Harvest Monday - April 16, 2012

This week had the last of the asparagus. The female plants that I was harvesting from were ripped out and replaced. Most people don't do this. They live with the female plants, but I had to order a bunch to replace some deaths in the patch. I had enough to replace the females (the ones with the berries last fall) so I did.

Then when I was prepping a bed there were a few over wintered carrots. So I got a tiny little harvest of them too. But of course I forgot the photo.

Those were the tiny harvests. Most of the harvests this week were huge. I was preparing for the heat coming today. The predictions are for 88F which is bound to cause havoc with any overwintered green. So I harvested a lot of them. Basically any green that had overwintered was harvested to the ground and frozen for later use.

A good portion of the cilantro was ripped out. I didn't bother to take it all out as I had way too much with this harvest.

The kale was shared with my townhouse mates. We both are freezing for later. At over 8 pounds there was plenty.

And the spinach. This is almost 5 pounds of spinach. That is my kitchen counter it is on and it is a full width counter. My big harvest basket was dwarfed by the harvest. I ate some. Gave some to my townhouse mate (though not half of it like the kale). It still took me about an hour and a half to prep it all as the leaves were pretty sandy. But I've got 11 servings all frozen for later. I need about 30+ packets when I'm all done, but it can be either spinach or chard. If the hot weather doesn't make the overwintered spinach bolt, I'll get another harvest from these plants. If it does, I still have the spring spinach that is small. I usually don't start harvesting any of that until the end of the month or into May. Well maybe a few thinnings, but not enough to freeze.

I was kind of sad to have to harvest them all because of the weather. I would have preferred to harvest about 3/4 of the spinach for freezing and leave the rest for harvests over the next couple of weeks. But I figure better safe than sorry as everything bolts.

I did spend money this last week on tools. I bought a rake, a hoe, and a really expensive trowel. I tend to break trowels. I've got one that bends if you use it. I've got one that the tip has broken off. I was getting down to just two that were any good. And one sits near the compost pile to move things around when putting in new kitchen scraps. You'd think that would be enough, but its not. I like to be surrounded by them. I tend to leave them all over the garden. This one like my rake and hoe has a red handle so I can find it better. I do tend to lose them in the mass of green later in the season.

• Asparagus 0.16 lbs
• Carrots 0.34 lbs
  
• Greens 13.29 lbs lbs
  
• Herbs 3.34 lbs
  
• Weekly total 17.13 lbs
• Yearly total 38.12 lbs
• Spent 54.89
  
• Tally -$505.52
  

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.