Harvest Monday - August 30, 2010

Potatoes, figs, winter melon, radish, beets.

Yukon Gold Potatoes grown in a Smartpot, this tray is 9.8 lbs.

Here in NM when you order food from a Mexican or New Mexican restaurant you're ask "red or green?"  That means you have to choose either a green chile sauce or red chile sauce for your plate.  My favorite is green, what is yours? 

Despite late start the 3 winter melon plants produce 6 large melons plus some smaller ones, I'm picking the smaller melons and use them as summer squash.  These winter melons can grow to 40 lbs or more if left unpicked, but you can use it at any size, the immature fruits are more tender and do not store well.

The mature melons with white waxy coating can be store up to a year if uncut, once the melon is cut it must be consumed within a week or two, or else it will be spoiled.  You can see these large melons are beginning to mature and developing a white waxy coat from the stem end, I'll let them grow until October and harvest before frost.

Harvest for this week:

Tomatoes 14.4 lb

Paprikas 3.0 lb

Shishito 1.35 lb

Beans 1.39 lb

Beauty Heart Radish 1.29 lb

Eggplants (final) 2.63 lb

Ong Choy 2.10 lb

Michihili cabbage 2.4 lb

Cantaloupes 4.3 lb

Banana melon 5.3 lb

Bitter melons 7.80 lb

Figs 2.5 lb

Winter melon 3.10 lb
Potatoes 15.35 lb

Total for the week: 66.91

Visit Daphne's Dandelions host of Harvest Monday for more garden harvests.

Introducing Junior

 

This is Junior -- note the black mark on his/her gorget.

This is the 3rd hummer that hangs around my garden lately,

I believe he/she is an offspring of Buzz and Zipp because

he was not chased away from the feeder like other hummers were,

like his parents Junior is not afraid of me or my camera.

His favorite perch is the sesame plant cage.

Junior flew over my head and perched on the trellis,

I was about 2 feet away from him and snapped this picture.

Wordless

Double Rainbows

Harvest Monday - August 23, 2010

White and green bitter melons, Japanese cucumbers.

Eggplants and Swiss Chard

Bitter melons come in green and white, long or short, 

small and big, very bitter and not so bitter.  Some people loves

the bitterness and some people hate it, it's an acquired taste.

Click here to read more about it's culinary and medicinal use.

Overripe Bitter Melon, it is soft and mushy, it will burst

and crack open any time at this stage.  I tried to pick this one,

but it broke into pieces and dropped to the ground.

An inside look -- the best part of an overripe BM (top left)
 is its sweet red pulp enclosing the seeds, the flesh is too mushy
for my taste, but some people love it.  The ripening BM
(middle-lower) is fine to eat.

Immature bitter melons are the least bitter and very crunchy.

Bitter melon stir fry with beef in spicy black bean sauce.
I use 3 different colors of BM here because I have them on hand,
this classic dish is commonly serve with green bitter melon.

“Five Greens Smoothie" 五青湯

A well known Chinese healthy drink for diabetics
and to control cholesterol.  Some people drink
this concoction daily and swear by it.

Here are the ingredients that go into the drink:
Green bitter melon, green apple, green pepper,
green cucumber, and green celery.

My harvest in the last few days:

Tomatoes 22.9 lb

Filet beans 3.0 lb
Long beans 1.5 lb

Eggplants 4.2 lb

Swiss chard 1.0 lb

3 Cantaloupes 9.2 lb

1 Charentais melon 3.2 lb

3 Petit Gris melons 7.2 lb

2 Banana melons 7.5 lb

Cucumbers 1.0 lb

Bitter melons 6.8 lb

Total harvest for the week:  67.5 lb

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, head over there to see more garden harvests.

Hummers Love Runner Beans

Wordless

Chayote Shoots 龍鬚菜

Chayote shoots - Chinese call it Dragon Beard 龍鬚菜.

Remove the tough tendrils you get these tender shoots to use

as broccoli substitute.  They are sweet, crunchy, and tender,

some people peel the tougher stems and use them as asparagus.

Simple stir fry chayote shoots with fresh garlic, salt and pepper.

Sprouting chayote 佛手瓜 is same as sprouting potatoes, 

put the squash in a bag and leave it alone until it sprouts. 
(This is an old photo from 3 years ago.)

Plant the seedling into the ground and provide trellis for
vines to climb. Chayote is a perennial in warmer regions, 

here at high desert I am growing it as annual.

Harvest Monday - August 16, 2010

Banana Melon - seeds from Baker Creek.

Fine texture, sweet creamy taste, less fragrant than cantaloupe.

