Monday, June 4, 2012

Harvest Monday, June 4, 1012

The week started out with a lot of greens. I have a short season, but the smaller choys are very fast to produce. I used my warmest bed for the spring and put in two successions of greens in the bed. But they all had to be pulled before June 1st so the sweet potatoes could go into the bed.

That tatsoi was also in this bed and all got pulled. I had so much it barely could balance in my basket. I ended up giving away a lot of the tatsoi and about half of the Shanghai bok choy in the top photo.

Also in the bed was some self seeded dill. Other herbs harvested this week were oregano, English thyme, and some mint. They were all dehydrated for the winter.

In other greens news the chard got chopped back after two weeks of growth. There were over six pounds. I didn't need any of it since I still had some spinach from before and wanted to eat that up. So I gave it to a friend to freeze for the winter. Last year when the chard got to be too much I just left the plants to grow. But I found the plants weren't as happy as when they were constantly harvested. The stems started to rot. I plant them on 9" spacing and I think it is too close if you let the plants get big. But if I cut back all the large leaves every two weeks they seem to do fine. Oh and I forgot to take the photo until I'd had most of the leaves packed up to go. They fit into three plastic grocery bags.

The strawberries keep rolling in. The last of the Earliglow is now mostly over. One or two more berries are still left on the plants. The main harvests are now coming from Sparkle, which is a later June bearer, and Seascape which is an everbearer. I really like Earlyglow. It puts out very nice berries that don't rot much. I have found more rot in the Sparkle and they also have a lot of distorted berries. And they are smaller so take more time to pick. Seascape is OK, but the June bearers always seem to taste better and are healthier. Of course they won't be giving me berries in August, so I won't be getting rid of Seascape anytime soon. And I forgot to photograph one huge pile of strawberries. It overflowed this container which holds 3 quarts.

This might have strawberries in the photo, but it is about the peas. I had a couple of new and wonderful harvests. The peas started coming in. This has Cascadia snappeas and Blizzard snowpeas.

And more snappeas. I did give just a few to my townhouse mates, but they have been getting eaten as quickly as I pick them. They are a nice change from the ubiquitous springtime greens.

Then there was the scape harvest. I haven't eaten many of them yet, but I did make some salad dressing. Yummy. I have enough that I'll probably eat them as a side dish this year. Before I didn't grow as many hardnecks, so didn't get as many scapes. I also might put them in a stirfry too.

Though the photo is pretty bad, the first of the broccoli tasted just wonderful. I split the head with my daughter for dinner. Plain steamed broccoli is how all of them will be cooked. It is my favorite way. The peas often get sauteed in a bit of ghee and some salt and pepper. But broccoli I like naked. Broccoli is also one of those strange plants. They just don't produce the weight for the garden space they take up. I have nine plants this year. They share a bed with the chard which is a plant that is exactly the opposite as it produces like few other plants. I might have to devote more room to broccoli in the future. I do love it. The problem is that it doesn't free up space as easily as my Asian greens so the rotations don't work as well. I think I ought to find one that produces good central heads and no side shoots. That way I could just pull the plants after the first harvest. Then they could be in my regular brassica bed that gets freed up for carrots after June.

  • Garlic Scapes 0.79 lbs
  • Broccoli 0.31 lbs
  • Greens 16.07 lbs
  • Herbs 3.39 lbs
  • Peas 1.69 lbs
  • Weekly total 22.24 lbs
  • Yearly total 114.79 lbs
  • Tally -$187.60
  • Fruits 
  • Strawberries 9.1 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.

58 comments:

  1. Wow! What a bumper harvest this week Daphne, everything looks great from the strawberries to the beautiful brocolli.

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  2. Fantastic harvests, as usual, Daphne. I love those beautiful strawberries.

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  3. Your crops seem to have come on really quickly. I wish I could grow dill like yours. Interesting that it and coriander seems to like your climate so much more than mine.

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  4. I am constantly amazed at how far ahead your garden is compared to mine and we are both in the Northeast. I have a feeling your purple sweet potatoes are going to be a whole lot better than mine. Should stop eating so much of the vine as that may reduce the size and number of tubers.

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  5. Your scapes look wonderful! I wish I had that many to harvest!

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  6. Oh my goodness those strawberries look delicious! What is your secret? I guess choosing the correct varieties is a start ... At any rate it looks to be a very tasty harvest

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  7. Wow, your harvest looks amazing! Those peas! I;'ve just put peas in and I hope I get a harvest like yours.

