An Unexpected Harvest & Reviews!

Not sure why it was unexpected, other than it was 90 degrees at 8:30 am and I had only planned on watering the garden and then hiding out the rest of the day! Alas, the heat and humidity over the past week had other plans in store for me! Since my tomato issues had me preoccupied the whole week, other things were left on auto pilot and went unnoticed until today! Here they are, along with my personal observations since they are mostly all new varieties to me this year:

Today's Harvest

1.0 lbs carrots (Purple Haze, Cosmic Purple, St. Valery), 1.0 lbs Dragon Langerie Beans, 11 oz Heirloom Yellow Wax Beans, 4.5 lbs Peas

'Purple Haze' Carrots - hard as a rock, horrible tasting, my dog who loves carrots wouldn't eat them, will not grow again!

'Cosmic Purple' (don't have a close-up) are purple splashed with orange - while moderately interesting, had a tough core and not enough good about them to make me grow them again

'St. Valery' grew very well here, crunchy yet tender, carrot-ey, passed the Finnegan taste test so it must be good! This was free seed I got last year from Baker Creek, otherwise I wouldn't have grown it - will order more next year. I grew it last year, but didn't get a decent germination or harvest, Granny's seed mats made the difference this year!

I do understand that these may perform differently in other areas/zones, but for me, they are the hits and misses!

Dragon Langerie (Dragon's Tongue)

I know a lot of us jumped on this bandwagon this year, and how could I refuse the delightful photos in the seed catalogs? They must be hugely popular this year since mine were backordered for a long time. Other than their beauty on the vine, these fell short of expectations in my garden. They are beautiful however! Tip for picking, they lose color and get huge VERY quickly! The color is most intense while small, also more tender and tasty then. They do of course, lose color after cooking and in my opinion there are other beans that taste far superior. My summation: grow these if you want to have beautiful things in your garden during a outdoor dinner party as people walk around and ooh & ahhh over things, but in the kitchen they fell short for me.

Dragon's Tongue after blanching

Now on to what I consider the superstar bean of the century! Why have I never grown these before????

Heirloom Golden Wax Bean

I can't say enough about these - slender, pretty, great bean flavor, tender, the easiest bean to snap the ends off I have ever encountered. Bush bean that produces like a pole bean. I will be picking these daily from just 1/2 of a raised bed's worth. After blanching, no color loss, still snappy, I will definitely use these to mix with my green pole beans when they come in for beautiful bags of frozen beans in the winter, and they will make for great Dilly Beans once I am ready to start canning. For those that want to know, I got this seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and I will be ordering more pronto. On the website, their picture looks like the beans are a little too mature for me, harvested skinny like mine they are extremely tasty and pretty! Tip for harvesting, don't wear polarized sunglasses, that's how I got some that were still light green, LOL!

(they still taste just as good this way)

Heirloom Golden Wax Bean - still gorgeous after blanching!

I could not have done all 5 lbs of peas today without my child laborers!

Marley underfoot while we are working, she had little green peas all over her by the time the kids were done shelling, I'm just glad they didn't spill the whole bowl on her, she might have actually woken up!

For those of you who wanted to see the Food Saver in action, here it is!

I put the entire harvest into the freezer today since the chances for me cooking a decent meal this weekend are non-existent! It is in the upper 90's so we will probably go to the beach tomorrow evening once it cools off and eat sandwiches.

What about tonight? The USO is putting on free concerts for a Military Appreciation Festival on the beach all weekend and tonight I will be toes-in-the-sand watching Hall & Oates! I am showing my age now, but I am excited to see them, and although they are old now guess what? So am I, LOL! And yes, the kids are coming with me! Should be a fun evening, even if a hot one!

I was not abducted by aliens!

Whew, it's been awhile! I will start by showing you the kids' costumes for Halloween! I am happy they chose to be "scary" and not some random cartoon character this year!

Loch recovered from the Swine Flu quickly and I managed to keep everyone else in the house healthy throughout the ordeal! Although my hands permanently smell like the bleach solution I had resorted to carrying on a holster of sorts, lol.

Our Harvest Party was a screaming success, with over 17 kids and their parents in attendance. It was a great time, and a good mix of people. I had invited my online garden club, some kids from the boys' classes at school, neighbors, and personal friends. I was nervous about mixing all those strangers, but every one seemed to enjoy conversing and meeting new people, and they kids stayed so busy we hardly noticed them, except for the noise! They had plenty to do, painting pumpkins and gourds, lining up for Sailor/Farmer/Husband and his friend to give "tattoos", roasting marshmallows, and creating general mayhem. The adults were able to be involved in "grownup talk" so much so that I commented to my husband that he should fire up a real tattoo gun just to see how long it would take the parents to notice the whirring sound coming from the deck, lol. But that's the sick sense of humor that I have, luckily it is shared by a least a couple of my friends. I sadly did not get any photos that turned out well from the party, and I really regret not taking photos of the aftermath on Sunday morning cleanup. There were forks and spoons in the bushes, plastic cockroaches that started the evening embedded in ice cubes were later floating in a bowl of punch, pieces of childrens costumes strewn all over the yard, wet potato chips to clean up (we got a thunderstorm that night too!) and just quite a wonderful mess in general!

