Chioggia Beets, Beans, and Tomato Harvest

Over the past week we've been getting more tomatoes than we can eat out of our garden, but we've also been seeing some great results from our beets and beans. I picked six relatively large Chioggia beets, with many more coming along nicely, as well as a mix of yellow beans and Blue Lake pole beans, and a Green Zebra tomato one day.

Since we aren't quite at the stage where we're getting enough beans from the garden for a meal for four people, our mom has been blanching and freezing the beans as we get them. The Blue Lake pole beans are really starting to speed up though. We have one plant that wasn't really producing, but it looks like now it's starting to.

With the Chioggia beets, I decided to try pickling them. I used a recipe from The Art of Preserving, with a few minor changes. The recipe was really basic, because once you've cooked the beets until tender, you make a simple pickling liquid from vinegar, sugar, reserved beet cooking liquid, and spices. The recipe called for apple cider vinegar, but I used plain white vinegar that had the same level of acidity, because that's all I had. The recipe also called for cloves and cardamom pods; I used the cloves, but I didn't use the cardamom because I didn't have any on hand. Instead, I added a sprig of rosemary to each jar. Onion also went into the jars with the beets and pickling liquid. I ended up with four 500 ml jars. The jars have to sit for at least a week before opening, so I have to wait awhile before I can try them.

Megan

First Week of August Harvests

This week we've been finally seeing some of our hard work paying off. In truth, most of the harvests I'm showing today are things that our mom planted, but there are a few things we grew as well that we've finally been able to harvest.

It started off with a small bowl of yellow and green beans that our mom planted, as well as a small bowl of our mom's Sungold cherry tomatoes and our Yellow Pear tomatoes.

A couple days later we picked the first Early Girl tomatoes, as well as a few more Sungold and Yellow Pear tomatoes. The Early Girls were planted by our mom as well.

Our mom's cucumbers have been very successful too, although we didn't notice one so it grew huge.

We got a few Roma tomatoes and Early Girl tomatoes out of the garden today, as well as more Yellow Pears. I also picked our first few Blue Lake pole beans.

Lastly, I got another small bowl of Sungold tomatoes out of the garden today.

I noticed our Cherokee Purple, Red Zapotec, and Purple Calabash tomatoes are beginning to show blushes of colour, so I'm sure we'll have a few of these off our plants very soon. 

Megan