Monday August 21

It's been a really productive week here in the bean patch, in fact, the best so far this year.  I brought down the garlic that was drying in the attic in the pole barn and cleaned it up.  There are 4 different kinds but only 2 are known since the labels were lost for the others.  Only about 2 pounds but that will last me until next year.

The Musica and Fortex pole beans have started producing again, and two rows of Provider bush beans that were planted a couple months ago are also producing beans.  I picked 5.8 pounds of beans for the week, and froze a large bag.

Early last week I made another batch of salsa.  The sweet peppers, Carmen on the left and 2 peppers of unknown variety, plus 7 Magyar paprika peppers, were roasted on the grill and deskinned.  There were only a handful of Jalapeno peppers, which have been overrun by the ancho peppers, so I had to buy some more  at the farmers market.  The smaller Fish peppers gave a heat boost to the salsa.

The tomato base of the salsa was made from 2 small varieties.  These are the Mountain Magic tomatoes.

And the Black Plum tomatoes. Combined they weighed a little over 8 pounds, enough for 7 pints.

I picked a number of Better Boy and Pink Girl slicers. Rather than show the individual tomatoes, here's a photo of the Pink Girl plant, laden with ripe fruit.

Later in the week, more beans, okra, summer squash and a Bride eggplant.  The eggplant is nearly finished, overtaken by disease.  The Lavendar Touch eggplant was removed a few days ago.

More Millionaire okra.  Another picking today and I can make some pickled okra and peppers.

More beans.

Sunday was marinara canning day.  Most of the tomatoes came from the 2 cages of Plum Regal tomatoes.  This is an easy tomato to de-skin and process, and best of all the plants show no sign of blight or other disease.

A few Roma tomatoes and I had just over 12 pounds to make the sauce.  There's only 1 cage of Roma tomatoes but less than half as many as the Plum Regals, which are vastly more productive.

Deskinned and green cores removed.  It looks like a lot of tomatoes, but after cooking them down there was just barely enough to can 7 pints.  I draw the line at removing seeds, and anyway these tomatoes don't have that many seeds.

For the week I got 15 pounds of slicer and salad tomatoes, 12.8 pounds of sauce tomatoes, 5.8 pounds of snap beans, and lesser amounts of other good things, 40 pounds total.  To see what other gardeners are harvesting, head on over to Our Happy Acres and check it out.