Harvest Monday - July 18 2011

It was a huge harvest week. There were several firsts of the year. I had the first green beans, the first chili peppers, and the first big tomato, Cherokee Purple. This week featured a lot of preserving. I blanched and froze chard. I grated and froze zucchini. And I dried a lot of herbs. I broke even this week on produce versus expenses. I'll let the photos speak for themselves, but just so you know, the garlic wasn't weighed and tallied yet. That will happen once it is dried and trimmed.

• Alliums 2.91 lbs
• Beans 1.06 lbs
  
• Broccoli 0.41 lbs
• Carrot 2.87 lbs
  
• Cucurbits 8.29 lbs
  
• Greens 9.59 lbs
• Herbs 1.88 lbs
• Peas 2.16 lbs
• Pepper 0.70 lbs
  
• Other roots 1.01 lbs
• Tomato 1.21 lbs
  
• Weekly Total 32.09 lbs
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 139.29 lbs
• Out of the hole! $2.83
  

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.

Revamping The Lettuce Bed

Gratuitous flower photo

Once the garlic had been pulled out of the bed it shared with the lettuce. It looked pretty crappy. The dill shared space with the garlic, but after pulling it couldn't stand up anymore. I decided it all needed to get pulled. Much of it wasn't harvested since I had plenty. It was compost fodder.

Lettuce bed with dill falling all over

The problem with pulling all the garlic and dill is that it was shading my lettuce bed. Without it the lettuce was going to die a horrible death. We had a two day cool spell (hovering around 80F both days). I say cool spell but the reality is in a normal year it would be a normal temp. July's average high in our area is 82F. Not 90F even if it feels like that has become our norm. Saturday was the start of another heat wave, so I pulled half of the lettuce from the bed. The other half will have to try to survive the nasty heat that is predicted for us.

I did help the lettuce out by putting up some shade for it in the form of some old muslin. I was trying to shade it in the afternoon, but it turns out I had the above misplaced. I rearranged it this morning and I think it will now provide shade in the hottest part of the day. Poor lettuce. There were some little seedlings that I had direct seeded a while ago. Most of them gave up the ghost after Saturday's heat. The carrots that came up are struggling too. Many have succumbed and keeled over. I'm hoping I can get a good enough stand to survive, but it will be hard. I can get them to germinate, but that doesn't mean I can get them to live.

Pulled Peas

This morning I did one major chore. I picked the last of the snap peas (Cascadia) and pulled the plants. Now the section of garden looks so open. I'm sure the corn and squash behind the peas were happy to see them go. Now they have more sun.

I did leave a small patch of peas near the fence. I let these set seed.

Cascadia, Golden Sweet, Blizzard

Some were dry already so they were taken off and brought in to be put with the rest of the seed to dry out. This may be my first successful year saving pea seed. Usually it gets so moldy I can't save it, but we haven't had too much rain so the pods are drying just fine.

Oh and did you notice that first photo? The burlap was taken off the first seeded part of the carrot bed. And yesterday morning I got some more carrots seeded in the old snow pea area and have burlap covering that portion.

T minus 7 days and counting. T minus 6 days, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. We have liftoff. Yes it took just a week for my carrots to germinate. I see most of the rows up, but spotty so far. I'm sure more will come up soon. I'm so happy. OK maybe it wasn't quite as thrilling as Apollo 11, but a gardener gets really excited about such things.

Now I've got to seed the rest of the pea bed and the garlic bed in carrots. Do you think that will be too many carrots? I'm still debating in my mind what should go where for the fall. The main brassica bed will stay the main brassica bed. I'm putting kale where the onions are right now and it will get a row cover. I think I want mache where the potatoes are growing right now. I've yet to successfully grow that, but I'm going to try again with some seed that Emily sent me. I'm going to put spinach where the Heinz tomatoes are now. I'm going to plant carrots where the garlic, peas, and spring carrots were. That is almost a whole bed of carrots which is probably too much. Or is it? I do want to store some for winter. Hmm should I try for fall peas? Fall peas really don't work well here. It is too hot over the summer to get them going well and then they don't have time before it starts freezing to produce. But I might get a little and variety is nice. Decisions, decisions.

