Sunday, November 7, 2010

Harvest Monday

I really enjoy getting in extra harvests simply by planning the dates when the vegetable plants should be in the ground. In my Excel spreadsheets, when I put a projected date in one column, based on other data in the spreadsheet, the harvest date pops into the scheduled maturity date column. It is SO helpful! Doing it this way gives you so much more control of the potential harvests. Basically, you're scheduling them throughout the year based on previous seasonal performance.

There's still mother nature to deal with though. When it doesn't rain frequently enough, I'm sure thankful for my well. Our house is on city water service, but the previous owner was a nurseryman and had a well installed in 1945, when there was no city water here. Actually, back then there was no city here. It was all country. There was a field across the street with cows in it. I wish it was still that way!








These 18 giant marconi green peppers were picked this week. There's more to fill out, but I'm not sure there will be enough time before a frost hits. I'm looking for frost between the middle of November to the 15th of December. This morning at 6:30 it was 60 degrees outside. I hope that keeps up!








I went out and picked 3 and 1/2 pounds of Vates collards. That was half of my first row. While they grow back, I still have two and a half rows left for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are really starting to fill in and grow very well. I'm sure there will be another picking between the holidays since they're so far apart. A month is plenty of time for more collards.








I picked two and a half pounds of Henderson butter beans from my garden yesterday. I was only 1/3 of the way down the row when it got too dark to pick any more.








Eggplant are finished for this year. After picking the last two for the year, I pulled the plants in order for the pumpkins in an adjacent row to be able to get more morning sunlight.








Well, this is the second harvest of cucumbers. A single, one ounce cucumber. I guess we'll combine that with our few Juliett tomatoes in the fridge and have a "small" salad. Planning. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it works not as well. You have to think positive.








A couple days after I picked the green peppers in the first photo in this post, I decided to pick the rest. I ended up picking an additional 52 of the giant marconi green peppers before pulling the three plants today. I didn't count the peppers less than an inch and a half in length in that total. I counted all the others because there will always be smaller veggies during the harvesting process, and I wasn't going to waste them just because they were small. The pumpkins in the next row need the morning sun if they are going to have a chance to grow. They were in the shadows of the eggplant and the green peppers. Now they're not.


I still have more Henderson butter beans to pick. I'm not even halfway down the row, and there will still be another picking to come in a couple of weeks if the frost doesn't hit. Either a lot of pods aren't filled out yet, or the beans inside are still too small to pick. Actually, I'll probably wait to pick them until after the frost, since frost won't damage the beans inside the pods. Then I'll pull the plants out and pick off the beans. Since at this time of year it will be the last picking, we might as well go for maximum growing time, which ultimately will be determined by the arrival of the first frost.


Well, that's it for my first "Harvest Monday". If you have comments or questions, sign into Gmail and use the "comment" feature or send me an email at: veggiegardenblogger@gmail.com

Thanks for visiting, and have a great gardening day!

Veggie PAK

9 comments:

  1. That's one Big & Beautiful harvest!!! It will be nice to see your harvests from a warmer zone...while us northern gardeners have little to harvest!

    Welcome to Harvest Monday!

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  2. What a nice comment! Thanks to you for all your help to me!

    Thank You!

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  3. Marconi green peppers, I've never heard of these before. Are they spicy? They are gorgeous!

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  4. Great harvest, thanks for visiting my blog and welcome to Harvest Monday.

    I've never grown Butter Beans, are they dry beans? You picked them green, do you cook with the shell on?

    Off topic question: I saw horseradish growing in your garden on the garden tour post, have you eaten horseradish leaves before, are they edible? Someone asked me this question and I don't know the answer, I thought you might know since you grow the roots.

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  5. Welcome to Harvest Monday! Those peppers look awesome and so plentiful!
    Keep it up, I look forward to seeing all the great stuff you are growing!

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  6. Your three Marconi plants were very productive, they must like your garden. Unfortunately mine were not that productive but it is good to see what this variety can do.

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  7. Thanks for sharing your harvest with us.

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  8. meemsnyc, The peppers are not hot. They are just like an elongated regular green bell pepper. The reason I grew these is because when I planted green bell peppers, they did terrible, year after year. My wife saw these at the feed-n-seed store, so we tried them. Very happy with the production!

    Mac, Thanks for visiting! I really enjoy Harvest Monday!

    Butter beans are basically lima beans. They can be dry or green. Henderson butter beans are more like a baby lima. They're tender, flavorful and are easy to cook, and taste great! Here in Virginia, you can buy them in the shell, or already shelled. The shelled ones run $6.99 a pound. They have to be shelled before you cook them. My wife and I shell ours while we watch a movie on TV.

    The horseradish leaves are edible from what I read, but the flavor is sort of bitter and unappealing. I wouldn't use it in a salad.

    Fred, the peppers did remarkable for three plants. 130 peppers for the season!

    Angela, as I was telling meemsnyc above, my regular green bell peppers always did terrible. I was doing well if I got ANY from the bushes. The weather or the soil was just right for these. I'll be planting these again for sure. I did fertilize them with an organic fertilizer on or around the first of each month, along with my tomatoes. Maybe that did it. I hadn't fertilized that frequently in the past years.

    Stevie from Garden Therapy.ca, Yeah. Mmmmmm! When I finish with the computer today, I'm going out to put some blood meal on them and water it in. The next picking will also be the pulling of the plants, so I want to give them a boost.

    Emily, Thanks for visiting! I enjoy sharing info about my garden and reading about the experiences of others. I think Harvest Monday is great!

    Thanks to all of you for visiting, and I enjoy visiting all of the blogs on Harvest Mondays!

    Happy vegetable gardening to all!

    Veggie PAK

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