The big harvest item for the week was garlic, though it isn’t reflected in the totals. I won’t weigh it until it has cured and I can get it trimmed up for storage. All of the garlic is harvested now except for a silverskin variety called Silver White that is still not quite ready. I hung it all up in the basement to cure. The basement is warm and dry this time of year, with a dehumidifier there to control the moisture.
I’m not sure which smells better to me – the garlic drying in the basement or Lynda’s lavender drying in the garage! The garlic aroma is definitely stronger.
The early cherry tomatoes are really coming on now. I experimented and planted two Sun Gold plants in one cage this year. No wonder they are going nuts! The ones in the bowl are a mix of Sun Gold and Sweet Baby Girl. We have other small fruited varieties that are just now starting to ripen, but so far no slicers are turning yet. It won’t be long. We got enough of these two to make some cherry tomato salsa.
It’s also blackberry season around here. We got the first real harvest this week. I filled up the quart container below and had to go back for the gallon bucket! We wound up with about a half gallon total, weighing a little over 3 pounds.
The varieties planted are Apache, Arapaho, and Triple Crown (all thornless). I think the Triple Crown berries have the best flavor, but the Apache have been the biggest. The berries in the photo below are all Apache, and the largest weighs 13 grams! They are sweet and juicy as well as big.
Apache blackberries
Some of them found their way into this cobbler my wife baked. Mmm, nothing like a fresh blackberry cobbler! If you’re interested, the recipe she used can be found here. The rest we froze for use later. And we get more blueberries almost daily, many of which go in our morning smoothies.
We continue to get a lot of side shoots on the broccoli, and I harvested two big heads of cabbage that weighed 4 pounds apiece. I donated them to the shelter when we took our church produce there on Saturday. I’m also pulling onions as I need them. It won’t be long now until many of them are ready to harvest. And the summer squash is still producing well (over 11 pounds this week), including a big zucchini that was lurking under the foliage. It went into some zucchini bread I baked. I love those flecks of green in the bread! I donated a lot of the squash too.
I made a stir fry with some of the broccoli, scallions, yellow squash and a little bit of sirloin steak. It’s so nice to have fresh veggies to throw into those spur of the moment dishes!
I also ‘harvested’ another possum in the trap and took it to the retirement village. I didn’t get a photo of it like I did the last one. Isn’t that the way it is – the first ones get all the attention!
All total we harvested 38 pounds of fruit and vegetables this week, bringing our yearly total to 230 pounds.
To see more harvests, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions
I have never seen that big blackberries! Mine are very sour and very small.
Beautiful raspberries and the sungold tomatoes look yummy.
Your totals are remarkable! I am jealous of the blackberries. We planted a cane this year, but it is still very small. I think we probably need to plant more than one for the kind of yield you have!
Those are some big blackberries!! I see that you had a great garlic harvest as well!
I guesstimated the weight of my garlic heads. I know that I will never get around to weighing them later. What varieties and how many heads of garlic did you harvest?
Robin, we had around 250 heads of garlic from about 15 different varieties. I will do a list in a couple of weeks when I get it all cleaned up and weighed. We love our garlic!
WOW those blackberries are HUGE! And I am so jealous….garlic and lavender hanging to dry – my two favortie things!
I’ve never seen such huge blackberries! Looking at those has me longing for my home made blackberry syrup, but we haven’t been out picking wild berries in years.
What an abundant harvest you have. It always amazes me to see the amount of food you grow. The stir fry looks delicious, too. I find myself doing a stir fry at least twice a week, it’s such a good way to use a variety of veggies. I was anxiously awaiting my first Sungolds, but wondering if my seed source might have saved seeds from his plant last year. Mine is showing oblong fruits!
Wow! Great total and great variety. What amazes me is that you are harvesting tomatoes and cabbages at the same time. I’ve never managed this feat. By the time the tomatoes are ready the cabbages are a big grey aphid mess, inedible, or when the cabbages are just perfect, tomatoes are but a memory or a dream for the future.
I like your hanging garlic:-)
I was so hot and tired from digging about 150 garlic plants in the heat that I was just happy to get it in the house and hanging in the basement. I was too tired to even take decent photos!
The real trick for us is to have tomatoes and lettuce at the same time for BLTs. I’ve done it the last couple of years, and I hope to have lettuce that is edible by the time the first slicing tomatoes are ready. I’ve still got 2-3 heads of cabbage holding in the garden. Slugs are our biggest pest, but the Sluggo helps.
Berry envy, I haven’t been able to grow berries yet, I’ll keep trying maybe someday, but I’ll take a scoop of the berry cobbler now.
Two cherry plants in one cage, you mean they like less leg room?
Two plants in one cage is an experiment I’m trying this year. It does make for a cage full of cherry tomatoes! I tried the same thing with 2 Juliets in one cage. Time will tell how that one does.
I was so amazed at the size of those blackberries that I send a link to my husband so that he can see them. They look so juicy, too!!
That harvest looks amazing! So does the food. Do you have a photo of the blackberry bushes? I would love to see how big they get. I really want to plant more fruit plants, but need to plan out the spacing.
