Friday, February 26, 2010

State of the Garden

Over the last two days we have had pouring rain. Last night was particularly bad as the winds were gusting to about 60mph. I kept hearing branches hit my roof. The oak trees in the back yard stretch their branches out over the house which is great for shade in the summer, but not so good in a wind storm. Anyway the rain washed most of our snow away. It seemed a good time to go out and see how things are growing.

The first thing I noticed was the first little shoots of garlic poking up. This variety, an unknown from the store, is always the first to come up. As you can see by the acorn the shoot is still short but it is very thick.

The mache has a couple of clumps that look the same as they did in the fall. So far it seems quite hardy here without protection. I didn't get much germination last fall. Maybe more will come up this spring. You can tell how small they are by the little seeds that lie next to them. Those are dill seeds that scatter themselves around the garden.

Then I saw something Thomas is familiar with. I have a little vole or mouse hole in my garden. I often get these and occasionally see them during the summer. Usually they are voles. Unlike Thomas I've never noticed any damage in the garden. So I wondered. How was my spinach under the row cover faring?

It seems untouched by voles and has over wintered well. Now I wouldn't eat that spinach, but it will be putting on new growth soon. In about three weeks I'll be sowing my spring spinach which will be eaten in May, but I'm hoping this patch will give me an early crop.

I also left in a couple of bunching onions to see if they would overwinter this year. Some years they do fine. They still seem to be alive. Their outer leaves are mush, but the inner ones look alive. The kale seems ragged, but not dead. Maybe it will put on new growth in the spring too. I can always hope.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Harvest Monday - 22 February 2010

This week was very special for the use of my harvest. As I've said before I pickled snap peas and was sorely disappointed. I'm a real pickle lover and they make great refrigerator pickles, but once they see heat they sort of dissolve. Ick. This week I opened the first of my cucumber pickles.

They really don't look like much, but oh my goodness they were so delicious. They weren't quite as crunchy as the refrigerator version, but not bad at all. They were better than any pickle I've bought before. YUM! Sadly last year was a bad cucumber year. I only made three pints. I've got just one pickle left in the first one. I can't eat one at a time. I eat four at a time. I really hope we get some sun this year so I can grow more cucumbers.

The recipe is the same as my refrigerator pickles, but you have to salt the pickles for hours first and can them. Is the growing season here yet?

If you would like to join Harvest Monday with a harvest or how you are using it, put your name and URL into Mr. Linky below.

Friday, February 19, 2010

We Have Liftoff

Though we had another snow storm this week giving us 7" of more snow, the gardening season has officially started for me. I have seedlings.

So they aren't all that big yet.

It took them a week to get here and right now they are sad little things. Still it means that spring must be right around the corner.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Harvest Monday - 14 February 2010

I know you expect the hostess of Harvest Monday to actually show you something. But I've got nothing. I didn't make anything special from my garden saved produce. I used spices and a bit of pickled peppers on my hamburger. Do I get points for it being grass fed from the farmers market last fall? But I didn't make any soup. Just the typical coleslaw and squash casserole. I didn't even eat any of my applesauce. All in all it was just the same old, same old.

I did have excitement though. I finally gave in and planted some onions. I was waiting for my Varsity seed from Fedco, but it still hasn't materialized. The planting target date was Feb 6th. I planted February 12th.

I multiplanted my soil blocks. Each have four seed and will be thinned out to the best two. Last year I found the doubles grew well if planted on 6" centers but the triples planted on 8.5" centers did not. I planted 18 blocks of Redwing and 36 blocks of Ringmaster. If Varsity comes soon, I'll get rid of half the Ringmaster and plant 36 new blocks (for a total of 72). If it comes late I'll probably plant up just 18 blocks and let Ringmaster be my major onion. 72 is a great number for me since a flat fits 72 perfectly (1 1/2" blocks).

I'm still trying to find the best container to keep the blocks in. I don't like the wood ones that a lot of people make. Flats are nice since they are a good size to go under the lights and large. I have three layers to my flats. The first is the solid bottom flat. The second is a wide plastic mesh which is strong enough to hold the plants without the first. The third is screening (from some old window screens) cut to fit so the soil won't fall out and the bottom is flat. I think this will work. I can put water in the bottom one and then lift up the middle one when the blocks are finished with getting watered. I'm hoping it works at least. Last year I just put them in the solid flat and didn't like it much.

