Harvest Monday 1 December 2014

Since I was cleaning out the beds this last week, I had a decent amount of harvests. The first to go was the Asian greens and chard bed. There wasn't a lot of chard, but some. And a very small amount of tatsoi as I planted it too late. But the bok choy harvest was pretty large.

I probably should have kept it covered from the frost as the outside leaves had started to get mushy so I had to trim them off, but the inside was still very nice. I now have just two beds with plants in them. The kale and the spinach that are overwintering.

And speaking of spinach. I had thought I had planted it too late to get any harvest this year, but I was wrong. I had a decent harvest. Enough for three meals.

I also had a few random harvests from the last clean up of the beds. I had forgotten I even had planted turnips under the chard. They didn't really grow much. But I got a handful worth eating. And the onions were at the end of a bed that had been cleaned up weeks ago.

My last harvest though was something I'd picked a while back and not weighed in. I had six little not quite ripe squash. You can see the color and size difference from one that was fully ripe and set earlier in the year. But I kept them and let them cure. I wanted to see if they were worth eating and they were. One wasn't as sweet as the older squash, but still flavorful. And one was just as sweet and tasty. It just wasn't as orange. I weighed in the two I cooked. The other four will be evaluated when they are cooked up. I suspect that two will be just fine and two aren't ripe enough to taste good. But I've never picked squash so unripe before, so that is just an uneducated guess.

• Alliums: 0.64 lbs
• Greens: 1.24 lbs
• Greens, Asian: 3.95 lbs
• Roots: 0.09 lbs
• Greens: 4.00 lbs
• Weekly Total: 9.92 lbs
• Yearly Total: 739.90 lbs
• Yearly Tally: $1396.30

The tally is special this week. I succeeded in going over my previous record of 735lbs. That record was set in the year with no winter (2012) so I was able to plant peas and spinach in February (unheard of here). I certainly couldn't do that this year. This year the peas were planted April 4th and the spinach April 14th. Also that record had the use of my asparagus bed which hasn't given my anything at all since it was planted in 2013, and might never as most of the plants have already died. So it has been a pretty amazing year. I'm not sure why it was so good. I'll probably go over the tally in a detailed comparison later in the year.

And just because I love numbers. If you look in my sidebar you will see that I have 565 sqft of raised bed. If I use that number I get 1.3 pounds per square foot (even with the non-asparagus counted in). My goal every year is to reach a pound per square foot. So I'm way over that. Whoohoo! Of course the more important part is that it feeds me. And it has done a good job of that.

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.