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  8. You had an awesome week of harvests. I've got to try that salad dressing if we get more scapes next year. In the south, we mostly grow softnecks.

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  9. Your green thumb is showing. :) What a great harvest week - variesty, quality, and volume - you have it all. The choy and tatsoi look perfect, so the timing for removal appears to have been amazingly coordinated. Envious of the strawberries. I have green berries and flowers but we need some warmer weather for them to ripen up and it is not in the forecast for the coming week. I have found the same thing with swiss chard that you have and it does not matter how closely spaced - they just do better if they get regular haircuts. Gorgeous snap peas. Mine are climbing but not flowering yet. The regular shelling peas are flowering like mad though.

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  10. You definitely had a great harvest! I am going to have to try harder this fall, lol. I think I will do like Mark and start a bunch ahead of time, then plant out after they are started.

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  11. The sheer size of your harvest is amazing to me Daphne. I can't imagine what that would be like, perhaps a little overwhleming? Your Asian greens look sensational and the strawberries are just making me long for the warmer months as we head full-on into winter.

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  12. Wow! 9 pounds of strawberries so far?! That's simply amazing to me as I pull them in ounce by ounce! Another fantastic harvest week, Daphne! Cheers!

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  13. Wonderful harvest. It makes me so hungry for fresh vegetables but guess I need to plant before I can harvest.

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  14. Wow! What a harvest. Enough to feed Coxey's Army as my grandmother used to say.

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  15. Beautiful harvest, as usual! :)

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  16. wow your strawberry harvest is amazing! How many plants do you have???? And how fun to get something besides greens, although yours are lovely as usual!

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    1. I'm not sure how many plants I have. I have them in about a 22'x2.5' section. But they are under my fruit tress so they don't get the whole space. And next year I won't put them toward the back at all since I find it too hard to harvest back there. So I'll have one row all along the front at about a foot spacing. And a partial second row. But no third row next year. Right now they are pretty randomly spaces. I like having two rows though. Once the June bearers are done I'll rip up the oldest row and let the new row put in runners to replace them. They tend to produce better that way then just letting the same plant grow. The everbearers are harder since they are always producing and I won't want to rip up a whole row. I might do the replacement every other year. Maybe I'll see.

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  17. Amazing harvest! And so much greens!

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  18. Excellent harvest! Your scapes look great, mine get curly before they get long so I harvest short spirally scapes.

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  19. Wow. That is a lot of stuff! Great strawberries.

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  20. Fantastic harvests this week Daphne!!!

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  21. Great harvest week daphne! I also harvested broccoli this week. Last year was my first time growing it and ot was awful. This year produced amazing heads. What type did you grow? The packman produced a center head about 9inches across.

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    1. This year I'm growing Windsor and Fiesta. I've grown packman in the past and it was about the same as windsor. Both about 4-5" heads. Not huge. At least for me.

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  22. I'm getting very hungry for fresh broccoli. I bought a packet of mixed varieties this year, so I have no idea what kinds I'll end up with. I think I ended up with seven plants, but none are beginning to head yet. My strawberries aren't even worth picking. I do hope the next round of blossoms gives me berries that are bigger then the end of my little finger!

    I wish Blogger would go back to the other captcha. The current one is taking me 5-6 tries to get the &%#$*^@ thing right.

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    1. Really I find this one easier than the last iteration. Mainly because the numbers are easier.

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  23. Ugh, I have the same problem with broccoli. I love it so much and it just doesn't produce enough to be worth all the space it takes up. Was planning to skip it this year but still had a bunch of seed so I went ahead and planted it anyway.

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  24. Some pretty good looking harvests there! I didn't know what scapes were until I read your posts last year. I'm growing a lot more garlic this year and they are just now starting to form scapes ... I can't wait!

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  25. Nice strawberries. I've I had nine pounds of strawberries I'd have a rash for sure. The cool weather in the NE should insure more snap pea production. It's a good year for them in the midwest too. Broccoli is a space hog for what you get, but it's so good when fresh. I like to grow Major because it's earlier and stays low so it doesn't shade other plants. Same footprint though.

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  26. Hi! You are a wonderful gardener with your planning and growing and harvesting. The Tatsoi looks so delicious and I wish I could grow strawberries like that! I just picked my shelling peas yesterday and today and I am eating a few of the sugar peas now too. You have huge harvests! Nancy

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  27. We're still lagging behind here, nice to see what's to come. Are your strawberries able to withstand all this wet weather?

