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