Henbogle

We picked quite a lot from the garden this week, with a freakishly warm and humid spell spurring ripening tomatoes, a flush of new squash blossoms on, and a final cucumber! That was a surprise.

Let me just say again how much I love my Costata Romanesca zucchini.  The poor thing looks so ratty, most of it half dead from powdery mildew and old age, yet it continues to grow new leaves and produce fruit.  I picked 2 squash from it this week, and there are at least three more which no doubt, will continue to grow this week.  Fabulous.  To be fair, the yellow crookneck and patty pan squash are doing the same, but somehow, have not won my heart like their counterpart the zucchini has.

We went through and picked a lot of the cherry tomatoes I had been ignoring.  WIth the recent rains a lot had cracked, but I amuse myself by tossing them into the hens.  I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if I tried, but I managed to hit Dan once and the corner fencepost birdhouse at least three times when doing this, sigh.  There are still lots of green tomatoes on the vines, maybe some will ripen.  I don’t think I’ll pull the vines and let the toms ripen on the vine, although I hear it works.  I just don’t have a good space for that experiment.  Any that look like they’ve begun ripening by next weekend I’ll bring in the house to ripen them up for fresh eating.

The ripe tomatoes were roasted and run through the tomato press for sauce.  I used some of the roasted tomato sauce in a big batch of homemade enchilada sauce, wow is it good.  Spicy, but delicious.  I froze 8 portions and we’ll have the rest this week with some squash enchiladas.

I picked all the peppers, deciding there was little chance the remaining green ones would ripen to red before a frost.  The Carmen peppers were the clear winner this year.  I will definitely grow them every year from now on.  They are prolific and tasty.  Thanks Johnny!  I will also continue to grow the Black Hungarian chile peppers.  These were still producing a few chiles even though they were completely overrun by the Sungold and Matt’s Wild cherry tomatoes.  Pretty, hot, and prolific gets my vote.  I’m hoping I have enough in the fridge to try my hand at making Cowboy Candy, aka candied pickled chiles.

Dan went through the pole beans and picked all he could find.  We will use these as shell beans in a meal this week.  I have some bush beans slowly growing and setting beans, I hope we get at least one picking from them before a frost hits us.  This week’s count follows.

Herbs 10 oz.
S. Squash 2 lbs 4 oz.
Peppers 2 lbs. 7 oz. (more peppers than summer squash!)
Tomatoes 7 lbs 5 oz.
Cucumbers 12 oz.

This puts me at a hair over 14 lbs. for the week.

The value of my harvests throughout the season stands at $1829.02. Expenses remained the same at $305.54, bringing the net value to $1,543.28. Total pounds grown this summer 542 lbs.

I still have yet to weigh the winter squash and pumpkins, and there is still more delicious home-grown produce awaiting dinner.  YUM!

This post is part of Daphne’s Harvest Monday series published on her blog Daphne’s Dandelions.  Check it out and see who’s eating what across the land.