Yardlong beans, paprikas, cucumbers, banana melon.

Melons, tomatoes, filet beans.

I think Buzz nests behind this wall, he will be heading south to
Mexico for the winter soon, I'll miss this little guy when he's gone.

This week's harvest:

Tomatoes 4.2 lb

Cherry tomatoes 1.8 lb

Paprikas 1.8 lb

Cucumbers 1.6 lb

Filet beans 3.2 lb

Yardlong beans 1.3 lb

4 Petit Gris melons 11.1 lb

2 Charentais melons 5.6 lb

1 Banana melon 4.5 lb

1 Cantaloupe 3.3 lb

Total harvest  38.4 lb

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, head over there to see what other gardeners are hauling in this week.

Yardlong Beans

One flower, two bean pods, they grow in pairs.

Use as any green beans.

Wordless

Harvest Monday - August 9, 2010

Petit Gris, Charentais, Sierra Gold, and Banana melons, cukes.

I have to pick the unripe banana melon, it cracked at the bud end,

or some critters bit into it.

Sweet potato leaves and shoots, cantaloupe, 

tomatoes, and eggplants.

We ate most of the melons before I remember to take a picture,
this is the last 3 pieces of the Charentais melon.

Two overripe Petit Gris melons, I can't tell WHEN is ripe!
The Banana melon is cracked on the bud end I had to remove it.

From left to right -- Petit Gris, Sierra Gold, Charentais.
Look what happen when I try to pick a "ripe" Petit Gris

before it cracks open, I got an unripe melon :-(

Look at last year's overripe Charentais together with this year's

Petit Gris -- 2 years in a row I haven't learned WHEN to harvest!

That's enough, let's go to this week's harvest:

Tomatoes 2.4 lb

Beans 1.2 lb

White onions 1.1 lb

Red peppers 0.5 lb

Shishito peppers 0.7 lb

Cucumbers 1.6 lb

Eggplants 1.7 lb

Carrots 0.9 lb

Sweet potato leaves 1.2 lb

3 Petit Gris melons 9.6 lb

2 Sierra Gold cantaloupes 5.0 lb

1 Banana melon 2.4 lb

1 Charentais melon 2.9 lb

Total harvest for the week:  31.20 lb

All of the ripe melons are juicy and sweet, among the two varieties of  French melons Petit Gris is sweeter than Charentais, but less fragrant.  PG out performs Charentais in terms of fruit production and sweetness.  You can tell a Charentais is ripe for harvest by its fragrance and the faintly yellowing tint on the skin (I learned the hard way), but I couldn't tell by smell, look, or touch when to harvest Petit Gris, consequently 2 of the PG were overripe and split open before I knew what happened, then I picked one I "thought" it maybe ripe, but I was wrong, it could use few more days on the vine.  By the way, these French melons do not "slip" from the vine when ripe, last year I grew a hybrid Charentais that "slips", but it was not as fragrant as the open pollinated variety. 

This is my second year in growing Sierra Gold cantaloupe, the quality is consistent whether it was grown in a container (last year) or grown in raised bed (this year).  I like the taste and texture of this cantaloupe, but there's no other muskmelon to compare with, next year I'll grow a different variety and see if there's any difference.

Do you eat sweet potato leaves?  They are delicious and can be used as spinach substitute, not all sweet potato leaves have the same texture, some leaves are thick and coarse, some leaves are thinner and softer, the finest leaves are from white (or yellow) sweet potatoes which local Asian markets sell for $2.99/lb including vines.  I have to trim back the Okinawan purple sweet potato vines that are growing in half barrels, they are spilling out of the containers and sprawl all over the ground, but I couldn't bear to throw away the tender shoots and leaves without tasting them, I'm going to stir fry them tonight with some garlic, ginger, and maybe some red hot peppers, something different from squash, beans, and eggplants.

Head over to Daphne's Dandelions host of Harvest Monday to see more garden harvests.

Sesame

This is the top of the plant, tiny flowers are set from bottom up.

The flowers open in the evening then fade and drop off sometime

in the afternoon the next day.

See the immature seed pod next to the main stem?

I started 21 cells of white sesame @ 3 seeds/cell, only 2 cells germinated, this is the only surviving sesame plant.  I hope it doesn't die (keeping my fingers crossed), I'm curious to see how a sesame plant grows and hopefully no critters would eat the seed pods.

Introducing Buzz and Zipp

Introducing my gardening pals -- Buzz and Zipp

This is Buzz -- a black-chinned hummie, engaged to Zipp.
He wears a grayish black blue coat, depending on the lights and
angle of the photo he may appears in lighter colors.