The Harvest Continues...

I think I am beginning to experience cornucopia fatigue.  The garden continues to produce at an extraordinary rate.  Now I feel I must qualify that statement a little in regards to 'extraordinary'.  I am not a novice to gardening by any means (the whole collection of my previous garden rants can be found here: Gardening Deja Vu, The Garden Never Sleeps, Garden Photos - part 1, Garden Awards Spring 2011,  Weeds - part 1, Garden Photos - Part 2, Gardening A,B,C, I am RAIN, Evil Tomato, Figs!, The Garden Marches On, Okra Odyssey, Garden Equity, Garden Check In and Garden Harvest - the haul so far). Some years you have great harvests and some years no matter how much work you have done or time invested - you get nothing. 

Forget Mother Nature.  Sometimes you get Father Wonka.

This year I am discovering the unrelenting agony of success.  Sure every year the garden needs me like a two day old abandoned kitten but this year I have the added guilt stab of the harvest.  If I don't get out there and pick those beans or tomatoes or cucumbers they are not going to pick themselves.  Oh no!  That luscious organic produce is going to go over-prime on the vine and blah, blah, blah... starving children overseas!  Or something like that plays out in my mind.

Okay, okay, so I go out and pick it all.  Just where does one store 68 tomatoes that are currently hanging out on my kitchen counter finishing the ripening process  (Let me tell you the myth of 'vine ripened' tomatoes - you might as well just call them bird pecked tomatoes and toss them right into the compost pile...).  There is only so much room in the fridge where I can store the five gallon-sized bags filled with cucumbers.  And the beans... well, okay, those are pretty small, but still - two pounds of beans is a lot to have hanging out waiting to be cooked and eaten.

We are overrun and by now even our friends and family are getting a little gun shy about me approaching them with plastic bags.  "More cucumbers?" they say, looking for the nearest escape. Yes.

So, let me reveal the garden productivity for this last week from 5/23/12 to 5/30/12:

Cucumbers

Total weeks harvest = 20 pounds

Although the pickle plant is suffering from mildew, it is still producing some great tasting offerings and the burpless hybrid are doing what they always do.  They are completely impervious to any plant disease and rocking the garden with constant productivity.  The only thing that will stop them is the upcoming unrelenting heat which will bake the flowers to dust before they can set fruit.  Until then it is a cucumber world.

Bush Beans

Total weeks harvest = 3 pounds

The first planting of about a dozen plants is showing signs of old age, but still setting beans.  The second planting has been doing great, but even it is having a little trouble with the heat.  I don't recall just when they give up, but I don't think it will be that much longer that they can hold out.  I estimate that by July we will see the last of the beans.

Peppers

Total weeks harvest = 1/2 pound - which is deceptive since they don't weigh very much.  About a dozen peppers in all.

The pepper plants continue with a modest offering.  Many of the fruit now don't get very large before they start to show the red rosy signs of maturity.  Since I have several varieties, some might continue to set fruit in the heat, but others won't.  The plants will typically survive the summer and might produce again in the fall.

Okra

Total weeks harvest = 1.25 pounds

Finally!  The okra plants have now grown past the 'dog' stage and I am getting to harvest most of the pods.  I know I stated that whatever happened to the okra this year I was going to blame on 'dog', but truer words have never been spoken.  The canine duo are still circling the plants like sharks, hoping for a low hanging pod.  Now when I am out there harvesting they hunker at my feet as if begging from the kitchen table for scraps. I don't relent because this 'okra predation' is the type of behavior I would like to extinct in my hounds.

Tomatoes

Total weeks harvest = 25 pounds

Well.  This continues to be a pinnacle year for the tomato harvest.  I definitely did something right with these guys this year because all of our productivity has been taken from five plants.

The two Creole tomatoes definitely are winning on numbers with one of them having set over 70 fruit and the other over 30.  Many of these fruit are in the half pound range.

BN444 - "Bunny" is the winner in HUGE fruit.

Many of Bunny's fruit are in the one pound range and they are beautiful.  Too bad Bunny is determinate and after all this fruit is gone she will be done for the year.

Here are eight of Bunny's fruit together weighing in at 5 1/2 pounds.

Top Gun is awesome and has quietly produced mostly half pound fruit that are the prettiest unblemished fruit I have ever seen.  The plant itself looks awesome and may go on to produce another crop.  It did not say on the tag whether this was determinate or indeterminate, so we shall see.

Big Boy has had a come from behind recovery from whatever befell it earlier this spring.  It has produced some moderate to small sized fruit.  Quite a lot actually, but the fruit are sort of ugly looking with tops that won't turn red and look a little wrinkly.  I think this is from the ?whatever? sickness it suffered from since I have grown this type before without this kind of issue.  Now though it is definitely setting new fruit and its new growth is out of this world healthy.  It may finish with a big bang of a harvest and be the longest producer of them all this year.

The month of May totals

Cucumbers = 40.5 pounds
Beans = 9.25 pounds
Basil = 2 pounds
Okra = 1.75 pounds
Pepper = 3.5 pounds
Butternut squash = 8.75 pounds
Tomatoes = 53 pounds!

Some people when I tell them about my garden harvest ask me "How many acres?"  There is not even one acre.  The entire area of our garden takes up just a small part of our back yard.  We have ten 3x6 foot beds along the fence on one side of our yard, a 3x9 foot and 3x12 foot bed in another area and a 3x6 and a couple of 3x3 foot beds in another area.  You don't have to have 'land' in order to have an over-abundance of produce.  What you need is good dirt and that you make yourself through composting.  Coming up I will share our secret of making great soil.  Stay tuned.