Harvest Monday - September 26 2011

This was Sunday's harvest. The only harvest that got photographed and weighed this week. I love how the zucchini are still pretending to produce. They never get big. If I don't pick them right away they rot out. They just don't have the energy this time of year to make a big zucchini. But little ones are well loved. One is perfect for me as an addition to a stirfry.

This week also features the first Fun Jen, which is the light green leaves at the top. These were just thinnings from the Asian green patch. Fun Jen makes great Asian salads. I never cook with it though as the leaves don't hold up well to heat.

The kale is also the first harvest of the year. I pretty much transplanted them and put them under a cover and ignored them until now. They really needed a weeding, but just so a few of the weeds didn't go to seed. Soon they will outgrow their cover. They are getting very tall. I think I want to stake them before winter hits. The snows really knock them over and I'd rather they stay upright. The kale is a mix from Fedco. Some varieties I can tell what they are, but most I don't know. They dinosaur kale isn't doing well here, but the red one is probably growing the best of all. If it can survive our winters unprotected I'll have to try to identify it. Last year I only had some dwarf curly kale. It went into the winter tiny and they all survived and produced in early spring. If I could get one that would produce in the fall and the spring I'd be really happy. But it might take two patches for that. The mature ones might not make it through the winter as well as the small plants.

I also have lettuce, herbs, a few beans (mostly they have stopped producing), peppers and tomatoes being picked. They don't get weighed or photographed. The weather is really starting to fluctuate a lot and it is getting colder. I'm hoping one of my friends wants the huge piles of basil in the garden right now. They won't last much longer. They die long before the first frost. Personally I have plenty frozen already and don't need more except for a few leaves here and there.

• Cucurbits 0.33 lbs
  
• Greens 2.87 lbs
• Herbs unknown
  
• Lettuce unknown
• Pepper unknown
  
• Tomato unknown
  
• Weekly Total 3.19 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 473.36 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $981.88
  
• Fruit 1.69 lbs
  

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.

Harvest Monday - September19 2011

I'm still not gardening much at all, but it still is producing some things. Above are my townhousemates harvests from Thursday. They weren't weighed. But I was told it was delicious.

Then Sunday I picked some things for my CSA. She picked some tomatoes too. She could have picked a lot more peppers, but she still had tons of chili peppers from last week. In this was a few pounds of some shelling beans. These are Tabais beans which are traditional for cassoulet. I should have enough for me too. I can't make a regular cassoulet since I can't have tomatoes, but I can fudge it up enough to get something yummy I'm sure.

While I was watering my new Asian greens bed I found some alpine strawberries were ripe and one everbearer regular strawberry. The yellow ones are divine. The red ones were just OK. I think if they self seed (which I'm told they do. I'll be replacing the red ones with yellow. I hope so. But I think most of them are red right now.

I picked a few other things during the week, but they were neither photographed nor weighed. Mostly I've been eating a really bland diet, but I am starting to feel a bit better. I've been out for walks a couple times recently. I get really tired, but I'm on the mend. It turns out I'm not allergic to tomatoes at all. I have solanine poisoning. This is the poisoning you get when you eat green potatoes (which I didn't). But my doctor says it is absorbed through the skin. I'd hug my tomato plants for long periods during picking and pruning. I typically wear short sleeveless dresses in the summer and as Granny noticed I go barefoot. So I'm totally exposed to all the plant. And I don't take showers as soon as I get inside. This year was worse with the contact because of the narrow paths and the double row of tomatoes instead of single.

He thinks I just absorbed too much. I've got all the typical symptoms of solanine poisoning (fatigue, headaches, dizziness, nausea). It is a neurotoxin that does a lot of nasty things to your body. It typically has a 1-2 month half life so it takes a while to get out of the system. I've now cut all solanum crops out of my diet, and not just tomatoes. This is what has been getting me better. The small quantity that was still in my diet was enough to keep my levels too high. The last time I had a little bit of pepper I got very sick again that night. I won't be eating any of those again for months. Usually the little bits of it that you eat are easy enough for your body to handle. I just got too overloaded with it. But the good news is the odds are I can eat them again in 4-8 months since it isn't an allergy. But in the future I'll have to be careful since I'm obviously more sensitive to this poison that most folks are.

