Harvest Monday, August 20th, 2012

Both the cukes and beans are getting to the end of their life. I think I have one cucumber plant that doesn't have wilt. Half the bean leaves are brown.

The first melon harvest was exciting and as usual one was split at the end. I seem to either pick melons unripe or they split on me.

Another case in point. This one had a smaller split so I had to cut less off. It however was much smaller than the other two. I'm happy to get any melons though. I always am. Usually our summers aren't very hot so they don't grow well. This year was hot enough, but I've had plants die due to wilt. They don't seem as affected as the cucumbers but they aren't resistant like the butternuts either. And as you can see I'm picking corn again. This is from the one solitary plant that came up in the first sowing of the bed. It set two ears since it had no competition. I was hand pollinating every morning so I did get reasonable pollination, but there were gaps here and there. I think this coming week the last sowing will be ready to start picking.

The last of the onions were braided. These were the Copra onions, a very good yellow storage onion. About four or so tried to flower for some reason. I've never had that happen before with onions raised from seed. But I had some do that from most varieties this year. These of course won't keep so will be eaten first. I wonder if the hot early weather in March and April combined with the cold weather in early June caused it. I've always thought onions bloomed due to light, not heat and cold. I'm very careful to keep the plant lights on for no more than 12 hours every day when they are seedlings. And they usually get planted right after the Vernal equinox, so they are planted with daylight of about the same length that they were grown. For those that live in other areas, we are at 42 degrees of latitude so I grow long day onions.

I now have all my storage onions hanging braided in the basement. All in all it is about 45 pounds of onions for the fall and winter. In addition I still have about half my sweet onions left so maybe 8 lbs there. Last year my storage onions started sprouting in March. I really hope they keep longer this year. They might. I had a lot less rot problems while they were growing. I also separated the Varsity from the Copra. The former will be used first as Copra keeps longer. I was also careful to feel the necks. Any that felt thicker were put in braids to use first. Necks that dry down better will keep longer. So I've got my fingers crossed that they will keep into spring. I certainly have many more onions this year than last year. I'll share some with my townhouse mates, but once we get to a certain point, I'll stop. I'd rather share than lose the onions due to rot, but then again I'd rather have my onions to use than having to buy store bought onions.

And in big news, I broke the 400lb mark and I'm about 10 pounds behind last year's totals. So I'm still doing well. The melons help since they are heavy. I try to make about a pound per square foot in the garden (570 sqft in the raised bed section). Though I don't choose what I plant based on that. Certainly planting 6'x4' of mustards for mustard seed isn't very productive in pounds. Nor are my precious dried beans. I really can't eat all that comes out of my garden by myself anyway, so I plant what I'll use even if it isn't productive. But for some reason I still like to see the weights add up. And speaking of weights here are the totals for this week.

• Alliums 18.7 lbs
• Beans 0.50 lbs
• Broccoli 0.38 lbs
• Corn 1.25
• Cucurbit 11.94 lbs
• Greens 0.45 lbs
• Weekly total 33.22 lbs
• Yearly total 402.67 lbs
• Tally $641.18

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.