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    1. So far so good. I was a bit afraid to pick them yesterday, but the rain wasn't about to let up enough for them to dry out for days. I thought I'd get less rot if I kept them picked. But spreading the molds around when they are wet seems like a bad idea too.

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  28. Whoa great harvest, try to plant some tatsoi next season.

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  29. Very nice harvest! I'm still jealous of all those strawberries. I agree that fresh broccoli is the best. I want to cover my garden with broccoli this winter!

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  30. Your asian greens looks so wonderful! If I may ask, where do you purchase your seeds?

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    1. Mostly I buy from Fedco, sometimes from Pinetree. The baby bok choys and the choy sum were gifts from Mac. She sent me a ton of seed one year. I was so much fun to try them all.

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  31. What a great harvest! Isn't it nice to finally be eating fresh peas?

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  32. Gasp, 9 lbs of strawberries! And 22 lbs of greens, including peas. Awesome! I'm afraid none of my Cascadia snap peas made it to the scale last year. I ate every one of them in the garden. I eat most of my strawberries while gardening as well.

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  33. The greens look delicious! I love fresh peas!

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  34. Daphne, Would you please do a newby gardener a big favor and check out photos of my greens - maybe you can give me some advice about what I'm doing wrong. This is my first year gardening and I'm so depressed about the stage of my lettuces and swiss chard. any suggestions you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

    http://thecautiousgardener.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-arent-my-greens-growing.html

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  35. Wow! I wish I had so many strawberries!

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  36. All those strawberries look so yummy. I wish mine would start putting on more!

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  37. Those are some good looking strawberries. I'm continually amazed by the amount of greens you get from your garden.

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  38. So far, we've only harvested alpine strawberries, but I think we'll get some standard strawberries in the next week. Of course, a little sun would help!

    Sandy

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  39. Wow on the strawberries! Your out pacing us right now. We haven't had much success with bok choi. It's our first year trying. Lot's went to seed. I didn't look closely at the garlic after returning from vacation. Maybe we have a few scapes too. Thanks for hosting Harvest Monday. Boy has it grown since we first began participating.

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    1. I've been kind of amazed by how much it has grown too. When I first started I was really happy when I had ten links. But it ebbs and flows with the seasons. July and August are the heaviest months. Over the northern hemisphere's winter it is the lowest.

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  40. I'm jealous of your Dill! Every time I grow dill it gets infested with bugs. I spray and wash them off with water but I didn't feel like putting up with it this season.

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  41. Awesome pea harvest. For the second year in a row, I have been having no luck with my snap peas. Different seeds, different beds. I am not sure what the problem could be.

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  42. Sorry, just realised I put the wrong link up the first time, so my name is there twice now.

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  43. Your harvests are always amazing, every year I can't have enough dill or bok choi

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  44. Wow, nice harvests as usual! I'm amazed at how much your garden is working to give such amazing results!!

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  45. are your Brassica crops so pretty because you keep them covered from critters? mine get all chewed up.

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    1. It is a big help, but some are chewed up. This year is a huge earwig year for some reason. And earwigs love to eat the more tender of the Asian greens. In my baby Asian greens bed they went for some of the tatsoi. The heads they went for you can tell because they are totally shredded. I find it strange that they will munch on one plant and leave the one next to it totally alone. The shredded ones I just tossed on the compost pile. The slugs weren't too bad this year. The row covers don't help with that. And I had some aphids in some of the bok choy. For that the row cover actually hurts since the beneficials can't get to the aphids to eat them. But it does keep the root maggots and the cabbage butterflies away. Both can take the brassicas down pretty quickly.

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    2. i wonder if cabbage butterfly caterpillars are what skeletonized my bok choy & tatsoi. i didn't get Bt on soon enought, and then it kept raining.

      Covers seem easier. How fine a cloth do you need to have on there? Could you just use tulle ?

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    3. I'm sure it would work to keep the butterflies off. Certain things could get in, but not those.

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  46. What an extraordinary harvest. I must say I am especially envious of your garlic shoots (is that what the scapes are?), your strawberries and the bok choi!

    I have just finished my main broccoli pick and am now eating the side shoots. I reckon that if everyone ate home grown broccoli instead of the shop bought stuff people would realise how lovely it is.

    I love garlic shoots stir fried with, ginger, thin thin beef strips or pork strips.What do you do with them?

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    1. I do stir fries, salad dressing, and put them on pizza.

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