End of Summer Harvest 2009

Oh, and there's a tiny bit of broccoli in there too. Sadly it didn't produce much at all, I think because I planted it really late. But what did grow was really tasty--just small bunches. My niece Allie liked to go up there and eat it right off the plants, and she showed the neighbor kids too. I think she's gonna be a broccoli ambassador to the neighborhood.

This is my tomato bed, six plants of three varieties. There's also a jalapeño plant in there and lao green stripe eggplant. The peppers and eggplants didn't do that great because they got totally shaded out by the tomatoes early on. After a while I tied up the tomato branches to try to give them space, but it was sorta too little too late. Only one jalapeño grew on that little plant and just a few eggplants. Fortunately the jalapeños and eggplants in the other bed did great.

This is the pepper and eggplant bed. From left to right are jalapeños, thai hot peppers, napoleon sweet peppers and lao green stripe eggplants. The hot peppers and the eggplants did pretty nicely. Only a handful of the sweet peppers grew. Not sure exactly why... maybe they needed a little more space, or just more hot weather.

This is the miscellaneous bed where I planted quite a bit of kale, the broccoli, some carrots (that I moved when I thinned their primary home), cilantro (which never grew 'cause it was shaded by the broccoli too much), a couple of types of green beans, radishes, beets and lettuce (which I already harvested and pulled out to give the other plants a little more space). The kale was definitely the most successful, despite quite an infestation of aphids. I've gotta do something about that next year.

This is the bed of three types of onions, carrots and basil. Actually, all of these did pretty well. I haven't harvested too many of the onions yet because they're still growing, but the ones I have harvested have been tasty. The carrots were delicious... super moist and sweet. The basil is wonderful. Most of it was actually donated by my friend Hillary. Initially I had lettuce where the basil is now and my basil plants were in the tomato bed where once again they got totally shaded out. So, I transplanted one of my them after I took the lettuce out and got several from Hillary. The kind I planted was just called Thai Basil, and hers was Siam Queen. Both very tasty.

Here's a closer look at a few of my spanish yellow sweet onions.

Siam Queen Basil.

The whole basil crop. :)

Danver's half-long carrots.

This is the bed where I planted three varieties of potatoes. At this point they are all ready for harvest, when the foliage has fallen over and died. I harvested a few of the red ones on this day, and a few days ago (from when I'm writing this) I harvested the rest of them. It was pretty fun to do. My mom and my niece helped me out. It's always fun to involve Allie (my five year old niece) in the process 'cause she gets so excited about everything. It's cool to share the joy of gardening with her. Hopefully she'll continue to be interested in it as she gets older and has a chance to do it herself.

Here's a closer view of one of my tomato varieties, the Blondkopfchens. As you can see, they're little yellow cherry tomatoes. I'd have to say they did the best out of the three that I planted. We had quite a harvest of them and they're still producing now.

This variety did pretty decent as well. This is one of the Japanese Black Trifeles. They were sorta medium-small on average and very sweet. The other variety I planted, the Manitobas, didn't produce much at all. Not sure why. Perhaps they were too crowded? Not sure.

This is one of the four jalapeño plants. They did really well, I thought. The peppers look really nice, were quite abundant and taste really good. I was pleased.

A solitary lao green stripe eggplant. These guys did ok, not as plentiful as I would have liked, but still pretty decent. The plants on either end of the bed did the best. I really like the taste of them--raw or in stir-frys or curries. Yum. I planted four of them this year and I think I'll plant more next year, maybe spread out a little more to give each plant a little more space to grow.

Here are some of the thai hot peppers. They were fairly plentiful like the jalapeños, although I'm not sure if they're going to turn orange or red before I will need to harvest them. That's ok, but it would be nice to get some variety of colors and ripenesses. These I started from seeds that my friend Hillary and I saved from peppers we bought from Lily Market, so it's cool that they did so well.

These were the best of the napoleon sweet bell peppers. I think all together between the three plants there were only maybe six or seven peppers, and only two or three "full-sized" ones. I keep waiting and hoping that they will change color--they're supposed to get various shades of yellow, red and maybe a little black--but so far just green. Oh well. I think they like warmer weather than we have here in the northwest.

Here's another shot of some of the japanese black trifele tomatoes.

Here's some of the ripe ones I harvested that day. Several of them had split because we got some rain a few days before.

And a bowl of the blondkopfchens.

Some carrots, radishes and the first red potatoes I harvested. My mom cooked up the potatoes with some carrots, onions and cashews (didn't grow those) in a tasty yellow curry for dinner that night. Man, it was good.

Just a closer view of the potatoes. I think the red ones actually did the best. They are really nice. :)