• Beans 2.73 lbs.
  
• Cucurbits 0.30 lbs
  
• Eggplant unknown
  
• Greens 3.02 lbs
  
• Pepper unknown
  
• Tomato unknown
  
• Weekly Total 6.04 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 470.36 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $975.10
  
• Fruit 1.69 lbs
  

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.

Harvest Monday - September12 2011

Monday's two harvests. It was definitely the week of the cherry tomato. They had been lagging around for a while, but they really ripened up this week.

Sunday's harvest was for my CSA. I only picked some. I let my CSA folks pick any tomatoes they wanted and peppers. I'm currently not eating them so they have become a free for all for them and my townhouse mates. The ones they pick are not getting weighed. And any lettuce my townhouse mates pick.

• Beans 0.12 lbs.
  
• Carrot 4.74 lbs lbs
  
• Cucurbits 2.14 lbs
  
• Eggplant 1.10 lbs
  
• Greens 1.16 lbs
  
• Pepper 3.24 lbs
  
• Beet 0.31 lbs
  
• Tomato 4.81 lbs
  
• Weekly Total 17.64 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 464.31 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $955.11
  
• Fruit 1.69 lbs
  

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.

Harvest Monday - September 5, 2011

This is the one and only large harvest I had. The rest of the harvests were just going out to pick what I needed for dinner. I had very small harvests this week. I'm recovering from my allergy induced asthma and I'm staying inside. I have a feeling I might be allergic to tomato plants so I've been avoiding the cherry tomatoes (though I'll pick them for my CSA this morning). The beans take too long to pick so I've been ignoring them. I go outside as little as possible.

So life is depressing here. In addition all my plants in the brassica bed (which should be my big harvests right now) had some disease go through while I was on vacation and they are all dead now. The broccoli is the sole survivor, but even it is slowly succumbing. So I've got no Asian greens anymore. I'm so sad to lose my Chinese cabbage. I wanted more of the Michihili. The kale bed is fine so far. So between that and my chard which I haven't picked yet, I'll have greens to eat.

I ripped out the flowers in front of my house and planted a new bed of quick maturing Asian greens, but I don't know if they will mature in time. If the fall is warm and long they will be fine. I could have ripped out some of my cucurbits but the main beds right now don't get a lot of sun due to the low arc this time of year and the neighbor's house and tree. So the rock wall garden by the driveway is the best bet for growing in the fall. And the only place without perennials in that bed is the first part you see when you drive in. My flower bed. So the beautiful zinnias that used to greet my guests are now gone. I did get a good laugh this week though. I pulled out all those beautiful flowers. My husband asked that evening what I did that day. I told him he saw when he drove in. He didn't even notice the ugly row cover over them.

This is the first year I've been chased inside into filtered air due to allergies. I've always had my windows wide open this time of year doing things outside. Yeah I had a few sniffles and had to take some meds, but I've never been really sick due to them before. I was out two hours at a BBQ on Saturday and was sick as a dog afterwards. So I'll be starting shots very soon. I have an appointment with the allergy specialist this week. Next year I ought to be a lot better. But this fall gardening season will be done with a mask and very little will happen. It is the reason I really haven't been blogging. And I've been avoiding a lot of other blogs too. Too depressing to think about. But don't worry about me, I'll get over it. And as I always say when something bad happens in the garden, there is always next year.

• Alliums 0.86 lbs
  
• Broccoli 0.26 lbs lbs
  
• Carrot 0.38 lbs lbs
  
• Cucurbits 2.00 lbs
  
• Greens 1.16 lbs lbs
  
• Weekly Total 4.66 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 446.67 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $898.07
  
• Fruit 1.69 lbs
  

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.