Category Archives: Harvest Basket

Todays Harvest Basket 6/1/ 2014

Posted on June 3, 2014 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket 6/1/ 2014

June 1, 2014

Today's Harvest Basket 6/1/14 Picked lots of Russian Kale "Wild Garden Frills" (seed from Renee's Garden). Despite being wild, it's also quite mild. Tore up some small leaves to add to our salad tonight. Will use the rest in a green rice dish. Picked a few baby butter head lettuces and lots of leaf lettuces like Flashy Trout Back, Oakleaf, Garden Ferns. There are onions and radishes picked yesterday, so it's wilted lettuce on tonights menu.

Today’s Harvest Basket 6/1/14 Picked a few baby butter head lettuces and lots of leaf lettuces like Flashy Trout Back, Oakleaf, Garden Ferns.
It’s wilted lettuce on tonight’s menu. Patsy Bell Hobson.

Picked lots of Russian Kale “Wild Garden Frills” (seed from Renee’s Garden). Despite being wild, it’s also quite mild. Tore up some small leaves to add to our salad tonight. Will use the rest in a green rice dish.

Picked a few baby butter head lettuces and lots of leaf lettuces like Flashy Trout Back, Oakleaf, Garden Ferns.

There are onions and radishes picked yesterday, so it’s wilted lettuce on tonight’s menu.

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Every inch of soil is productive. In the blocks that frame this raised bed are lettuces which will be harvested soon so the onions will have space to bulb. Patsy Bell Hobson

It’s just too bad that we can’t have home-grown lettuce and tomatoes at the same time. Usually lettuce comes to an end about the time cherry tomatoes start coming on.

A broken transplant or starter tomato might have been a disaster.

A broken transplant or starter tomato might have been a disaster.

 

Tomato plants want to live.

All you need to do is stick the broken stem in the ground and plant the rooted base.

Don’t forget to keep these starts well watered and protected from the hottest sun until till they are well rooted and starting to branch.

It will be the same as planting two tomato plants. Meaning double the tomatoes as planned.

This tomato is Gold Medal, a big old heirloom producing 1/2 to 1 pound size yellow globes with red streaking.

I love Gold Medal tomatoes, they are meaty slicers that are beautiful on a plate of  Caprese salad (Italian: Insalata Caprese, meaning “Salad of Capri”)

The salad has no recipe, just combine basil, tomato and mozzarella. drizzle a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt.

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First Harvest Basket of the season 2014

Posted on June 2, 2014 by | Comments Off on First Harvest Basket of the season 2014

 Todays Harvest Basket

First Harvest Basket of 2014. Pak Choi, onions, radishes, lettuces. Plus, there is a pint or so of strawberries we’ve been getting every day this week, Ozarks Beauty. We are also finishing up Asparagus season this week.

Salad greens, radishes, green onion, Pak Choi

Salad greens, radishes, green onion, Pak Choi Photo: Patsy Bell Hobson

One interesting thing, is that there are a few radish left, hidden in the lettuces. They are big and only as hot as the smaller more traditional radish. Not fiery hot or pithy. They are pink and red and a few are white.

Some of these big radish have gone to seed. The flowers a small and dainty on tall wispy stems. I hope to save some seed to plant next spring.

 

 

 

 

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Todays Harvest Basket 6/15/2013

Posted on June 28, 2013 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket 6/15/2013

A salute to summers best salads!

With Make It Your Own recipes

lettuces and chard. Photo by PBH

lettuces and chard. Photo by PBH

With this beautiful romaine lettuce, I’ve been inspired to make my own Caesar Salad Dressing. See it on Hub Pages soon.

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Todays Harvest Basket Sept 18, 2012

Posted on September 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket Sept 18, 2012

Todays Harvest Basket Sept 18, 2012

End of the garden vegetables. A few green beans that haven’t been eaten up by the bugs. They will be steamed and served with lemon and chives. (RG)

Peppers are beautiful but smaller than usual this year.

The red peppers are Red Cheese, sweet and mild. So called because at one time the red pepper was used to color the wax used to coat cheese. (BC)

The black peppers are just barely hot Black Hungarian. Thinned walled (BC)

I picked a couple dozen TAM jalapeno. These peppers have the flavor of jalapeno but are with less heat. I’ll use some of these to make a bottle of pepper vinegar. (BC)

The yellow pepper is called Ozark Giant. It is big, thick walled, sweet and juicy. (BC)

A couple of beautiful Gold Medal tomatoes, also much smaller than usual. When sliced, these tomatoes are a beautiful gold yellow with red centers. Gold Medal is an heirloom with that rich  tomato flavor. (BC)

Riesentraube Tomatoes are the 30 or 40 sweet red 1-oz fruit (BC)  An excellent salad tomato and I have dried hundreds of these tomatoes this year. This winter they will go into soups, stew and chili. (BC)

There are some small eggplants that will be become a simple version of ratatouille to serve over pasta. There are three small eggplants in the upper right corner of the basket. The leaves of this plant are lacy with so many flea beetle holes. (RG)

Ozark Giant

Hungarian Black

Red Cheese

 

(RG) = Renee’s Garden

(BC) = Baker Creek Heirloom Seed

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Todays Harvest Basket

Posted on September 5, 2012 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket

September 4, 2012.

That big butternut squash weighs over 3 pounds.

Tomatoes, butternut, garlic, peppers, potatoes

I did not count the Riesentraube cherry tomatoes, but just one tomato plant produced all of these. They filled a 2.5 quart bucket. Riesentraube means “Giant Bunches of Grapes.” Plant them once – you will always have these little German heirloom cherry tomatoes in your garden.

