Harvest Monday August 23, 2021

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. It’s been a great year here for tomatoes, and I have harvested almost 150 pounds of them. They have been dehydrated, roasted, turned into sauce and paste as well as eaten fresh at every opportunity. Juliet and Health Kick have been especially prolific, and so far I have gotten 40 pounds of Juliet along with 25 pounds of the short vine Health Kick. I have four plants of Juliet in two remesh cages, and three plants of the Health Kick.

The slicing tomatoes have not disappointed either, and last week I picked a couple of big Chef’s Choice Yellow tomatoes that weighed over a pound each. While impressive, I have to say I prefer the slightly smaller sized fruits like the red Garden Treasure ones in the below photo. It’s hard to get a decent slice out of the ones with the big shoulders.

It’s been a so-so harvest for the winter squashes so far. I got a mix of Thelma Sanders, Gill’s Golden Pippin and a couple of delicata along with two more of the yellow acorn Goldilocks. Goldilocks has been the star squash so far as well as the earliest, though I am looking forward to getting a taste of the others soon. The neck pumpkins are setting on quite a few fruit so we should have plenty of them for winter storage.

We have had a bumper crop of eggplant this year, and have been well supplied for a couple of months now. The ones planted in-ground are now producing, and I’m harvesting a mix of Italian and Asian type varieties that are quite useful in the kitchen.

One thing we did with the eggplant last week was to make a cheesy casserole. For this dish I cooked Carnaroli rice in the rice cooker until it was done but still had a bit of “crunch” to it. That way it could continue to soak up moisture from the other ingredients, which included tomatoes, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese. I topped the casserole with fresh basil and more mozzarella and Pecorino Romano cheeses. It had a great flavor and mouth feel, and made for a comforting side dish at dinner time. The leftovers were pretty tasty too! I can see this casserole using other garden goodies like squash or perhaps even cabbage.

The pole beans are just now really starting to produce, and I got enough last week for another cooking plus a few for the freezer. We use a lot of beans in soups as well as for cooking up on their own, and we have used up pretty much all I froze last year.

In other news, I baked up a batch of Everyday Sourdough Bread last week for sandwich use.  This King Arthur Flour recipe is easy to make, and baked in a Pullman loaf pan which makes for a loaf with a dense consistency that can be sliced thin and yet still hold up to wet toppings like tuna salad and such. I’m still experimenting with this recipe, and for this loaf I used 20% sprouted whole wheat flour along with 80% bread flour. It took about 16 hours from start to finished loaf, but only around 15 minutes of that was hands-on time.

We still have lots of things blooming in our flower beds. The hardy hibiscus plants are really putting on a show, and even though the blooms only last a day there are usually several news ones to open up each day. The Ligularia (aka ragwort) is also looking good in the shade garden now.

My wife is especially fond of this Fluffy Shasta Daisy that is blooming now. She has several different daisies in the Sun Garden area, including Becky and the 2021 AAS Winner Sweet Daisy Birdy. Fluffy has quite a few blooms given that it was just planted a couple of months ago.

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 share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!