Thanks to our wonderful host, Daphne, for Harvest Mondays. I always enjoy reading what is going on in different gardens around the world.
I harvested enough pears this week to make another batch of pear relish. If you are interested in more information about pear relish, you can go to the link.
This week, I harvested a few more of my Mississippi Cream peas. Our family loves them and wish I had planted more of them. Once shelled, the seeming abundance vanishes and we are left fighting over the delicious peas.
I am harvesting okra only in dribs and drabs. A good friend of mine (thanks, Kristi!) suggested that I freeze what I get until I have enough for a meal. As you can see, we are almost there with what was harvested this week.
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The okra plants are getting bigger, and the okras are coming in quicker now, so I hope to be harvesting enough for our needs pretty soon.
I had to pull down my cucumber vine. The terrible rains we had several weeks ago (15 inches) followed by the terrible winds of Tropical Storm Debby were just too much for them. I was sad to see it go. It was a wonderful tasting and productive part of my garden.
The last of my green beans also met their demise this week. I am planning and planting fall garden and needed to get my English peas planted, so goodbye green beans. I did get Tall Telephone Pole English peas planted after a huge fight to get the last of the green bean vines off the netting. If anyone knows of an easy way to remove those twining vines from the netting suggested by Mel Bartholomew of The New Square Foot Gardening book, I would love to hear it.
That's about it for me. I really encourage you to go see what others are harvesting.
I harvested enough pears this week to make another batch of pear relish. If you are interested in more information about pear relish, you can go to the link.
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| pear relish |
I am harvesting okra only in dribs and drabs. A good friend of mine (thanks, Kristi!) suggested that I freeze what I get until I have enough for a meal. As you can see, we are almost there with what was harvested this week.
.jpg)
I had to pull down my cucumber vine. The terrible rains we had several weeks ago (15 inches) followed by the terrible winds of Tropical Storm Debby were just too much for them. I was sad to see it go. It was a wonderful tasting and productive part of my garden.
The last of my green beans also met their demise this week. I am planning and planting fall garden and needed to get my English peas planted, so goodbye green beans. I did get Tall Telephone Pole English peas planted after a huge fight to get the last of the green bean vines off the netting. If anyone knows of an easy way to remove those twining vines from the netting suggested by Mel Bartholomew of The New Square Foot Gardening book, I would love to hear it.
That's about it for me. I really encourage you to go see what others are harvesting.
I hate removing pole beans from my vertical supports - but I love the pole beans even more! It's a tedious annual job and one I always put off until the fall when there is nothing much left to do in the garden but "tidy up" for the winter.
ReplyDeleteGood idea on freezing the okra. I do that with other items that come in slowly and are not enough at one time to do much with, but once accumulated are enough to process or use properly.
I find it a tedious annual job too, and would like to find an easier way.
DeleteI don't use plastic netting; either concrete reinforcing mesh with 6x6 spaces, strings or actual poles cut from the weed trees. If you use hemp string you can just yank everything out and compost altogether.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of using hemp strings and just cutting the entire thing from the frame after every season. That would make it a lot easier and quicker.
DeleteNot sure you have to remove all of the old vines. The peas will cover it up quick enough. Last year Hurricane Irene blew down my bean trellis and I found out the beans had halo bean blight. That meant I had to remove ALL vegetation from the netting and destroy it. I used scissors to cut the vines into shorter pieces so I could untwine them and cut the netting in several places, so be careful with scissors.
ReplyDeleteDavid, that's a good idea--to just leave the old vines until I take everything down for the winter. I used scissors and cut my netting once, oops.
DeleteDid you have to get rid of the netting because of the halo bean blight?
I worry about carrying disease from year to year - so I grow my pole beans on poles which I discard at years end. I clean the pea netting as thoroughly as possible and then bleach. When I use metal fencing for peas I spray it with bleach between seasons. Here is my method of building a teepee:
ReplyDeletehttps://marysveggiegarden.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/a-pole-bean-teepee/
Thanks for letting me know how you do it, Mary. Thanks for the link.
DeleteI love cream peas. I really don't have room to grow them in my current garden. I visited the Nashville Farmer's MArket last week and brought back some Lady and Purple Hull peas that were already shelled. It does take a lot of pods to make a mess of peas though!
ReplyDeleteI love them, too. I probably don't have enough room, either, but I am going to try to make enough room.
DeleteYou are so right that it takes a lot of pods to make a mess of peas. It's surprising how so much goes to so little so quickly.
Mmm, that pear relish sounds awesome. Would you mind sharing the recipe (or the source)?
ReplyDeleteOkra is on my list for next year's garden. Yum!
Thanks for stopping by my site and saying hi!
The source is some old church-written cookbook. As far as I know, it's not online. I will copy it down and post it to my blog.
DeleteThanks for stopping by my site, too. :)
Hello Cristy,
ReplyDeleteI wait for the bean vines to dry and then pull them off, yes it is tedious.
I do not plant okra in my home garden but we plant them at Locust Grove Heritage vegetable garden. Few volunteers take the harvest so I usually end up with quite a bit. I should try freezing.
Thank you, gardentowok. I will let them dry completely before removing them next time.
DeleteI'd love to try pear relish, sounds great! I hate trying to get those dang bean vines off netting like that. I usually just left the vines on over the winter and let them try up then just swept them off with a broom or a rake.
ReplyDeleteI'll get busy typing in the recipe on my blog, but it will probably be later in the week.
DeleteOoh, that's a good idea--let them dry completely and sweep off with a broom or rake. Thank you for the suggestion.
Cream peas sound delish! I tried field peas for the first time this year and my family loves them.
ReplyDeleteAdventures in Agriburbia, I love field peas, too, but I think cream peas taste quite different from field peas. I like the flavor of both very much.
DeleteI've never tried growing Okra, oh so many crops so little space...
ReplyDeleteI so agree. I find that many of the blogs I read on Harvest Mondays grow things I would like to try, but where to put them?
DeleteSome people just use disposable netting. Since we've gone to using cattle panels, I find the job of removing stuff less tedious than from netting, but it's still a job - it's just now I have something rigid to pull against.
ReplyDeleteI saw your comment about cream peas vs. field peas. What is the difference to you? I've been trying to figure that out because a lot of people use the following terms interchangeably: field pea, crowder pea, cream pea, and cow pea. So far as I can tell, they all mean the same type of thing, it's just the varieties can differ (kind of like cucumbers having many different types).
As far as I understand all of those names you named are cow peas. Field peas are things like pink eye purple hull peas and black eye peas. Cream peas look like those, but they taste much more like butterbeans (small lima beans.) I have never grown (or eaten, as far as I know) crowder peas, but I assume they must taste or look different somehow.
DeleteAround here, people grow a lot of cow peas, because the weather gets really hot and that is all that will grow in this weather. So I think the names were given as kind of a short hand to explain which taste/texture/growth pattern we were talking about.
Thanks for the tip about the cattle panels.
From Wikipedia:
Delete"Cow peas are a common food item in the southern United States, where they are often called Black-eyed pea or field peas. Two subcategories of field peas are crowder peas, so called because they are crowded together in their pods, causing them to have squarish ends, and cream peas."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpea
It makes sense that the different names were to differentiate taste somehow...
Oh yes...the recipe for your pear relish would be much appreciated! It looks delicious!
ReplyDelete