Beautiful garlic! I love the smell of a room full of drying garlic. This year, I tried pickling a little of my harvest, spicing it with hot peppers, coriander, and allspice. I just made it last week, and it the pickled garlic is supposed to “rest” to let the flavors “meld” for a few weeks, but I’m so anxious, I want to try it now! I’ll see how long I can hold out.
I cannot believe how huge those blackberries are; they’re incredible. I have Youngberries and Boysenberries that I planted last year–they’re giving me a small crop now, but I look forward to when they’re established and providing lots and lots of yummy berries. I’ve got berry envy.
Villager, your whole post made my mouth water. 🙂 I’ll definitely try that blackberry cobbler — although we’re going with wild blackberries and have nothing like those amazing, huge berries! Still, we have a ton of berries to use up, and I can’t wait to try.
And bravo for the first zucchini bread of the year. We haven’t gotten sick enough of grilling and sauteing them yet to move on to more creative, time-consuming uses. 😉
Well, I love garlic and blackberries! I hope to grow garlic for the first time later this year. I cannot believe how large the Apache berries are….just magnificent!
That’s it…I’m moving to Indiana. You clearly don’t have coastal fog to contend with. Your cherry tomatoes are ready…you’ve harvested garlic already…AND you have berries that are ripe taboot!? I’m feeling greener than my zucchini with envy 😛 We always plant our cherry tomatoes in pairs. It happened accidentally one year, but we felt that our yields were higher. The plants perhaps weren’t as tall, but fruit set seemed better, so now we always do it, and they help to hold each other up too.
I’ll bet you’d want your coastal climate back if you had our heat and humidity.
You are right about the paired cherry tomatoes supporting each other. I suspect I will try this on all my small fruited varieties next year. I’ve got two cages of Juliets this year, one with one plant, and the other with two. So far the cage with two is looking, well, twice as good!
I have a friend who always puts two tomatoes of all kinds in a cage, but then he makes his cages bigger than mine. He swears by his method.
Oh yummy yummy yummy. You had me at garlic which is one of my favourite foods especially in humus but then we went onto lovely little cherry tomatoes and you ended by stunning me with huge blackberries. It all looks wonderful.
My garlic this year is taking longer before it is ready to pick. Last year I harvested at the beginning of July. This year I think it will be closer to the middle of July. I can’t wait. I love the smell of it in the garage, but I’m not sure I can use my garage. I’m thinking my bike shed.
Holy cats! Those are the biggest blackberries I’ve ever seen! And I always thought one gave up a lot of taste with those big ones, but it sounds like yours are pretty delicious!
Taste seems to have been important to the plant breeders when they came up with new blackberry varieties in the last few years. The first thornless blackberries I ever grew many years ago (Black Satin, Dirksen) were a lot smaller and less tasty than what we have to choose from today. Triple Crown is still my favorite, but the Apache is catching up fast!
You and your harvest are definitely inspiring this new gardener to work harder and grow better vegetables! Wow. What do you do with so much garlic? I see that everyone loves your blackberries, and I love them, too! I’m thinking of that TV commercial where the dog licks the TV screen because the food (can’t remember what was on it) looked so good and real. Your berries look like they could almost pop out of my screen (I wish).
We do use a lot of garlic. I like to bake whole heads of it and put in mashed potatoes, or just spread it on a slice of good bread. I use slices of it in stir fries. Minced or crushed it goes in sauces, pesto, salsa, garlic herb butter, burgers, meat loaf, and salad dressings. Come to think of it, it’s goes with almost everything here!
And I do find we use more of it if we have it.
Oh, it’s so true that you find all kinds of uses for vegetable when you have lots of it! I’m still trying to get to that “lots of it” phase with my vegetables. I’m only there with my herbs at the moment. I’ve only thought about, but never actually tried roasting whole heads of garlic. I will definitely have to remember when I grow my own garlic. Thanks!
WOW! Those blackberries are HUGE. Ours are just starting to show some red.
I wish I could cure my garlic in the basement but it just gets too damp down there. It looks like you’ll have enough to last until next year.
O.M.G. I’m wiping drool off my keyboard from those blackberries!!! Slosh sloshing in drool now! They look so good!!!
You must have quite a healthy heart from consuming all that garlic! I had my garlic, onion & shallots in the garage, but it’s way too hot for them now. There’s nowhere to put them now because these crazy west-coasters don’t understand the importance of basements…
I made my zucchini bread again this weekend with much better results than last week. Looks just like yours! 😉
Love that you show all your baked stuff! That last picture….. is that possum stir fry? Haven’t tried that yet. Ha! Nice looking berries. Don’t have any of those here, but we’re making room for them.
~~Lori
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Fabulous harvest ! That’s an amazing lot of garlic and those Blackberries are huge ! A true gift to be able to enjoy such wonderful produce.
This post was one wow! after another. 150 heads of garlic, wow! Blackberries, wow! Apache blackberries, double wow! And that cobbler, and the tomatoes and the zucchini bread. Oh my.
Wowser on those huge blackberries. Two would feed a family! lol
What a great harvest you are enjoying now. Well except for that possum….
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