If you are doing better with your harvests than I am, put your name and URL into Mr. Linky below.

Friday, February 12, 2010

The Return of the Sun

I've noticed a real increase in the angle of the sun recently. Remember on January 22nd it looked like this.

The neighbor's house shaded the garden almost all the way to the fence. Now just three weeks later:

The lower bed is totally in the sun and the middle bed is even partially in sun. Whoohoo! It must be almost spring. Notice also that the garlic area is out of the snow already! We were supposed to get 8" of snow on Wednesday night, but it never materialized. We got about an inch and it was melted off by the afternoon on Thursday.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Wasn't the Superbowl Four Days Ago?

I've been slacking on my blog. I've been meaning to talk about Superbowl food, but here it is Thursday. I'd better get with it, shouldn't I?

As our most parties that my friends throw, the Superbowl party was a potluck. Sue, who is the traditional hostess of the Superbowl among my friends, suggested that we theme what we bring to coincide with the teams playing. New Orleans was so easy, but what should I bring for Indiana? I suppose middle America food - potato salad, coleslaw, jello molds - would have been appropriate, but I wimped out and just supported New Orleans with my food choice. I made Seafood Creole. Yum. I don't make it often, though it is quite a well loved dish. It takes at least an hour of active food prep and about an hour after to let it simmer.

This post is all about how much of a slacker I've been because I really wanted to take photos of it after it was done. But did I? Nope. So to make up for it I'll give you all my recipe.

Daphne's Seafood Creole

  • 2lbs uncooked shrimp with shells on
  • 2T flour
  • 3-4 T butter
  • 2 onions minced
  • 1/4c minced jalapenos
  • 1/2c minced celery
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • 4c Sungold tomato sauce
  • 2 cans crabmeat (or use fresh if you have it)
  • 1/4 lb scallops
  • 2 bay leaves
  • T dried parsley (or more fresh if it is summer)
  • Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning to taste (which has salt, so I don't add any more)

While other things are getting sauteed, I work on the shrimp. Peel. Rinse the shells. Put the shells in water to cover and boil for 10 minutes to make a shrimp stock. Strain and use 1 cup in the recipe. If I have really large shrimp I chop them up a bit for this dish.

Make a light roux with flour and 3T butter. Add onions to roux and sautee for 10 minutes over low to med heat. I often add another tablespoon of butter at this point because it likes to stick. Add jalapenos and celery. Saute 15 minutes. Add tomato sauce. BTW you don't really need Sungold tomato sauce like I used but if you don't have a really sweet sauce, add some sugar to taste. You can also use fresh tomatoes, but add about 5 cups finely minced. Add bay leaves. Simmer 20 minutes stirring constantly. Add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer for an hour. Serve with rice and a nice Louisiana hot sauce on the side.

From my garden I used, jalapenos, parsley, and the Sungold tomato sauce. I've had trouble using up my Sungold tomato sauce. It is really too sweet for most things, but it went very well with this. It gave a really sweet and sour taste to it.

And this ugly thing I remember to take a photo of?

After I was done making my stock, I kept looking at the shrimp shells. It would have been such a waste to throw them away. People buy things like crab meal to use as fertilizer. I keep my eggshells. So I dried them out and I'll crush them and put them on the garden. Maybe they will be good for nematodes like crab meal is. I can only hope.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Harvest Monday - 8 February 2010

I hadn't put my accounting up before, but I think it is time. I've spent a lot of money on the garden already. It is typically how I spend. I think of what I need for the year and get it all at once. I like to buy from one company if I can because it saves on shipping. Or it does if you can remember everything you were going to buy and put it in. I failed miserably at that task this year.

My first order I talked about already. Seeds from Fedco at: $33.90. Then a couple of weeks later I ordered from Fedco Organic Growers Supply. If Fedco were a normal garden company I could have bought them together, but they aren't. They have several different branches of the co-op and you have to order from each one separately. From them I got:

  • Buff Oats OG (hulless oats)
  • Peas/Vetch/Oats mix for a cover crop
  • Legume innoculant (works on beans, peas and vetch)
  • Micro soil blocker
  • 2" soil blocker
  • Orchard netting
  • 2 1/2 gallon sprayer (my old one broke last year after about 20 years)

This gave me a total of $170.80. $100 of that was a birthday present from my MIL and $50 was from a gift certificate I won from another gardening blog. Which gives me a total of $20.80 out of my pocket.

