Tuesday, July 10, 2012

My Organic Garden Harvest


The garden has been doing really great in the last few weeks! I've had to recruit helpers in order to keep up with the harvest rate.


Celie and Eleanor help Poppa by picking the yellow pear (or balloon) tomatoes.





We picked 36 of these that weighed a total of 1 pound 1 ounce. There were also 18 tomato berries that weighed 4 ounces. (Not all were in this pic.)





The butter beans weighed 6 pounds 7 ounces in the pods.





Shelled they weighed 2  1/4 pounds.





I picked 10 ounces of Cherry Belle radishes.





The blueberries continue to be a major delight in providing me with a full 1 pound harvest this week!





The golden Bell Peppers were harvested for the first time in my garden half-barrel. I picked 13 of them for 1  3/4 pounds.





There were 9 banana peppers at 6  3/4 ounces.





One black beauty eggplant at 11 1/2 ounces.





The Celebrity tomatoes gave us 17 1/4 pounds at this last picking.





The Park's Whoppers gave us 13 1/2 pounds.





and the Roma's gave us 18 1/2 pounds!





When I was making my wife's lunch and sliced this Park's Whopper tomato, I just knew I had to take a picture of it. They are on a dinner plate for size comparison purposes.





Here is my first batch of homemade organic tomato juice! Fourteen quarts! Needless to say, I am spending a lot of time in the kitchen putting up the veggies.





I thought I'd share a short video on the results of my gently squeezing the tomatoes before sending them through the food strainer. It really worked out great!

That completes another garden harvest report from Back Yard Organic Vegetables. I thank you for caring enough to visit my blog so I may share information with you on the successes as well as the failures of my gardening experiences.

Please forgive me, but I've been late on getting out my replies to comments that have been shared with me due to kitchen activity, but I will answer all within the next couple of days since it is raining again today.

Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Veggie PAK

8 comments:

  1. I can't wait until I get that many blueberries. I so love them.

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    1. The blueberries are great! I might entertain planting some additional bushes... if I can find the space!

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  2. Very nice. I strained some yesterday but should have remembered your idea for squeezing the juice out of them because it is very thin.

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    1. Thanks! Cooking the juice down takes a long time, even with the extra juice squeezed out. I'm going to try to find another way to separate the juice out from the pulp. Maybe refrigerate overnight and let it settle, then manually remove the juice with a turkey baster or something.

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  3. What a great harvest. Your peppers are gorgeous!

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  4. What a great blog. I'm enjoying it so much I have started reading it from the beginning. Can you share your cucumber salad and Grand Ma's Tomato soup recipe from 7/10 posting? I also am very interested in your homemade tomato cages. How about a small video on how you made them. I can't believe what a green thumb you have. Cheers, Louise

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    1. Louise, Thanks! Sorry for the late reply. Blogger doesn't want to cooperate very well in the "Reply" department today. I will locate the recipes and post them.I really like the tomato cages because they will last me the rest of my life! This is the type of fencing that I climbed over as a kid, and that same fencing is still there in use on my grandmother's former farm. That was over fifty years ago! Of course it's all rusted, but still functions as the sole boundary to keep the cows inside the area.
      No more annual purchase of the flimsy electric-welded mass produced tomato cages for me! I will contemplate a small video on how I made them, or perhaps step-by-step still pictures of the process. It might seem expensive at first, but when you realize that you never have to buy another commercially fabricated tomato cage, I think it's worth it! The roll of field fencing costs around $174. It is 4 feet high and 330 feet long, and very heavy. That is a lot of tomato cages as well as trellises for beans and cukes, which means no more stringing trellises either! Thank you for your kind comments.

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