Harvest Monday: August Is Here

I had four separate harvests from the garden this week, and plant diversity is increasing. That means August is here! I had the week off of work, so I was able to spend a lot of time in the garden, thinking about the garden, and planning for some big changes for next year's garden (more to come on that in a separate post).

Tuesday, when I posted my July garden journal, I picked a handful of tomatoes and peppers, but forgot to photograph them. I did remember to take photos of the garden though. The first photo has my winter squash on the left, 8-ball zucchini and fennel poking up behind them, and the mass of tomatoes in the back. The foreground is peppers and a row of Swiss chard.

It didn't feel like 80 degrees in the shade; it was a lovely morning. Here you'll see my sparse rows of beans (1) and carrots (4). Behind those are the rutabagas. They look wilted because I'd just thinned them. Behind those you can barely see the rows of beets. So far I've only had to water the garden two or three times because we've been getting regular rain. The squash plants were thirsty by Friday afternoon, but with rain in the forecast on Sunday I held off (right now watering is a production of connecting and running a 50-foot hose). The rain came in multiple downpours, so the squash should be happier now.

I remembered to photograph the remaining harvests. On Thursday I got more tomatoes (Juliets and some cherries), a green pepper, two 8-ball zucchinis, and some super chili ornamental peppers.

Saturday brought two harvests: the first ripe Celebrity tomato, and a mountain of beet thinnings (Lutz Winter Keeper and Golden) providing a glut of baby beets and beet greens, which I've yet to process.

A quick spin through the garden on Sunday before the rain came found more tomatoes, including the first few Romas, another pepper, more chiles, and some jalapenos (Mighty Nacho).

Although I sliced a few for a pizza, most of the Juliets have been roasted and eaten with eggs for breakfast. When I start getting them in larger quantities I'll dehydrate them. The cherry tomatoes and peppers are combined with CSA veggies for mason jar salads that Aaron has been taking to work. While trying to get feedback on what salads he liked best, I learned it doesn't matter what veggies are in it as long as there's some smoked pork. So he smoked another pork roast this weekend so he'd have salads for this week.

Some of the jalapenos I harvested Sunday went into a jalapeno corn bread that we had with the pulled pork and some CSA corn on the cob. It will make a good side for Aaron's Southwest salads this week, too.

That's all from Gross Farms this week. I hope you'll head over to Happy Acres to see what Dave and the other Harvest Monday participants are pulling out of their gardens and cooking.

Hopefully in a few days I can get a post together about the BIG garden plans for 2021.