Getting A Record Amount of Pole Beans This Season

Yesterday and today were very interesting days in the fact that I had to pick pole beans that I didn't think I had.  What I mean is that I didn't know that this many pole beans were in the garden.  I only planted a couple of rows in hopes of getting a decent harvest.

In hopes of getting pole beans I planted them a second time to make sure that I would get enough.  Even with all the thinning out that I did I still was able to get an incredible amount of beans.  Between today and yesterday I got over thirty pounds.  To be exact I got 25 yesterday and 8 today which comes out to 33 pounds of pole beans.

I had an idea that I would get quite a bit, but I didn't think that one row would fill up six containers quite easily.  That's right one row was able to fill up six large containers.  That is why I had to stop yesterday because I had ran out of large containers to use.  After hours of picking these beans I decided that it was best to finish it today.

That is exactly what I did this afternoon.  Finished off the second row and filled up on one container and got 8 pounds from them.  I will eventually have more to pick, but for the moment the plants can continue to grow and produce even more flowers.

I also gained some more Roma tomatoes as well this week.  I know it is harvest season and there will be many things to pick including melons, peppers, eggplants, and so much more.  I decided on picking some of the Roma tomatoes early and place them in the window to ripe so that I don't have to worry about them in the future.  They are just for some tomato sauce that I will use throughout the Winter.  Nothing special will come of them.  Since they are meaty fruits this is perfect use for them.

Some Roma tomatoes on the windowsill.

I ended up picking up some corn as well since it had been a few days since the last batch that I picked.  Many of them were starting to ripen real quick especially with all the sun that we have been getting this entire month of August.  I took a look at a few of them and finally picked about 17 of them today.

They are average in size and I can't complain about the amount of corn that I am getting on a consistent basis.  I would like to have them a little bit bigger, but they are a great size for the most part.  I will have to keep this in mind for next year and make sure that I do some things a little bit different in order for larger ears.

I Now Have Corn of my Own That I can Eat and Enjoy

Corn has finally arrived in time before the season starts winding down.  I knew I was going to get corn, but it all depended exactly when this would happen for me.  A few weeks into the month of August I was able to collect the corn that I needed for the summer.

Yesterday is when I did this fun and easy task of removing and checking the ears for ripe corn.  I didn't just want to go out there and start cutting down all the ears on the stalks because chances are that I would likely remove some there were still ripening.

The one thing that I did was check them pretty much every day until yesterday, so I knew that the corn would be coming out very soon.  Once I had pollinated them I could then wait a few weeks for them to develop and once they had reach their full size I could then look at them and wait until they were ripe.

Only 24 were cut from the stalks yesterday and weighed in at 15 pounds.  I was happy with this and I wasn't so worried about the weight and size as I was with the taste.  I cooked them like usual and they came out to be incredibly delicious.  Tender and sweet just like all corn should be.  Here are some photos that I took of the corn harvested yesterday.

Just Picked The Most Green Beans Ever in a Single Day

As I mentioned before I was waiting for my pole beans to become mature and ready for harvesting.  I did do a small one earlier and that was definitely a good sign of more to come.  Well that time came today with an incredible amount of pole beans that needed to be collected today.

I was shocked when I had filled up one of the containers I use for harvesting in just a few short minutes.  When this happened I got real excited that I would have many more beans to pick and more for me to enjoy even through the Winter once I start preserving them.

I even collected some peppers today along with other tomatoes that I haven't picked just yet.  I am finally getting some Roma types beginning to ripen and I will be using them for making sauce so that I can easily store them for the Winter as well. 

Three peppers were picked today along with my beans.

Take a look at the new Roma tomatoes I gathered today.  These will be perfect for sauce that I will most likely be making later in the season.  Once I collect enough I then will start production on sauce.

Larger Cucumbers are Finally Coming From My Plants

It is about time that my plants have started to produce cucumbers that are large in size or at least much bigger than what I have been picking up.  Sometimes it just takes my cucumber plants some time before they can get the much larger fruit to start producing.  The earlier ones were small, but now they are getting bigger which is a good sign and means that the season is not over yet.

As you can see these three are pretty good sizes and I would definitely take more of them like this.

Not only are the cucumbers bigger, but I picked a very large tomato yesterday that was a good red color perfect for cutting up and placing on a sandwich.  The steakhouse tomatoes were supposed to be larger than the average tomato.  I am not surprised that these have grown to an enormous size.  In this case I am very pleased with the outcome.

Time To Harvest Pole Beans

It was very exciting today to finally pick my pole beans that I thought I would not get when the season started this year.  It was close that I would even get them at all, but in the end I still was able to get them in a reasonable amount of time.  I could have picked them earlier, but I am not going to complain because I am lucky that I got them at all.

With two rows of these beans I have plenty to choose from.  I was able to get three pounds today and I definitely feel that I will be getting more as the season goes on.  There were still many that I couldn't pick because they hadn't reach full maturity.  I love large beans and the fortex beans that I grow usually get to very large sizes that you will not find in any store.

Here are the beans I picked today.

This is how long they actually are.