Now if you will notice I ordered two soil blockers and forgot to add in the part that lets you use them together (putting the micro block into the 2" block when potting up). Whoops! So much for buying things all at once. But GrafixMuse came to my rescue and told me about a 20% off coupon from Johnny's so I ordered it from them along with the two other things I forgot about.

  • Soil blocker insert set
  • Sluggo (trying it for the first time this year)
  • Bt dust (for my winter moths in the spring that eat my blueberry flowers)

That added up to $26.03. Now if someone could just tell me how to put those inserts into my soil blocker I'd be all set. There were no instructions.

At my local hardware store they had a beautiful display of Blotanical Interest seeds. I still haven't gotten my onion seeds on backorder. So I picked up Ringmaster, which the seed packet claims is a storage onion but not nearly as long keeping as Varsity the one on backorder. Now my eye did get drawn to the tomatoes since they had a huge selection of great ones, but I resisted. I already have more tomato varieties than I can grow.

And speaking of seed I'd like to thank Miss M for the leek seed that showed up on my doorstep the other day. Yes I've been sent yet more seed. Where oh where will it all go. Resisting seed at the store is so much easier when you know you have too much at home. It is hard not too look though.

Now I still have to buy new tomato cages. I want some good ones that fold, so that is going to be a pretty penny. I've seen two types. Round ones that you can get 6' high or square ones at 32" which you can stack two high. Two square ones are more expensive than one round one so I'll probably go with round. To get twelve I'd need to spend $200. Ouch! I could always buy a roll or two of concrete reinforcing wire, like I've done in the past. It does get rusty fast. It doesn't fold at all so storage has always been in issue. If anyone has used either of the above, please let me know how you liked them.

So now onto the tally. Spent:

  • Amortized Fence $60
  • Fedco Seed $33.90
  • Fedco Supply $20.80
  • Johnny's $26.03
  • Hardware store $1.89

Harvest in pounds: 2.2 oz
Harvest total: $0.21 (hey don't laugh!)
Yearly spent: $140.73
Yearly earned: $-140.52

Until things start coming in this time of the year is really pretty sad. I spend a lot and I won't harvest a thing until April (if I'm lucky, otherwise May).

If you would like to help me believe that harvests still exist, put your name and URL into Mr. Linky below.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

And Yet More Seeds

Hmm seems to me I've used that post title before. I must have too many seeds in the house now. I had a package from Canada arrive last week. I knew what that meant. Seeds from Dan.

He sent me some Little Gem Romaine. Now I have 12 varieties of lettuce. Where, oh where will I put them all? At least this one has "little" in its name. That must mean it is a dwarf variety and won't need as much space. Maybe I should plant it with my Tom Thumb lettuce from Stefaneener. Two cute little heading lettuces together would be nice.

He also sent me some Tiger's Eye Beans. These will be part of my dried bean growing effort this year. I want more things to eat over the winter from the garden. And as you have all probably figured out, I love dried beans and eat them all the time. It would be great if more of them were my own.

The other two are Cherokee Purple and Big Chili II. I've been wanting to grow Cherokee Purple all summer long as people rave about the taste. It takes a bit longer than the other tomatoes I grow, but I'm going to try it anyway.

I know there are a couple of folks that said they would send me seed and haven't yet. Well I really, really don't need anymore. I have too many varieties of too many things.

The one thing I need and I haven't gotten yet is my onion seed from Fedco. My charts say my target date for planting is Feb 6th, just two days away. I only have my red variety right now. Varsity, my white storage type is nowhere to be seen. I might just have to pick up some from the garden center soon. I really wanted to try Varsity. Fedco's description was that it kept better than Copra and can get as big as Ailsa Craig. That is saying a lot. But if it doesn't get here, I'm sure I can find something locally to plant easily enough.

I placed an order from the Fedco Organic Supply too. I ordered a lot of things, one of which was more seed. I always find it amusing that cover crops and grains are put in the garden supply section and not in the seed section. I ordered their soil building seed mix. I'm a fan of an oat and vetch combination, but to buy them separately costs too much for me. The mixes are cheaper. Their mix is an oat/pea/vetch mix. It ought to work well at any time of the year as vetch overwinters. Around here most do a rye/vetch mix for the fall into winter as rye is also winter hardy, but I like oats much better. All the research I've seen shows that oats, even though they winter kill, is better than rye because it isn't allelopathic like rye. So crops after oats grow better than crops after rye.

