Usually, I harvest every Wednesday. Somehow, this day works for me like a harvest day, but I had to move it to Tuesday this week. This week is very busy for me and I have to mow the orchard. I need more grass clippings, so I’ll have to use the lawnmower instead of the trimmer. Because of this, the orchard mowing will take me 2 or 3 days, so I have to start on Wednesday to finish until Saturday. Also, I’ve ordered some vegetables for pickling, so I’ll be busy cooking the veggies and won’t have time to store the garden veggies.

This is why I went to do my weekly harvest today. Although the drought is still holding strong, the harvest is really good and actually getting bigger every week. This week I brought home a big bag containing 4,8kg (10.5 lbs) of vegetables. 

I have harvested some tomatoes, cucumbers, fefferoni, and peppers like I do every week. Peppers are now growing like mad, it seems that the one cooler week benefited them and there are more and more peppers on the plants. Fefferoni, on the other hand, have stopped flowering due to the cooler week. They will continue flowering this week when we have another heatwave scheduled. 

A few weeks ago I’ve harvested beet leaves and today the plants were ready for a second harvest. Roots are still fairly small and are not ready for harvest. I’ll see how they will progress. If I notice the roots are starting to get woody, I’ll harvest them no matter the size. We’ll just eat the fresh beet salad, and if the roots get big enough, I’ll fill the jars with pickled beet for winter. In the meantime, I’ll continue harvesting the leaves for beet leaves salad.

Carrot leaves are also ready for the first harvest. For the last couple of years, I’ve been cutting the leaves off and using them for cooking. I feel bad about throwing the leaves when they can be used for eating. I’m thinking of making sauteed carrot and beet leaves with garlic for tomorrow’s lunch.

Beans also benefited from the cooler weather. Finally, the flowers have stopped falling and I have a nice bean harvest. There are still plenty of small beans that I’ve left on the plants to grow bigger, and I’ll harvest them next week. 

I’ve also harvested Collard greens and cauliflower greens. I’ve bought collard and cauliflower seedlings from the family farm and they both came wrapped in newspapers without a label. I couldn’t tell which ones are collard, so I’ve planted them to separate beds, but I still have no idea which vegetable is where. I just can’t tell the difference, both look the same to me. So I’ve harvested both. They both can be prepared the same way, so I don’t really care which ones are collard and which cauliflower. I’ll recognize the cauliflower when it starts forming heads.

I’ve added some chard to my today’s harvest as the temperature makes the leaves wiry, so there’s no point in leaving them in the garden any longer, and blackberries. 

If the harvests continue to be this good throughout August, I’ll have a nice amount of vegetables for winter in the freezer.