Monday, July 19, 2010

Harvest Monday - 19 July 2010

I left on vacation on Wednesday morning and am still there. I am probably internet disabled though there is a chance that we have access to a computer. I scheduled this post so you could all still have fun with Harvest Monday without me.

However I do have a small harvest from earlier in the week. The beans and cukes need picking about every two days. Luckily my townhouse mates seem happy to have the chore of harvesting the produce, but I didn't make them weigh it all this time. So no additional weights will be added in from them.

I had the last harvest from the old house. I harvested mostly dill to freeze. My new house has no dill growing right now so if I want more pickles this summer - and I do - then I needed to stock up. This does not even touch the dill that I had at the old house. This was just a little bit of it. It probably weighed over a pound as shown above, but I processed it before weighing. I wanted to have both dill heads and dill leaves for my future pickles so made two containers of each of those.

And then froze them after scattering them on the cookie sheet. I also harvested one cuke and some beans while I was at the old house.

The old house and its garden is now just a memory. I signed the papers to sell it on Tuesday. I thought it would be hard leaving, but right now I don't think so. I know I'll have a wonderful and bigger garden here. So things will be fine. I'll miss having a place for all the fall crops but it isn't a real issue. I can have patience for another year.

The small bit of the new garden that is up is filled with summer veggies. And I picked some beans and cucumbers before leaving. I blanched the beans and froze them and put the cukes in the refrigerator pickle jar.

  • Beans 0-.89 lbs
  • Cucumbers 0.56 lbs
  • Herbs 0.23 lbs
  • Spent this week: $0
  • Total harvested this week 1.69 lbs
  • Total for the year 39.53 lbs
  • 2010 Tally -$104.66

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

27 comments:

  1. Hope you are enjoying the vacation. Thanks for the tip about the dill. Never thought about saving it like that.

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  2. I didn't even know you could do anything with dill heads. Do they have any flavor? Can you use them the same way as dill leaves? Have a great vacation!

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  3. We just came back from vacation. Hope you are having a lot of fun! Dill heads are delicious in pickles.

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  4. I have always saved dill weed (leaves) and seeds (head) by drying but I am definitely going to give the freezing a try. Thanks for the good idea!

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  5. How do you go from picking to frozen herbs - wash, trim, dry(?), freeze, store in airtight containers in the freezer? Thanks.

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  6. Have a great vacation!

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  7. I hope you're enjoying the vacation!!!

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  8. Dill's on my wish list, but not something I've ever yet gotten planted. Maybe next year...the heads look like they'd be fantastic for making pickles with.

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  9. Have a great vacation! Even though you'll have to wait to have your fall garden, it is great that you just moved to a new house and already have a functioning productive garden. Very impressive :-)

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  10. Thanks for getting Harvest Monday going for all the rest of us. Have a fun and relaxing vacation. Your harvest may have been small but it is lovely. You'll have a nice reminder of the old garden every time you munch on one of those dill pickles in the coming year.

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  11. Daphne, I am with everyone else. Please share steps for freezing the dill. I am growing dill for the first time. I harvested some to use on roasted new potatoes and I see that some of the dill is forming heads. Help! I don't know what to do with them.

    I hope you are having a very relaxing vacation.

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  12. Congrats on selling the house ! Enjoy your well deserved vacation and thanks for hosting HM while your away.

    I was checking out my herb bed the other day, no dill in sight. Did I forget to sow ??!

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  13. Hope you are having a great vacation!

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  14. Hope you're having a wonderful vacation! That's some great looking dill.

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  15. nice yellow beans. I hope to have some yellow ones soon to add to my green and purple ones!
    Mmm pickles! Have not made any myself yet though.

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  16. I too am curious how the frozen dill works out. I hope you're celebrating the sale of your house and having a lovely vacation.

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  17. Hope the vacation is going well!

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  18. I am newly introduced to the wonders of fresh dill. What variety do you plant? Mine seems absolutely fabulous for seed but fairly unproductive when it comes to leaves.

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  19. have a great vacation and thanks for scheduling this for us!

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  20. Sounds like you need a vacation I hope you have a great one. You have very lucky townhouse mates.

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  21. Thanks for the tip in freezing dill. I never though of that! DUH! LOL!

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  22. I hope we're not overwhelming you. So many people are now posting on Harvest Monday. It's WONDERFUL! Great dill. That reminds me, I still haven't planted any dill or basil. I'm running out of time to finish my summer planting. Gonna quit blogging and go garden now. Enjoy your vacation!!!

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  23. I tried growing Dill this year and was not successful at all. Do you have a seed company for Dill that you recommend?

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  24. Sorry about being so late in answering, but we didn't have any decent internet service on our vacation.



    To all that wanted to know more about freezing dill:

    I wash the dill and dry it very well. I trim it well (though some think it is better frozen on the stem, for me it takes up too much room like that). Then I just freeze on a cookie sheet and put in a ziplock bag once frozen. It will not have the texture of fresh dill, but the flavor is all there. So it works great for storing for pickles or if you chop it really fine for cucumber salads. It isn't so good if you want to use large sprigs since it gets soft and limp.

    For those that wanted to know about dill heads:

    Dill heads have a wonderful flavor. And yes you can use them the same way as the leaves though if you are chopping them and will be eating them I'd probably take off the hard flower stems and just use the flowers. The heads have a slightly different taste than the leaves, but still dill like.

    Sarah Ruth, I don't know the variety. I planted it over a decade ago at my last house. I've let it self seed for years. It even survived (along with the cilantro and parsley) the year that I was too sick to want to garden. I had a weed patch that year and there was still plenty of dill to use. Dill is a real weed. I hope my seed that I saved from last year will still come up next year so I can keep my dill going. It is a very tall form of dill. It grows 5' high and has huge flowers. The heads are often 8' across.

    meemsnyc, since I just let my dill self seed (for over a decade). I don't know what variety it is. I haven't a clue as to what seed company I bought it from either. I do recommend Fedco if you live in the NorthEast US as they tend to stock seed just for this region.

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  25. I am pretty new to blogging and have tried to link to my harvest from last week. I wish I had seen your blogs earlier in the growing season.

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