Harvest Monday, August 13

July 21 squash harvest

                                                      
Wow--is it already August 13??? I realized I haven't posted about my veggie harvests since June, but i've been taking pictures of harvests, so I'm going to talk about it all at once here.

My squash plants have pretty much ended their production cycles, and we yanked out all the dead brown plants over the weekend. This wasn't a good year for squash for us, between the squash bugs, vine borers, and cucumber beetles, but I managed to get a few. We grew zucchini, yellow crookneck, and the pale green one above is Sweet Gourmet (all from Burpee). Back in July when the squash production started to slow down, I thought about starting some new seeds, but time got away from me and then we went to Maine, and now I think it's too late. Ah well, there's always next year!

July 26 harvest

Then came the cucumber harvests. Despite the beetles, the cucumber plants have done really well, and did I mention they're growing in containers? Cucumbers grow well in containers, by the way! We used to put up a trellis for the vines to climb, but it got messy, so now we just let the vines hang over the side of the deck. It's a hanging garden! I tried to make tzatziki with these cukes but it came out really runny. I didn't have Greek yogurt on hand, and even though I tried to drain the yogurt and seeded the cukes, it still came out watery. I plan to try again with Greek yogurt. I spent an unreasonable amount of time on the internet yesterday  researching how to make non-runny tzatziki while I watched the Olympics. (I think I'll be trying this version of the recipe next).

August 1 harvest

 Right before the Maine trip we pulled every and any vegetable that had any color in it so that the squirrels wouldn't feast on them while we were gone. Clockwise from the top, we harvested cucumbers, habanero peppers, anaheims, jalapeños, pepperoncini, banana peppers, and Sweet Snack tomatoes.

Nothing EVER bothers the peppers, not squirrels, birds, bugs, anything (except for the occasional spider mite). We brought all of these to Maine and grilled the peppers one night when we all cooked out. The tomatoes are Burpee Sweet Snack and the plants have been producing well. Yay!

August 8 harvest

As you can see, August is going to be about the tomatoes {knock on wood, cross your fingers, make a wish}, although I'm nowhere near harvesting the amount of tomatoes I have in past year.  (No change on the Mortgage Lifter situation, I'll write a tomato update post later this week). Most exciting--the ground cherries are starting to come in!! They're the little nubbins in the container with husks. (I ordered them from SESE and first wrote about them here, if you'd like to see). We're growing two varieties of pink tomatoes--Burpee Pink Girl hybrids (left, next to the cuke) and Burpee Pink Brandywine (heirloom, single one on the right with the long stem). We bought both as small plants and I want to see which plant produces better.

Not pictured: basil. I've harvested about a cup of basil so far and have added it to sauces, Caprese salads, and pesto.

So far this season I've harvested 11 cucumbers, 4 ½ pounds of squash, just over 2 pounds of peppers, and about 4.3 pounds of tomatoes. I track all my harvests on this tab.

I'm linking up with Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday meme. Check it out to see what other gardeners are harvesting this week.