I also ordered some hulless oats on the outside chance that I'll get a community garden plot to put it in. The thought of growing a little grain seems really quite intriguing. I haven't a clue how I would harvest it yet as I don't own a scythe, but I'll cross that bridge if I get a plot and actually plant the oats. For now you can laugh at the image of me cutting a patch of oats with scissors as that is the best tool I have right now.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Get Growing in February

This is the third in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, and I will post on the first of every month. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

Compost

Here up north we are still locked in winter. If you are growing onions from seed, this is the month to to start them under lights, but other than that we are still reading gardening books and dreaming of spring. So this month I'm going to talk about composting which is a useful topic any month of the year.

Compost isn't rocket science. It is just broken down organic matter. Nature does it every day. If you scrape away the top layer of leaves in the forest you will see nature's compost.

Why Compost?

When people start gardening, they don't think of their soil as being alive, but it is. It is home to many organisms, both the good and the bad. My philosophy to gardening is to work with nature not against her. When you don't replenish the soil with organic matter (compost or turning under crops), you are effectively killing off all the good organisms that help your plants grow and some can even help protect your plants from disease.

When there is plenty of organic matter in the soil the good bacteria and fungi can thrive. Many of the good bacteria can hold onto excess nutrients in the soil and when they die they release them to the plants. Interestingly enough the good bacteria and fungi thrive in a compost pile. So when you add the organic matter, you aren't just making a good living environment for these organisms, but you are adding more of them to the garden.

You can get compost in several ways. You can buy it bagged up at the garden center, which can be expensive and isn't very sustainable. Many towns in my area now compost their leaves and grass clippings and it is often free for town residents for the taking. Some will even haul it to you in large quantities for a low price (fabulous for starting a new large garden). But you can't beat your own homemade compost. It costs exactly nothing and keeps a lot of kitchen waste out of the trash. When kitchen waste ends up at the dump it produces methane, one of the worst of the greenhouse gasses. So you are doing both your garden and the earth a favor by composting.

Where to put a compost pile

You want to put your compost pile on flat ground over dirt or grass. It needs to be within reach of your hose. It should be convenient to your kitchen and to your garden. You can put it directly in your garden and rotate it from year to year. The soil under the pile will be very fertile. Or you can put it in the shade which will help retain moisture in the pile.

How to contain the compost

Commercial compost bin

There are many commercial compost makers, from the really expensive, like a tumbler, or the more inexpensive like a wire bin composter. Many people make their own. You can get wooden pallets and connect them to make a free composter.

Compost bins made from wooden pallets, photo copyright and courtesy of Our Engineered Garden

My solution is to buy wire fencing material. I measure out about 10' of it and cut it off. I connect the two ends and have a bin about three feet in diameter. Then there is the cheapest and easiest of all methods. You can just pile up the materials into a heap. Most people don't elect for this one since it takes up more space and looks messier.

To keep the compost hot you need a compost pile that is at least three feet in all directions. The mass of the pile will be able to insulate it well enough. If you want a smaller compost pile you need to go for one of the enclosed black plastic varieties (either a tumbler or the on ground ones) and keep it in the sun. There is an advantage to those types of composters. They keep animals from getting into them. I usually throw my kitchen scraps into one to keep the raccoons out of it. It has no bottom, but the top locks shut. If I lived in an area with rats, I might choose the tumbler kind that is totally encased for my kitchen scraps.

But what type of containment you use is totally up to how much you want to spend, the quantity you are making, and how you want it to look.

How to make a pile

I pile needs three things to compost well. It needs moisture, air, and orgainic matter to compost. Typically you can add any organic matter to your pile with certain exceptions. DON'T ADD:

meat and bones
atrracts pests like rats to your yard (it can be done, but it is expert composting)
milk or oils
smell up the compost pile
dog and cat waste
contains parasites that can infect you
diseased plants
if the temps don't get high enough the disease can spread
toxic materials
dyed hair, treated wood, plants treated with herbicides or pesticides
black walnut tree
produces juglone which is toxic to certain plants

The organisms that break down the organic matter in your pile like a 25:1 to a 30:1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen in the organic matter you put in. If you are really into getting the perfect ratio you can do a lot of calculations, but a good rule of thumb is to mix half green material (higher nitrogen material) and half brown material (higher carbon material). It might be called green material and brown material, but the color has nothing to do with it. And even the green material which is higher in nitrogen, still has more carbon than nitrogen.