And I have one other question for you all. I broke my posts out into three smaller posts. Sometimes I think very long posts get to ungainly and disconnected. And sometimes hard to read all at once. What do you all think. Huge massive post. Or more smaller ones?

Seeing Red - And Purple

The first of the Heinz tomatoes are starting to ripen. These should get bigger, but I think they set too many fruit and the plant just can't handle it.

The first Cherokee Purple tomato is starting to ripen. So the tomatoes have liked the heat even if I've hated it.

I'm Loving The Cool Weather

Weird garlic

The cool weather is only lasting two days, yesterday and today. But yesterday was fabulous. I came home from work and went out into the garden. I hadn't intended to pull my garlic then, but it needed to come out and it was only in the high 70Fs. So nice. I figured I'd get a few done and finish the next day, but nope. I just kept going and pulled it all out. I just wanted to stay outside in the nice weather.

Rotting

The German Extra Hardy all looked good, but the unknown artichoke variety that I've been growing for the last few years had some issues. I have rot in some of the bulbs. I wouldn't have noticed, but this year I decided to braid theses softnecks before the leaves dried. In the past I'd tried the other way, but they get too brittle. So I was peeling the outer layer off to get to clean skin and I could see the bulbs were yellowish underneath. That's not good. I hope I got all the rotting ones out as I wouldn't want them to spoil the others.

I've never had a bulb rot like this on me before and here I was with a small handful of bad bulbs. The soil I have is very rich and grows things well, but it has some really bad fungal diseases in it. I had issues with some of my onions rotting out. I've had half my spinach damp off in the spring. I had some of my carrot damp off. I'm not used to things rotting on me. So far it is the one bad thing about the soil here. I hope the garlic stores well. Last year's garlic went all the way to harvest time this year. I'm used to being able to store it all year long. I might not be able to if there is a lot of bad disease inside the bulbs. But time will tell.

At any rate, I wiped off the hardnecks and bundled them into five sections of six and hung them and the softneck braid up to dry in the bike shed. I'm now well protected from vampires. Or at last my bike is. I have a few cloves in my kitchen that broke off when I was harvesting them and a couple weird ones. I'll use those up first. The rest will dry and I'll weigh them up once they are ready for storage.

It was really nice to be able to work in the garden in the late afternoon. I don't remember the last time I could do that comfortably. I like the pleasant weather. I so want more of it.

A Very Dilly Day

Yesterday was all about the dill. OK maybe not ALL about the dill. I had three dill plants in the rock wall garden. Though I didn't mind having them this year. I don't want to have the dill come up there in future years. I want it in the main garden. If you let dill go to seed it is the biggest weed. For years it has been the biggest weed in my garden. I encourage it so it is only my own fault.

Since I didn't want it there and it was flowering, I figured I'd better pull it up now. These plants were huge. They had no competition at all early on. Now I have strawberries and my baby fig trees there, but early in the spring they grew all alone. So they grew better than usual. Usually my dill has 1/4" stems maybe as large as 1/2" if they are given a good spot. But these were almost 1" wide. The biggest plant had over 30 flower heads on it.

I trimmed off all the stems and just left the ferny leaves. I got 10.7 oz. The flower heads weighed in at over half a pound. I froze all the flower heads for pickles. I may not have any dill in bloom when I want to make them, so freezing them works fine. And I dehydrated half the dill leaves. That was enough to fill up a spice jar totally packed. Now I have way too much dill in my fridge. Anyone need any dill? I'm going to have even more when I dig up my garlic. I'd let them go to seed there, but I doubt I can dig up the garlic and not destroy the dill in the process. I think I have about 20 dill plants that came up in there and were never weeded out. I'm drowning in dill.

And I haven't even talked about the dill I planted on purpose because I thought I would need it. You would think the self sown dill wouldn't come up in a garden with new soil, but you would be wrong. Where the garlic and the circular herb garden is, I used my old compost from the last house that was in buckets for a whole year. Dill seed can last through anything.

