Harvest Monday

And no surprises for guessing what was in the balcony harvest this week ... you guessed it ... zucchinnis and beans and silverbeet! Ok so you thought I was going to say tomatoes, and well, you wouldn't be wrong, I have harvested quite a few of those which I'll show later but first I wanted to vary it a little bit. This week saw the harvest of a full size zucchini, a rarity in the balcony garden seeing as the ratio of male to female flowers is abut 1:1000000! I also picked a few smaller ones which I roasted up with Christmas leftovers. The big zuke went in last night's risotto.

As you can see by the above picture the zucchini was not alone. I harvest silverbeet once or twice a week, just small quantities to add to the greens in my meals. The probably explains why I never have many photos of it, as it is small and routine! The beans were a bonus this week. I got a packet of gourmet bush beans as a bonus in an extremely affordable ebay haul and decided on a whim to plant them. Boy are they tasty and their small size means they fit well into the balcony garden. Only four so far, but that's good for the beans as they have been terrorised by snails and struggled in the early Spring heatwave.

Ok now for the money shot, ok maybe I won't go that far but for all you Northern Hemispherers who are stuck under snow for the holiday season here are the tomatoes I harvested this week. As usual there were a tonne of cherry tomatoes. Although this looks to be the second last haul, and the final haul for the red cherries as I had to pull the first two bushes from the garden. Both of the red tumbler cherries were in hanging baskets and were more brown than green so I pulled them to make way for, well just to make a bit of space up there. The yellow tumblers are hanging on, but it will only be another week or so before they join their comrades. I can't beleive I am already harvesting and pulling up tomato plants, it is only December!!! There was an additional yummy tomato this week, a green zebra! These would have to be one of my favourite kinds of tomato, so interestingly coloured and tangy.

So there you have it, the harvest post for this week. I wonder what goodies will turn up next, and also how long the rest of the tomatoes will last due to the rapid onset of the evil wilt (I think fusarium but it seems a bit odd, experiments are underway!) If you want to see other lovely harvests from around the world visit Daphne's Dandelions, she wraps up the harvest posts every week!