Harvest Monday 18 August 2014

I have so many of the typical harvest baskets. So I'll give you a very unrepresentative sample. Usually it is cucumbers, beans, basil, and sometimes chard or broccoli. This one has some root crops - turnips and beets. Though I took photos of them all, I'll spare you the repetition. Even I'm bored of them at this point and that is saying a lot since I never get bored of seeing the fresh veggies even if it is just beans and cukes.

What I will show you are the things I'm really loving this week. That would of course be corn. We eat it fresh most days. Oh it is so so good. My husband is constantly raving about it. The top basket is mostly the last of the first section of corn planted. The second basket is the first of the second planting of corn. There were more baskets this week as I pick it fresh everyday just before dinner, but those were the biggest.

I have to show off the peaches. I harvested over 14 pounds of them last week and I probably have the same amount left on the tree. I do have to split these with my townhouse mates as they are part of the landscaping for our yard. But I still have enough to do some preserving. Though I'm doing my best to eat a lot of them fresh with juice dripping down my chin. That really is the best way to eat a peach.

The last harvest I'll share is the last batch of onions. They were finally cured and dried so I could braid them and store them in the basement. I've been really shocked by the harvest totals this year. Especially when I look at last year's totals.

Variety	2013	2014
Ailsa Craig	16.28	17.30
Redwing	7.52	11.89
Copra	17.64	35.94
Total	41.44	65.13

All of the onions had about the same amount of plants in the same set up as the year before. With the same fertilizer and treatment. There was only one thing different. I put netting over the onions to keep the onion maggots out of the patch. I can't believe how well it worked. The Ailsa Craig obviously isn't much affected by them, but the Copras, which are my main storage onion are obviously seriously set back by them. I know I've mentioned it before, but my Copras are really the best I have ever seen them. They show no signs of rot either. Any of them. Unlike in previous years. Then I'd make sure to eat the questionable ones first. Needless to say, I'll continue with the netting every year.

And though the yield of the Ailsa Craig onions aren't really different, they taste better this year. I was thinking of switching to a different variety because I wasn't fond of their taste as much as other sweet onions. But this year they all tasted great. So good in fact that I've been eating them constantly. As a sweet onion they don't store well. Though they are one of the best keepers for sweet onions. They last about 2 months in storage. In the past I often lost onions because I couldn't finish them up in time. But I only have a handful of them left. They will be gone way before the end of September this year.

And if you wish to compare onion varieties. The AC and RW onions have the same number of plants and the same conditions. There are exactly twice as many Copra onions, but it is hard to compare because I put the Copras closer to the path, which means they have more sun. Even with that though I'm surprised that the Copras out performed the AC onions (by a hair). The AC onions are a large sweet onion. They can get just huge. They got big, but none of them were huge.

• Alliums: 26.73 lbs
• Beans: 1.20 lbs
• Broccoli: 0.96 lbs
• Corn: 11.23 lbs
• Cucumbers 12.68 lbs
• Greens: 1.17 lbs
• Herbs: 0.20 lbs
• Roots: 1.85 lbs
• Squash, Summer: 1.21 lbs
• Weekly Total: 57.23 lbs
• Yearly Total: 337.98 lbs
• Yearly Tally: $425.98

• Fruit
• Raspberries: 0.33 lbs
• Peaches: 14.34 lbs
• Weekly Total: 14.67 lbs, $46.87
• Yearly total: 27.57 lbs, $102.12

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.