Harvest Monday – 6th February 2012

Saturday's harvest

How can it possibly be February already?  The summer harvests are still going strong, although I fear that they are slowing.

This week I harvested:

2 Apple Cucumber –   getting a bit sick of these now. They have a bitterness that I’m not keen on.

4 Golden Nugget pumpkins – I think these are on the downhill run. I tried to move the vine during the week to mow around it, and I snapped the growing tip off the most productive plant. Now I’m just molly-coddling the seed-donor pumpkin, because I don’t have seeds for this amazing and highly productive variety.  I really hope that they grow true to type next year.

1 Lebanese cucumber – My lebanese cuke plants have finally started producing. I imagine I’ll get quite a yield from these if it doesn’t cool off too quickly.

18 lebanese eggplant – still going extremely strong. I made baba ganoush during the week, and I’m finally starting to enjoy eggplant.

1 ‘Double Yield’ cucumber – I really should have looked after these plants better. They are still producing, but only just.

3 ‘Tigerella’ tomatoes – I’m having to pick these severely underripe to prevent fruit split. We’ve had 66 milimetres of rain over the last week, 44 of which fell last Friday, playing havoc with a lot of my fruit. The most devastating was the much anticipated 1st rockmelon that split on Friday.

1 Rockmelon

I had to pick it before it was infested through the split. Unfortunately it was only days under-ripe – still edible, but not great. Thankfully I still have another on the vine. As long as we don’t get any more downpours I might actually get to enjoy it.

1 ‘Rouge de Marmande’ tomato – These don’t seem to have split as easily as some of the other varieties, and they are so productive! This plant isn’t much to look at, but it is simply covered in fruit.

7 cobs corn – The corn is still going really well. My 2 year old loves it, and we get requests for corn every night for dinner.

2 kilos ‘Ruby Lou’ potatoes – I harvested one of the potato growing bags this week. It had died off long ago but I was storing the potatoes in the bag. I’m really enjoying growing potatoes this way, and as long as I have 2 or 3 bags on the go at all times, I think I’ll be able to produce potatoes all year round.

4 green capsicum (green bell pepper) – I made the mistake of growing the capsicums in the middle of the bed between 2 rows of eggplant. The eggplants now dwarf the capsicums, so there is very little light reaching the capsicum plants. My lovely plant that was covered in capsicum dropped all its fruit during the week. The 4 I count here are the ones that could be salvaged.

1 ‘birds eye’ chilli – This chilli plant is amazingly hardy and really productive. I picked a chilli during the week, and I have many more coming.

Next week, I’m hoping the edamame will be ready to harvest!

For other great harvests around the world, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions.