Harvesting Vegetables from My Garden
Here in the Northeast, we're hoping for some much-needed rain today after a string of hot, hazy, humid days in the mid-90s.
Despite some uncomfortable summer weather, the vegetables at my Bedford, New York farm are thriving. Fortunately, we were able to harvest another good amount of delicious and nutritious produce yesterday - kale, cabbage, Swiss chard, beans, beets, carrots, and more.
Here is an update on what we picked - enjoy these photos.
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- There has been so much growth in this vegetable garden in the last couple of weeks – there’s always something delicious to pick.
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- Recently, we’ve had a lot of very warm days and little rainfall. This combination can sometimes be a detriment to growing crops, but some of the plants continue to do well, such as these bush beans. We have lots and lots of green, yellow and purple beans.
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- Bush beans are second only to tomatoes as the most popular vegetables in home gardens. Bush beans, or snap beans, are eaten when the seeds are small.
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- They are also called string beans because of a fibrous string running the length of the pod, but most varieties grown now do not have that fibrous string. These purple beans are gorgeous – violet-purple outside and bright green inside with great flavor.
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- The four to six-inch-long pods turn green after cooking, providing a built-in blanching indicator.
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- The bright yellow beans on the left are also pretty. We always keep the beans separated by color. Bush beans can continually produce throughout the season with the proper care. In general, bush beans should be ready in 50 to 55 days. Once harvested, everything is loaded in trug buckets and brought up to my flower room, where they are washed if needed, and stored in the refrigerator.
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- Here is Enma harvesting some kale. One cup of chopped kale has 134-percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin-C – that’s more than a medium orange, which only has 113-percent of the daily C requirement.
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- Kale or leaf cabbage is a group of vegetable cultivars within the plant species Brassica oleracea. They have green or purple leaves, in which the central leaves do not form a head.
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- Enma picked a big bunch of kale – enough to fit an entire trug bucket.
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- Swiss chard is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. The leaf stalks are large and vary in color, usually white, yellow, or red. The leaf blade can be green or reddish in color.
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- Look at the bright reddish-pink of these Swiss chard stalks. Harvest Swiss chard when the leaves are tender and big enough to eat.
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- And always cut chard leaf by leaf, so the plant can continue to grow new leaves during the rest of the season.
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- Our tomato vines are growing nicely and some fruits are already developing, but they’re not ready just yet – they still need a few more weeks. I am looking forward to seeing how well our metal uprights do to support these tomatoes. We repurposed these stakes from old deer fencing that surrounded the farm.
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- Enma moves to the beets. Behind the beets is a bed of onions, which also needs a bit more time.
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- The beetroot is the taproot of the beet plant, and is often called the table beet, garden beet, red or golden beet or simply… beet. Beets are highly nutritious and very good for maintaining strong cardiovascular health. It’s low in calories, contains zero cholesterol, and is rich in folates, vitamin-A, B-complex, and antioxidants.
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- Next, Enma picked this beautiful green cabbage from our prolific patch.
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- This Savoy is also so beautiful, but still a bit small and not quite ready for picking. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, red, and green.
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- I always like to grow many varieties and colors of carrots. Most are familiar with the orange carrots, but they also come in red, yellow, white, and purple.
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- Sweet peppers don’t come in just red and green anymore. Yellow, orange, and even purple bell peppers are popular in the garden – all grassy in flavor and super-crunchy in texture. I love making stuffed peppers – do you remember? It was one of my “quarantine dinners” back in April.
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- We planted many peas along the garden fence – there are more snow peas ready for picking too.
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- Here is a lovely view from my vegetable garden looking across the verdant paddocks toward my Winter House in the distance. I am so pleased with this year’s growing season. How is your garden doing? Share your comments below. I would love to hear fro you.
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