Harvest Monday - October 24, 2011

The cold weather really has moved in. We haven't had a frost yet, but as I write this our temperature is at 37F. So I was out removing things from the garden. My townhouse mates were too. They removed the eggplants, picking as they went. And they removed all the pepper plants and harvested a huge amount of them. They were going to make some hot pepper sauce with the spicy ones. None of these were weighed, but they picked a couple of huge bags of peppers and quite a few eggplants.

I was out picking the last of the celery. This doesn't look very big, but trust me it is. I had to cut them in thirds just to fit them in my fridge. There are six pounds of celery in that pile. What I kept I'll clean and chop up and freeze. I'll keep a little fresh as it is truly soup season now. I made two different soups last week.

I picked the last of the leeks. If you see the one on the bottom is is perfect. I don't think I've ever grown one that has been as huge as the ones you find in the supermarkets. Mine tend to be an inch wide or less. Also in there is probably the last zucchini. I never pulled them even though they stopped producing and lo and behold, the strongest of them put one more out. A tiny one, but still a zucchini toward the end of October here is really unusual. I picked more carrots. These were smaller than last weeks. I picked them over in the shadier part of the garden. Some have sized up OK, but not great. I figure I'll pick all the ones big enough at all over there first. When it gets colder the carrots outside my kitchen door will be easier to get to and have a tendency to freeze less as they are surrounded by bricks and not wood.

Every week I pick Asian Greens. I thin out the largest of the baby boc choy (both white and green stemmed) and the tatsoi. Every week they fill in the gaps and get bigger. I tipped one up in the corner so you can see how big they are getting. The biggest are just under half a pound which is huge for a baby choy. Every week before harvesting they look so beautiful in their beds (I really need to take a photo) and every week they look so sad after harvesting. But the holes left in the bed give me a chance to put down some sluggo. There are slugs in this bed and I pull some off the greens every week, but with the sluggo the leaves aren't shredded at least.

The slugs like the Fun Jen the best. I think it is because it is such a mild Asian green, but they are still doing well. Only some heads have tattered tops. I think this plant really acts as a trap crop for the rest of the bed. Most are looking pretty good though. So I'm pretty happy with them. I pick the largest of these each week too. Almost everyone thinks these are lettuce when they see them, and in fact that is how I use them. They make very good salads.

• Alliums 1.49 lbs
  
• Carrots 1.23 lbs
  
• Cucurbits 0.21 lbs
  
• Eggplant unknown
  
• Greens 11.39 lbs
  
• Herbs 0.18
  
• Pepper unknown
  
• Raspberries unknown
  
• Weekly Total 20.50 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 535.17 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $1164.01
  
• Fruit 1.87 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.