enough to make a large batch of something. What I'm getting now isn't enough to bother going through the whole canning process.

    Thomas, the thing I really hated was picking the cherry tomatoes and have them look so nice, but by the time they got inside they were split. They are so fragile.

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  27. ReapWhatYouGrow, I'm going to have to buy all my apples from the farmers market this year. Just like last year.

    Angela, thanks.

    michelle, thanks.

    Granny, Somedays I'm really happy to be dogless. I so miss my dogs, but it is so much less work not to have one. At least my last dog didn't throw up much (like the one before did), she just kept us up all night.

    mamaraby, that is a big cuke. I can understand the whole garden fatigue. August is really an intense month around here.

    memmsnyc, lol

    Mac, I like to preserve in big batches because it takes less time overall, but it does get tiring after a while.

    Sandy, well hopefully next year will be better. We all said that last year on the east coast and we got a banner tomato year.

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  28. I love the harvest Monday idea so I've decided to partake! I need to get some cherry tomatoes like yours. My red pears look great, but aren't producing the huge yields you expect from a cherry tomato.

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  29. I had a relatively small harvest this week too. The weather has been so up and down and it's messing with my plants! Downpour and 50 degrees last week and now it's 90 again.

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  30. It may be small in comparison to some of your other harvests, but it is beautiful. There must have been more rain down your way last week. Wednesday was our only rainy day.

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  31. still is a pretty basket of produce even if it is smaller than most weeks.

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  32. That's really quite pretty, if small.

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  33. I have missed everyone!!! It might be a small harvest, but it is pretty, Daphne! This week is my largest by far. I pulled in around 25 lbs!

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  34. Kaytee, it is true you can't beat a cherry tomato for sheer number of tomatoes. They put out an amazing number.

    Cloud, it has been some really weird weather this past week. I was liking the cool rain for a while. I'm glad it didn't last longer, but it was a good break.

    GrafixMuse, I think we got a lot more rain than you did then.

    Shawn Ann, thanks

    Stefaneener, thanks

    lisa Anne, congrats. My garden is in a decline right now. There is no chance of me getting over 40lbs again I think, but I suppose you never know. Our weather has been weird.

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  35. I'd be willing to sacrifice some tomatoes for some rain! It's been so dry!
    what are you going to do with all your hot peppers? I'm looking for ideas.

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  36. Here I am, probably the last to post again this week. I worked on my newspaper column (and photos of attempting to rescue a sea lion) until after midnight last night and had no energy left to blog. Now my post is up, but I had "only" 7 lbs last week. But with my little garden, I'm thrilled with 7 lbs, especially since it included the first of my Granny Smith apples. Your harvest looks really lovely, as usual, beautifully presented and photographed.

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  37. abigail, I've made salsa with them. I have them in my eggs every morning (with onions, tomatoes and sometimes zucchini). I put them on pizza. I put them on quesadillas (roasted green chilies are especially good that way). And I pickle them for future use.

    Lou, nope not the last. I'm horribly behind though. I still have half the posts to read. I too have been busy.

    Stevie, thanks

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