Melons climbing the trellis

In other news, our heat has broken . Right now in the early morning it is 61F. Whoohoo! Sadly our break won't last. It looks like we will get another heat wave on Sunday. If so we will already be at our number of normal 90F+ days for the summer by Tuesday. And it is only mid July. It has been a really hot summer so far. I'm thinking it was a really good year for me to try to grow melons again. I had 9 melons set, but then over the last week two of them died while they were still smallish. But I still have 7 that are doing well. Even if I get no more, that would make me a really happy gardener.

Storing Up For The Winter

Yesterday I really tried to harvest some greens under my row cover. But did you know those nasty white butterflies really wake up early in the morning? I had to wait until today to do it. So I was out this morning at 6am. My chore was to get the mass of chard harvested so I could process it.

I chopped off the stems and cut the leaves up. Then boiled it for a few minutes before plunging it in ice. Now it is in the freezer. I freeze it in chunks that are about 3/4c. Though I use those plastic containers to form the chard ice cube, they don't stay in there long. Once they are frozen, they are demolded and put into ziploc bags. The plastic boxes take way too much space in the freezer.

Then I grated all the zucchini I had in the house and froze that too for my winter soups and zucchini bread. I was on a kick to save things for the winter because I had let a little mizuna and a little komatsuna get too old. I really try not to. Any excess ought to be preserved or given away.

As I was preserving today, I cut the oregano back hard and dehydrated it. Finally I have my own oregano again.

And can you believe I had the first harvest of beans today and didn't take a photo? OK there are only about four. I think by the end of the week beans will start piling up. I'm seeing more little beans and there are just tons of flowers on those plants.

Then I was faced with this. The dying peas. The snap peas still seem to be alive and producing, but both snap peas have seen better days. So they got pulled out and composted. I collected some dry pods for seed next year. Not enough, but some.

The space was seeded with carrot tapes that I made yesterday afternoon. They are now nicely under burlap. I hope they sprout well. Some years I can get carrots to sprout easily in the summer and sometimes it seems impossible.

Harvest Monday - July 11 2011

Monday's Harvest

Chamomile right before harvest on Tuesday

Tuesday's herbs

I think this week was more about how many little photos I could take. Usually I harvest in the morning knowing what I want to pick and eat. This week not so much. I'd harvest. Then I'd remember and come back and harvest again. And sometimes again.

Tuesday's lettuce

Tuesday's main harvest

This week was also about firsts which you will see scattered through the photos. I had my first carrots above. Mokum was the first to get big enough to pick. Though there is one little Purple Haze. I sent the Purple Haze to my CSA. They have kids and I thought the kids would get a kick out of purple carrots. Though the purple doesn't go all the way through.

Wednesday's beans

Wednesday's peas

Thursday's Komatsuna

Thursday's Chocolate Mint

Friday's harvest and the first cucumber harvested

Another Friday harvest and the first tomato

Sunday's carrots. Isn't that top one freaky. It had no outer part on one side, just the inner core.

Sunday's peas and zukes, and yes more tomtoes

And I had my first strawberry, Seascape. The strawberry was photographed, but not weighed. And promptly eaten for dessert. They aren't as good as a Sparkle strawberry, which I have planted but it is a June bearer so will have to wait for next year. At least this strawberry got photographed. The tiny handful of raspberries I've been picking don't even get their photo taken. I see it and eat it. Gone with no record.

• Alliums 0.29 lbs
• Beans 3.31 lbs
  
• Broccoli 0.71 lbs
• Carrot 1.33 lbs
  
• Cucurbits 2.37 lbs
  
• Greens 2.01 lbs
• Herbs 0.82 lbs
• Peas 1.63 lbs
• Other roots 0.53 lbs
• Tomato 0.13 lbs
  
• Weekly Total 13.17 lbs
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 107.21 lbs
• Still in the hole $-115.53

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.

Random Photos

I finally did it. I got my peppers sprayed. The damage in the last two days was pretty high. More so than the whole last week and a half. Next time I'll just have to spray them when I have to. I'll leave the tomatoes out of the picture so I don't lose so many leaves to bacterial spot.

Grilled peas, zucchini, boc choy, and fingerling potatoes (the last from the farmers market)

First sunflower starting to open.

But mostly I'm doing this post because I have a few random photos and nothing to say today (shocking isn't it). So I'll just put them up.

Ladybug pupa all over the garden.

For Ribbit