Harvest Monday - 14 March 2011

I have been eating from my stores. Above I used some of my Cherokee Trail of Tears to make a bean and apple salad. I have a few apples left from the fall and am trying to use them up before they all rot. The salad wasn't made using a recipe, but contains 1/2c dried beans, an apple, an orange, half a red pepper, about 1/4c of sweet onion, 1/4 c cilnatro, a couple tablespoons of vinegar, a dash of chipolte pepper, and salt.

I also have been eating my frozen chard every week. I rarely show it or talk about it. It isn't as sexy or photogenic as the beans or the canned items, but it is there and a workhorse of what got saved last year.

What I was really hoping for though was a harvest from my overwintered crops. Everything melted out and thawed this last week. The rock wall bed that had overwintering plants in it had totally thawed. The plastic had huge puddles of collected water weighing everything down.

This is what the support structure looked like after the plastic was removed. Pretty sad right?

And this is what the plants looked like. Now the tatsoi above looks like it will regrow, but those nice rosettes had rotted stems below them. There were only a couple that I thought might or might not survive.

Of the other plants the Fun Jen looks like it is fairly healthy. But I don't have high hopes for it. I see signs of it wanting to bolt. The roots seem healthy as I pulled up a few. Still I'm giving them less than even odds of putting out anything edible this spring. But if they do succeed in only putting out blossoms, you can bet that I'm going to see how they taste. Most of the Asian greens that bolt put out good tasting flowers.

And as for Harvest Monday. Don't those overwintered turnips look good?

Well they weren't. Almost all of theme were rotted to the core. I had two that seemed OK. These were the largest of the turnips. The small ones seemed to have more issues. The smaller the turnip; the larger the brown rotting spot was. I haven't weighed the two nice ones yet. I was afraid to taste them. I will and if they are OK they will be added to the tally. Two tiny turnips won't weigh much, but it would be something.

But the bed got totally cleaned up. I'm hoping but not expecting much.

Interestingly enough, the unprotected things fared better. The tunnel collapse probably helped to rot things out. Above is some of the overwintered spinach. The spinach is spotty here and there along the rock wall garden. It sprouted spotty in the fall. It doesn't look like I had any winter kill at all. I also had two Tom Thumb lettuce plants survive under the protection of the parsley. The parsley will probably sprout, but not in time before I rip it out for the flowers that will go there this summer. And last but not least, my Dwarf Curled Kale all survived. They are still small as they were when they started winter. They might get big enough before they need to get ripped out. So future Harvest Mondays might happen in a month. Time will tell.

And I fixed my fruit tally. I found not all the columns had added up. I also added in the Felco F-6 pruners that I ordered. I have crappy ones, but they just don't cut well. Everyone says that the Felcos will last forever, so in the long run I'm guessing they will be cheaper.

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.