Greens
Browns
grass clippings
leaves
kitchen waste/eggshells
wood
manure
paper
coffee grounds/tea bags
cardboard
alfalfa/clover
straw
hair/feathers/wool
sawdust
green plants from the garden
dried plants from the garden

It is best to cut up or shred the larger items. If you put a log into your compost it could take years to break down, but if the wood is chipped it will compost much faster since it has a larger surface area. Leaves, especially oak leaves, can mat down and take a while to compost, so shred them by running over them with your lawn mower. I've found that newspaper mats down very easily into a glue like substance. It is best to shred them and mix them with something else. Grass clippings also can mat down if left in large clumps.

Many people will tell you to make a compost pile by adding four inches of green material and then four inches of brown material. The reality is that they do better by being mixed up at the start. The pile heats better and things don't tend to clump as much when mixed. So add eight inches of mixed material together. To get the organisms you need into the pile to start it off faster add a shovelful of soil (I've done piles without any soil and it still works). Soil, especially good garden soil, will not only add organisms, but will add some minerals that might be lacking. You can buy compost activators from a store, but in reality all the organisms you need are in your soil.

If you add too much carbon to your mix, your compost will decompose more slowly. If your nitrogen is too high then you will get a smelly pile as the ammonia goes off. Your neighbors will not appreciate this. If you find you have done this, just turn the pile and add more carbon.

Without being moist the pile won't heat up properly. You want your pile to be moist but not wet. Think about the moisture content of a wrung out sponge. So as you layer your pile, water it so everything is just damp. If the pile gets too wet it will become anaerobic and the organisms that like to live in an airless environment will take over. These are not good organisms for your garden and they smell. If your compost is too wet, turn it to air it out a bit. I keep plastic over the top of my open bins to keep out the rain, since I live in a very rainy environment. This also keeps the rain from leeching out the nutrients in the pile. If I had sides to the pile this would probably be a bad idea since the pile needs to breath, but I don't. I just have wire mesh on the sides, which give it plenty of air.

My wire bins with plastic on top to keep out the rain

So you just keep adding to your pile until it reaches the top of your enclosure. In a normal household this can take a while and the bin is mostly populated with leaves and grass clippings and a few buckets of kitchen scraps. Some people collect things and make a big pile all at once which makes for better hotter compost, but doesn't fit the lifestyle of most people. If you want to collect things for you piles an easy source for carbon material is leaves in the fall, or newspaper from your friends all year long. Often tree companies will dump their chipped wood on you for a low cost or free (they have to pay to get rid of it). For nitrogen materials, coffee houses will often save buckets of them for you. I get pails of this from my husband's work. Grass clippings left by the curb are great if you know they don't use herbicides on them. You could probably even convince a nearby restaurant to save the kitchen scraps for you. I occasionally get these from my husband's work too, but there is someone with rabbits that works there that gets first dibs.

Maintaining a pile

Once you have your pile, you have two options. You can keep it turned every few days to a week to keep an active compost pile, or you can just let it sit like mother nature does.

For the active compost pile. The organisms in compost will heat up the pile if they get just what they want to survive. They need the right amounts of nutrients, water and air. Turning the pile adds air to the mix and will keep a pile hot if everything else is just right. After a few days to a week the temperature will start to come back down again. Now it is time to turn the pile. You keep doing this until the pile no longer heats up when you turn it. The better shredded your starting materials are the faster it will decompose. Also the closer to your 25:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio you have the better it will work. If things go well you can have compost in six weeks. The best compost for the garden is this kind of compost. When you add all your ingredients for your pile, you will notice that it heats up all on its own. It creates a whole lot of disease preventing fungi and in addition the nutrients haven't had time to leech out so it is more nutritious for your plants.

For the inactive compost pile you can just let it sit until it is ready. This can take up to a year. This method doesn't even require the right amount of nitrogen for the pile. If there is too much carbon it just takes longer to make. One type of compost is leaf mold, which is just made with a pile of leaves that have been moistened and allowed to sit. They have to sit for a year if very well shredded or two if not, but it is very low effort. This type of compost won't have the nitrogen content of a quicker compost. So on its ownit isn't a perfect fertilizer. It needs to be supplemented. It also won't supply the large quantities of beneficial organisms for compost tea (use actively made compost for that), but it will provide a lot of low work organic matter and your garden will love it.