I had a couple of harvest pictures the past week or so, nothing spectacular. Below are the 3, yes, that's 3 carrots I pulled. I might add that these are the only 3, lol! I had every intention of doing the paper mat carrot thingie so eloquently explained by Annie's Granny... but alas, lazy girl took over and I didn't do it and this is all I have to show for it:
I can still plant carrots here, so I WILL do the paper & glue thing next week. Really.... I WILL!

My lettuces are all going gangbusters now with all you want to pick every day. There is assorted mesclun, lettuces, oriental greens, Swiss Chard and spinach. Also a head of broccoli was harvested one day the past week. Worms everywhere, ugh! I think no more broccoli plantings for me - it's pretty hard to get a kid to eat it when there are worms crawling out of it!

Here's your weekly dose of garden humor! Oh, how pretty the forgotten broccoli plant is, look at all the pretty flowers, lol! Kind of takes the "Master" right outta the Master Gardener, huh? Hey, I've been busy studying about the plant, not taking care of it!!! Anyway, it's gone now... pretty cabbage moths and all, lol!

I did make a pretty good salad the other night - with the addition of some pansies I ALMOST got the kids to try it. Almost, but not quite... although they were thoroughly fascinated as my Sailor/Farmer/Husband and I ate them!

A random pic from class this week... potted weeds! Our "Weed Professor" (yes, that got a snicker from the class even though we are all "grownups" now) brought in about 50 different weeds for an identification class. It was kind of funny to see them all potted up in a cultivation status!

Here is Finnegan brewing up a batch of Homebrew the night of the Vikings/Packers game. Even though we are far away, we had to honor the day with a batch of Saint Paul/ Summit Ave Extra Pale Ale clone recipe. I actually designed some labels for our brews that should arrive any day now. I could print them at home but honestly the extra expense online is worth it when the cost of ink cartridges and pain in the butt factor is figured in.

Lastly, today was the day! Our class of Master Gardener trainees graduated this morning! I am now officially a Master Gardener Intern. I am really looking forward to getting involved in some neat projects in the future. I highly recommend this program for those of you whose states/extension services offer it. I learned so much, and the speakers that the Virginia Tech Univ/Extension Service people brought in were top-notch. I met so many wonderful people and enjoyed it so much, I was a little sad to see the classroom phase end. I know that I will get the chance to work with them in the future, so it's exciting as well and I look forward to it.

A funny note to end on: When I got home today from graduation, I brought home a clump of Maximillian Sunflower one of my classmates had divided to share (thanks Amy!). I walk in excited about graduating and at the same time holding basically a ball of mud - I tell my husband "look what I got!" You should have seen the look I got. (I could see he was thinking "should I let this slide?", "should I look excited?", "should I have her committed?"). Later, I show Lochlann my mud clump and told him it was a "Major Award" and he flatly said... "that class doesn't sound like too much fun to me". Whatever, I LOVE my mud clump and can't wait to sink it into the ground tomorrow!

This is WAR!

Ok, so I fell of the organic wagon and broke out the Roundup. This bed is only a month old, several layers of cardboard, and 3-4 inches of mulch! Ugh, the nightmare that is Bermudagrass. As anyone that lives in the south can tell you, it's horrid stuff. I call it "bamboo grass", since it spreads by rhizomes underground and this chain-like crap above ground. The first pic is a closeup, the second pic is my border and how much of it I had to kill. At least I didn't use it near the veggies. And the worst part is that it will be back in just a week or so. Several treatments hopefully will do it. Expensive problem, though...will be trying a less expensive brand for the next round. I am on a self-imposed deadline of Thursday to be done weeding all of it, since today and tomorrow are only supposed to be in the 70's, which is incredible weather for this time of year to being doing hard chores.

On to better things...I pulled the shallots the other night! I am having to hang them inside since it is so humid most days outside I am afraid they might rot.

Here's Loch harvesting a carrot that he surely will not eat...

Loch & Finn posing with their harvest of carrots

I feel bad (kind of) that the first batch of homebrew that Sailor/Farmer/Husband made will not wait until he gets back for the first taste...I had to "test" it and make sure it was aging properly - it is :) !! It was absolutely fantastic and I wanted to open another tonight and "test it" again but I forgot to put one in the chiller, so I am settling for a glass of wine instead. Now we need to name it...

I am now officially the "crazy chick"... with bags all over my grape bunches! My son was watching me from his sandbox for a long while when I finally asked "What are you looking at, Loch?" (knowing the answer!), and he said "I'm not sure, Mom", followed by "are those lunch bags?", and finally "are you tired of packing sandwiches for my lunch?". Wow, I had been having a trying afternoon with the kids, but I could no longer contain my laughter at that point. Just when you think you can't take anymore headaches from kids, they come out with a gem and it makes you realize how awesome it is to be a parent.

I could go on and on about the garden chores this week, but if I don't quit now, I will not have any relax time catching up on the DVR tonight! By the way...any of you seen the new A & E show Obsessed? For a type A, anxiety ridden, OCD person such as myself, gotta say I love it!! Kind of fun to watch what might happen to me if I let myself slip over the edge :)