Harvest Monday, 13 July 2015

Lets start with the fruit this time. I harvested my gooseberries and my pink currants. I made jam out of the gooseberries and froze the currants. I'm slowly collecting all the currants as I'll make them into jam too. But each bush ripens at a different time, so I have to slowly collect them. I've also eaten some of those currants fresh. The pink ones are my favorite ones for eating out of hand. The red ones are too tart for me to eat straight.

The big harvest this week was the cabbages. I harvested over 10 pounds. None of the heads are huge, which is fine. I have trouble enough getting through one head at a time. Coleslaw is my favorite thing to make with it. Luckily it keeps well so in a couple of weeks when I'm harvesting mostly zucchini and cucumbers I'll get to eat the cabbage too.

The last kohlrabi was picked. It keeps pretty well too. I've mostly been enjoying my kohlrabi as fermented pickles and also fairly plain. I love them cut into sticks then steamed and cooled. I like them raw too, but slightly cooked is my favorite. I've picked a decent amount of turnips, but they are pretty badly damaged. Still worth cleaning up and eating though.

The kale was picked and pulled, so now it is just my chard for summer greens until the amaranth picks up. I didn't pick chard this week as I didn't feel I needed it. I'll need to do that soon or it will out grow its row cover.

I'm still picking from the apiaceae bed - fennel, parsley, and celery. And the lettuce is still growing. Though I've tossed some of it that was bitter (not shown). I have a feeling after our last heat wave more will have to be tossed. I just hope I can harvest something this coming week. The rosemary was picked out of desperation. I used the last of my dried rosemary from last year. I needed more for my rosemary bread. Since I'm gluten free, my husband is stuck eating like that too and he loves the rosemary bread. I do have a lot of rosemary in the garden right now. But it needs to get bigger so I can get a decent harvest to dry enough for the whole winter. But what I picked will tide me over.

I've been picking the Walla Walla onions as they have been getting bigger. I'm pretty disappointed in them so far though. "Big" is being pretty small this year. Dixondale sent some pretty crappy starts for them this year (the other onion varieties they sent were good). Starts are supposed to be around pencil width. I got plenty that were about 1/8" thick which isn't big enough to make a good bulb. But I'll use what I get. Two of them were used to make some onion powder. I used the last bit up from last year, so I needed more. I'll have to do it again later in the year, but these ought to hold me for a couple of months.

And last but not least are my carrots. I so love carrots. I have to keep myself from eating them at every meal or they will all be gone before the fall carrots come in. I'll probably pick the rest of the bed next week to get it ready for the fall cabbages. Hopefully I'll have cleared up some space in the fridge that is being used by my greens.

I was taking a look at some of the previous years' harvest tallies and comparing them to this year. Last year was my best year ever in the garden and I'm about 50 pounds ahead of those totals. I could still fall short this year. We have had some cool nights at times that slow down the melons and sweet potatoes. The melons this year are struggling more, but they might catch up. We will see. 2013 was my worst year ever in the garden and I'm 100 pounds ahead of those numbers. In 2012 we had the year without winter and I planted in February (remember this year the ground wasn't unfrozen until April). I'm about 15 pounds behind that year. I'm not surprised that that was the best spring ever in the garden. 2011 was the first year of this garden, and I'm about 100 pounds ahead so far this year. So all in all the spring crops have done well. I still have carrots to pick, but that is the last of the spring beds.

• Alliums, 1.09 lbs
• Broccoli, 0.31 lbs
• Carrots, 3.33 lbs
• Greens, 18.68 lbs
• Herbs, 2.13 lbs
• Roots, 2.84 lbs
• Weekly total, 28.38
• Yearly total, 211.16 lbs, $410.50

• Fruits
• Gooseberries, 5.92 lbs
• Currants, 2.83 lbs
• Fruit Yearly total, 36.25 lbs

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.