Jere Gettle of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed is giving out free Riesentraube with some seed purchases. I suspect Gere is trying to cover the world with little pointy tomatoes. They are prolific.

Drying Cherry Tomatoes

Riesentraube is an early producer. When the big tomatoes start producing, I start drying these little cherries. Here is how I use these hundreds of cherry tomatoes: Tomato triage for too many tomatoes.

While I was cleaning out a raised bed, I found two pounds of these little potatoes. I did not plant potatoes this year. They came up from spuds I missed last fall!

TAM, a very tasty milder Jalapeno, just keeps producing.Kepp watering this pepper and it keeps producing as long as you keep picking peppers.

Quart sun pickles.

 

I left this jar of sun pickles out on the retaining wall for another day or two. When I made these, it clouded up and rained for three days. Which was good for the garden. But who knows about sun pickles?

 

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Todays Harvest Basket

Posted on August 17, 2012 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket

August 17, 2012

Riesentraube tomato there are about 90 of these little 1 ounce tomatoes, all from the same plant. Riesentraube means “bunch of grapes”.  Seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Indigo Rose tomatoes are the row at the top of the basket. Just over a dozen to these saladette tomatoes are all picked off the same plant. Seed from Nichols Garden Nursery

Outside the basket are a 3 small pink Brandywines. After a long, hot summer, these heirloom Brandywine tomatoes are much smaller than the usual tomatoes. Tomato seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

3 Italian roma tomatoes are Pompeii. Bigger than most plum tomatoes, these are meaty and rich-flavored. Great for sauce or dried. The seeds are from Renee’s Garden.

Today is really all about the tomato. The Riesentraubes are in the dehydrator now. By tomorrow evening they will be “Sun dried” tomatoes. The majority of tomatoes sold as “sun dried” are dried in a deydrator. It’s faster, safer, cleaner.

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Todays Harvest Basket

Posted on August 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket

July 13, 2012

tomatoes, cucumber, squash, hot peppers.

This horrible heat has caused the tomatoes to stop blooming.  Tomatoes are suffering, even though I am watering the tomato plants. It is just too hot to bloom or produce fruit. Even when we get a temperature drop, it will take 5 week to produce a tomato. It takes about 3 weeks for the tomato to grow and then 2 more weeks for the big ones to ripen.

Today I harvested the ingredients, along with the home grown onions and garlic, for ratatouille.

I have loads of tomato information on Pinterest Tomato Everything

On Hubpages  Read My Hubpages about saving seed and tomatoes.

Hubs like this one: What causes tomatoes to crack?

Top Tomato Tips: When Size Matters

Why hot tomatoes stop growing

Sungold tomato. photo: PBH

This tangerine colored cherry tomato is little and the sweetest tomato I’ve ever eatin. This is the only tomato that I will for sure have in the garden next year.

 

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Todays Harvest Basket

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket

July 23, 2012
tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, TAM pepper, onion, arugula

White Wonder cucumber, Grandmother and Uncle Ebb grew white cucumbers like this. They are small, non bitter, great slicer. Photo PBH

This arugula, is a perfect green to combine with lettuce. Tonights salad included the arugula, cucumber, tomatoes, red onion. I make my own salad dressing. Usually a lemon and olive oil is the start of a good homemade dressing.

TAM is Texas A & M jalapeno pepper. Less heat but all the distinct flavor of jalapeno. (The little red peppers on the right.) I’ll roast them, then freeze. That way they will be handy to add to salsa and chili.

 

 

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Todays Harvest Basket

Posted on July 20, 2012 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket

July 19, 2012

chard, mint, tomatoes

chard, mint, tomatoes

Todays harvest included lots of small tomatoes, some mixed varietys of chard, and a hand full of mint that will go in tabouli and iced tea.

This is how I keep the mint under control: every day I make sun tea. I snip a

Mojito mint planted in terracotta drain tile

bit of mint off one of the four varieties each day. So, once or twice a week each mint (or the lemon balm) gets a bit of a trim. And I get fresh mint for cooking or for my sun tea.

The tomatoes are mostly Riesentraube Cherry Tomatoes, an old Pennsylvania Dutch heirloom tomato meaning “giant bunches of grapes.” They are larger than most cherry tomatoes. and the distinctive thing about them is the little pointy nipple on the end of every tomato.

tlnb – the little neighbor boy-  came by today and told us we would miss him this week because he was going on vacation. I suspect he is right. We do miss our frequent garden guest when he doesn’t come around.

He’s just as cute a Dennis the menace and asks dozens of questions at every visit. Lately he can also answer some of the questions.

“Why do you garden so much?” he asked.

“I know. You like to know where your food comes from and gardening reminds you of your mother and your grandmother,” he answered.

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Todays Harvest Basket

Posted on July 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on Todays Harvest Basket

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Onions, tomatoes, celery

celery, onions, tomatoes

First time to grow celery and it is a heavy feeder and needs lots of water. It should be blanched. The celery was very green (because I did not blanch it.) It is not bitter, but it should be, because I really forgot about it. These plants were in the shade of other plants (roses, tomatoes.)

The celery should have been picked weeks ago before the big heat wave. But even the bugs and disease ignored the celery. So sometimes, even when you do everything wrong, garden plants will thrive anyway.

This was the last of the onions in the garden.  A few saladette tomatoes, the Indigo Rose tomatoes are ripe every day.

 

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