Harvest Monday, 11 August 2014

Let's start with the good this week. And that would be corn. I harvested corn five days this week. Yesterday I even harvested enough to freeze. I've been sending some over to our townhouse mates. It isn't as perfectly pollinated as last year. This corn seems to put out its pollen later in the day. I'm used to the morning pollen. So I hand pollinated it during the morning. I noticed there wasn't much pollen at all when I did it. Once when I was out just before lunch I knocked them and pollen was everywhere. I always figured all corn was the same. At least I know for next year.

I was good and caught up on the chard. The first one was a large enough harvest to get two servings to freeze.

I harvested the early Copras and the rest of the Ailsa Craig sweet onions. Most of the latter had been eaten over time, but I had a decent amount to store. For a sweet onion it keeps pretty well, but not longer than two months, so they get eaten first. There were four braids of onions. Three of Copra and one of Ailsa Craig. In one or two weeks the rest of the storage onions will be dry and I'll braid those up.

Not all my alliums are bulbing onions. The bunching onions are getting harvested and used too. In addition to the bunch above for me, I gave a bunch to a friend that was visiting. I have way too many of these in the garden. I didn't weight that bunch. Things do slip through, though usually it is the herbs that don't get weighed.

I had a lot of the typical cuke and beans baskets. They often come with something else, be it broccoli, zucchini, herbs, or beets. I have a lot more photos, but I'll spare you the repetition. Let's just say I could use less cucumbers. I harvested 15 pounds of them this week. If I'm really trying I might be able to eat half of that, but usually not even that much. I did give away a couple of batches of them, but I need to give some more away this week. It is way, way too many cucumbers. If this keeps up it will be my best cucumber year ever - or the worst depending upon how you look at it. I hate throwing produce into the compost pile. I do see signs of them slowing down, but not quickly.

But until they stop I'm eating lunches like these (though often with carrot sticks too). I do love my cucumber salads.

In other good news the peaches have started. I did pick them just a tad too early. It took them four days to ripen on the counter. I'm getting impatient with them. Last year I started picking them in July. This year they are taking longer.

The autumn raspberries have started too. I'm so happy. I've been going out every morning to see what I can put on my cereal. Sometimes it is a small handful. The worst morning it was just two. But I'll take even two. They are so good.

Now for the bad news. I had to rip up a lot of the celery due to mosaic virus. I'll probably have to do the rest this week. This makes me really sad as the plants really like the cool fall weather and they would put on a lot more growth. I've never seen this in my garden before and I wonder where it came from. From the celeriac seeds? I'm not really sure.

• Alliums: 30.34 lbs
• Beans: 0.86 lbs
• Broccoli: 1.98 lbs
• Corn: 9.67 lbs
• Cucumbers 15.51 lbs
• Greens: 2.54 lbs
• Herbs: 0.79 lbs
• Roots: 1.11 lbs
• Squash, Summer: 0.74 lbs
• Weekly Total: 63.54 lbs
• Yearly Total: 270.20 lbs
• Yearly Tally: $293.80

• Fruit
• Raspberries: 0.21 lbs
• Peaches: 3.46 lbs
• Weekly Total: 3.67 lbs, $12.85
• Yearly total: 12.89 lbs, $55.25

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.