Harvest Monday

Tiny Carrots.  Tiny tiny carrots.

Beets, golden beets, and tiny carrots.  The golden beets didn't get nearly as large as the red beets.

A Numex Big Jim pepper and the last of the spring planted kohlrabi.

Two gypsy bell peppers, a space miser zucchini, two Ichiban eggplants and  so many beans that they wouldn't all fit in my stock pot.  

Bush beans:  Royal Burgundy, Yellow Wax, some kind of green, and some kind of rare heirloom yellow shell bean that you can eat like a string bean if you pick it young and green (those are the flat green ones).  I'll have to look up the actual names of the things I planted.  

In addition to the above, I harvested another zucchini that was given away and everything included in this post from last Tuesday.  This is my first week participating in the awesome Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions, so be sure to pop on over there and take a look at what everyone else has harvested this week!

Harvest...um...Tuesday?

Next week my goal is to actually participate in the Harvest Monday thing over at Daphne's Dandelions that I keep seeing on other gardening blogs around the intertubez.  I did just get a pretty massive harvest (after skipping a few days due to feeling poopy) and I'm too excited to wait 6 days, so you'll find today's haul at the bottom of the page.  

While it's pretty cool to get a ton of veggies all at once, the downsides to not harvesting often enough are zukes the size of a large cat, and TOTALLY out of control weeds.  I did what I could today, but tomorrow it will be several hours worth of nothing but pulling weeds.  *shudder*

First pan patty squash!  It seems to be the bright yellow pan patty variety from my mixed packet from Burpee.  I have several more pan patty plants in the garden so I hope I end up with all three color variations.

Cat faced tomato!  This is a Mr. Stripey, which seems prone to this, though the wonky heat and weather isn't helping.

The late-planted cukes are beginning to climb...I wonder what variety will set fruit first?  There are three here in total; a burpless, a yellow lemon cuke, and a white pickling cuke.

One of the two surviving red cabbage plants, generally unharmed.  We'll see if  that trend continues. 

The one surviving green cabbage looking pretty much like my cabbage looked last season at this time (none of which survived).

Harvest!  Tons of zukes, two saffron squash, one ichiban eggplant, two kohlrabi, one big early bell  (picked green) and a crap-ton of different bush beans!

I need to go look up the names of the beans...this is actually 4 of the 5 varieties of bush beans that I have planted right now.  Weird colors are how I get my kids to eat veggies.

This is why you check your zucchini plants DAILY.  Two of those things are bigger than my calves...and I am not a tiny  person.

Food everywhere!

We're reaching the part of garden season where the kids start to REALLY get excited.  Harvesting is much less work and much more fun than all the stuff that comes earlier in the season.  We're also getting more variety with our CSA, which is awesome because it forces us to try and figure out how new and creative ways to cook food that the kids will eat.

One of the big success stories in this arena, is actually my first attempt at quiche.  After being inspired by this post and recipe by Chris over at Adventures of a Thrifty Mama I decided to give it a try using ham, broccoli, garlic scapes, fresh basil, and spring onions all from the amazing Kretschmann Farm CSA.  It was surprisingly awesome, and even better than the quiche I remember eating all the time when I worked at Whole Foods several years ago.

I tied up the volunteer tomatoes growing behind the bush beans.  The peas have been yanked and more beans have been planted on each side of the tomatoes.

An entire melon cluster has been eaten by bunnies.  They were spaced too close anyway, so it's not a huge loss, but this is a trend I would like to stop.

Austin picked one of his "spicy peppers" (Garden Salsa).  Not sure what we'll do with it yet since we have no tomatoes.  

Today's harvest was one weirdly shaped Space Miser Zucchini, two immature gypsy bell peppers, one garden salsa pepper, and one small kohlrabi.

Around the garden...

I picked up two Golden Treasure pepper plants a few weeks back without really knowing anything other than that they are a sweet yellow pepper.  After doing some research, it appears they are quite long (8" to 9") and resemble banana peppers.  The plants are now barely a foot tall but there is one baby pepper already growing.

I have multiple clusters of Early Girl tomatoes growing on my two plants.  The other tomatoes have yet to achieve fruit set, though there may be some in hiding.

On the left, you can see a pretty large volunteer tomato in my tomato bed.  I'm torn because it's VERY close to my Early Girl and too big to move.  I think I'll be leaving it and keeping my fingers crossed.  

Yesterday's harvest was one kidney shaped ichibahn eggplant and a bowl full of basil.

The two Gypsy Bell's have a total of 4 baby peppers including the big one I keep watching.

The first Saffron Summer Squash...there are no male flowers yet though.

This kohlrabi will be harvested later today.  

Our newest family member is now 4 weeks old, and LOVES just sitting in a rocking chair sucking on a finger after she eats or when she's feeling cranky.  Unfortunately for her, Daddy's finger won't do, and Mommy's fingers aren't always ready when she is in finger mode.  See the problem here?

It's not good enough to just wash my hands either...I have to actually scrub and make sure none of the garden dirt stays under my finger nails or else it will end up in her little tummy.  Granted I ate tons of dirt as a kid, but I'm pretty sure the only thing a 4 week old needs right now is milk.