I also had some cherry tomatoes that I though were good enough to be removed from the plant and be ready for consumption.  These are my favorite so I always have to make sure that I plant at least one of them for myself.  Check out the size of them they are almost as big as some roma tomatoes.

There are still plenty of cherry tomatoes and others out in the garden and I should be able to pick them until the end of the season.

Harvesting Cherry, Roma, and Steakhouse Tomatoes

This is what I did this week and has been somewhat busy in the harvesting part of gardening.  My tomatoes are ripening at this moment and getting the needed water that they crave.  I had one Roma and a couple of steakhouse tomatoes that were looking very good and I had to pick them before a caterpillar or other pest got to them.  I also had a dozen or so cherry ones that looked very good.

I also had a large cucumber harvested this week after watching it everyday for the past couple of weeks.  Watching them grow each day is very exciting because when I thought it was done growing it kept getting bigger.  I love cucumbers and cutting them up and putting salt and pepper on them is great to have with your lunch.

This is the biggest one for this season.

I have a couple other plants that have cucumbers that are about this size and I hope they reach their peak just like this one did.  With some tender loving care I can get them to very large sizes and you can too.

I also have some news on my eggplants as well.  As you know I had about one eggplant that was growing to a good size and soon I will be harvesting it.  I also discovered another one that has been pollinated and is growing at this moment.  It is on a different plant and I am looking forward to seeing how big this one will get as compared to the first one I have.

Here is the new one that started to grow sometime this week.

Every Onion Out of the Soil and Accounted For

I loved removing my onions from the soil yesterday because what I saw was a great harvest and a good season for onions.  I do not always get a good harvest, but this year I think I have figured out exactly how many bulbs should be placed in each tote for maximum potential.

Twenty bulbs were inserted into each tote this year instead of thirty like last year.  This is probably why the weight of the onions last year was so low.  This year was much higher and they look much better in quality.  Quantity always looses in organic gardening.  95 onions and 30 pounds was what I got this year from these vegetable.

Here is the large pile of onions that I collected yesterday.  I was able to braid the stems together making them much more easier to use for consumption.  Take a look at what I did with them so you can do that same as well.

Now that you know what I did with my onions yesterday, today brought some more fruit and vegetables.  I picked a cucumber that had not been growing anymore and a tomato that was at its prime.  Check them out below.

I also picked another two and a half pounds of blueberries.  This looks like this is one of the last harvests that I will get out of my blueberry bushes.  I will have to start thinking about what I am going to different next year with these bushes in order to get more of them consistently.

Onions Look Very Promising For 2014

I had taken a good look at my onions and since many of the stems had fallen over it was a sign that they were ready to be taken out of the totes and put onto the dinner table.  Although I do not use this many onions in one day I do very much enjoy the flavor of fresh organic onions.

As you may have remembered that I used totes to plant my onion bulbs instead of in the ground.  In the end it makes harvesting these bulbs so much easier and there is no digging around trying to make sure if you got them all.  Since I only plant a certain amount of onions in each tote it is incredibly easy to know if you removed all the onions.

Now you know why I use these totes and how simple it is to grow onions when you use these items.  Pulling them out was very easy and as I watch the size of each onion I wanted to remove all of them, but time was against me and I was only able to do just one.  This was a good test to see if they were ready and discovered that it was time to get them out of the soil.

Here is what they looked like and the relative size that they achieved this season.

This is all the onions I was able to pick today.  17 in total that were able to be saved while three of them had been eaten by maggots or rotted away.

Check out the other fruits and vegetables that I was able to harvest today.

I Have Picked a New Fruit Today

It is always a good day when you have anything to harvest including fruits, vegetables, bulb, leafy plants, and much more.  This means that you are doing something correctly and that you should keep on doing what has been working.  That is what I discovered today when I saw my beefsteak tomatoes hanging there on the bush.

I noticed that there were a couple of these tomatoes that looked very close to being ready, but I wanted to give them another couple of days in order for them to reach their peak nutritional value.  The means that I want to make sure that it turns as red as possible.  Here have a look at the tomato that I happened to pick today.

Now that my tomatoes are ripening I now am seeing my pumpkins doing the same exact thing.  Not all of them are ripening it is only the early ones that came about a month or so ago.  They have stopped growing in size and they are turning orange as you read this article.

More Fruits and Vegetables Beginning to Grow

Getting new fruit is always happening throughout the entire season.  Depending on the amount of plants you grow you might end up seeing this quite often.  Today I discovered that I had an eggplant that looks like it was pollinated about a week ago.  I must have missed it because I did not take a picture of it just before it started growing.  Today I made sure I took a snapshot of the eggplant.

As of last week my corn was starting to develop tassels which are used to pollinate the corn silks that they are producing.  Some of them look like they have been pollinated because they are beginning to develop ears of corn on the side of the stalks.  This is very exciting because I only get to enjoy corn on the cob one time per year.

The last new fruit that is growing in the garden is a cantaloupe.  They start off real small and fuzzy and get bigger each and every day.  Once they are done growing then they will create the skin that we all know all over the fruit.  This won't happen until another few weeks.