If you just have compost pile that you constantly add little bits and never turn, the pile will never officially be done, but it will produce good compost at the bottom of the pile. Once a year you should dig off the top parts that aren't yet decomposed. At the bottom will be your finished compost. I do this with my black bin composter (shown above). The bin has little side slots from which they assume you will dig out your finished compost. They are way too small to do that. I just lift off the whole bin and move it over to a new spot. Then dig the unfinished bits back into the bin.

Using the compost

Compost is finished when it is dark and crumbly and smells like soil and not your original ingredients. Many people screen their compost before use. Sometime there will be parts that haven't decomposed, like a stem from a plant or a stick. Maybe some oak leaves have been resistant. These are usually screened out before adding to the garden. Screens can be bought or made from 1/2" hardware cloth. I don't usually screen mine. I go through it and pick out the larger bits and toss them into the next pile to form.

Once it is screened or sorted through you can dig it into the top six inches of the soil or use it as a mulch if you follow the no-dig philosopy. I tend to think of 1/2" as a minimum to add to the garden on a yearly basis to replace the organic matter that has disappeared over the year. I tend to add a lot more because I make a lot of compost and often use it as a mulch to keep down weeds. Most garden writers will tell you to add at least 1". With organic matter more is not a problem. It isn't like fertilizers. It won't burn your plants.

There is one other common way to use compost - in tea. Actively made compost and worm compost (which I'm not discussing here since I don't keep a worm bin and have no experience, but you can buy worm compost), are the best for compost tea. They both have a lot of beneficial organisms. The usual tea recipe requires a bubbler, molasses, rock dust and sometimes a host of other ingredients. The idea is that you give your good organisms a really good environment to grow and boost their population. I do not do this. I simply put the compost into a container and fill the container up with water. I let it sit a day; filter it; then spray it on my garden. The reason to do this is the organisms contained in the compost can out compete the disease causing ones on the plants. In addition it supplies some foliar feeding. The actively brewed tea works much better than my version, but requires equipment that I don't have. If you want to know how to do it, you can read about it in Fine Gardening.

Other post in the series

Determining your growing zone and planting peas (Vegetable Matter - December)
Planning a Garden (Daphne's Dandelions - December)
Growing Lettuce (Vegetable Matter - January)
Starting transplants indoors (Daphne's Dandelions - January)
Growing tomatoes (Vegetable Matter - February)
Compost (Daphne's Dandelions - February)
Snap Beans (Vegetable Matter - March)
Peas and Spinach (Daphne's Dandelions - March)
Eggplant (Vegetable Matter - April)
Brassicas (Broccoli, Cabbage, Asian vegetables) (Daphne's Dandelions - April)
Edamame (Vegetable Matter - May)
Tomatoes (Daphne's Dandelions - May)

Harvest Monday - 1 February 2010

The first harvest of the year! Kale: 2.2oz. OK so it isn't much, but it is a harvest. The kale survived under all the snow. We had a good melt out. Not enough to get rid of all the snow cover, but enough to get to the kale. Whoohoo!

The stores continue to be eaten up slowly. Above is lunch. I would call it leftovers, which the meat is since it is leftover from a restaurant meal, but my son insists that what I make to just leave in the fridge can't be called a left over. I often have coleslaw made in the fridge for no particular meal. The coleslaw is from cabbage from the farmers market from ages ago. It is amazing how long cabbage will keep. The squash casserole I also make to keep in the fridge for whenever. It is made from frozen squash from the garden and farmers market. I mix the squashes when I puree them.

This meal of a sweet potato and bean burrito is probably more typical of my use of garden produce.

The only things in it from the garden are coriander and garlic.

And a pepper from the ristra. Sadly the black beans weren't mine. I do still have a small bit of mine left and I'll have to cook them up soon.

Next week I hope to have my new tally up. I have been spending money and keeping track. Now that I had a harvest I don't feel so bad about it. My next real harvest probably won't be until spring, but at least I've had something.

If you would like to join me in Harvest Monday, put your name and URL into Mr. Linky below. It doesn't matter how big or small your harvest is. If you have had a harvest this last week, show us and join in!