Monday, December 1, 2014

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.

15 comments:

  1. Congrats on a great year for the garden. That is truly outstanding productivity. I know there's always weather variations from year to year, but you also work hard to get that productivity. I'm still amazed at the 78 pounds of carrots!!! Not to mention all those lovely greens.

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  2. That is great that you still have some greens coming in, mine have all frozen over. I have shut down my garden for the winter. Time to start planning for next year. Congrats on a great year!

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  3. Don't have a Harvest Monday post today, but that doesn't stop me from admiring your final harvest for the season. Your butternut squash always makes me anxious to grow some, which is the plan for next year.

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  4. Oops..clicked the submit button too fast. Big congratulations on your record breaking harvest total...you definitely inspire the rest of us, Daphne!

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  5. Congratulations at season's end. Nice to know about the butternut squash experiment. Sometimes mine have to be removed to make room for winter crops.

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  6. That really is an amazing tally for the year! And without the benefit of heavy producers like tomatoes. Congratulations.

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  7. Everything is looking amazing!! We love record harvest!! Great job!

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  8. Spring onions just don;t seem to want to grow for is any more.At one time they were so very easy. You still have plenty of variety

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  9. That's a pretty decent haul from what you describe as basically leftovers, and a very admirable annual total. I certainly couldn't match that - though I think my productivity per square foot might be in about the same range. For me the most important thing is that gardening gives you pleasure as well as food!

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  10. Wow Daphne, it's pretty amazing you've still been able to pick all that considering the weather you get there. I'd like to grow more butternut squashes next year, I did try to grow more this time but lots of my baby plants got eaten.

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  11. I quite like pumpkin soup made with under ripe squash, sometimes fully ripe ones make it too sweet for my palette but the under ripe ones are fine.

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  12. Oh I meant to say that earlier I saw my first ever UK mention of gleaning (that I first heard of on your blog), where a Norfolk farm had lots of spare Brussels Sprouts that people were invited to collect to take to foodshare locations.

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  13. 1.3 pounds per sq foot? Very inspirational! Fantastic looking goodies, as always - it's only been a few weeks for me since everything wrapped up and I'm already craving the fresh greens. I have a long time to wait!

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  14. Congratulations on your record and being able to grow so much of your own food and keep such good records!!! Lots of yummy looking greens. That is interesting to learn about the squash. I bought an acorn squash and didn't good it for awhile and it turned mostly orange on the outside. Was it suppose to do that? I baked it tonight and it tasted good. Nancy

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