Monday, October 1, 2012

Harvest Monday, October 1st, 2012

I should have picked over my garden twice this week but I only did it once. The end of the week was rainy and wet and I just didn't feel like going out and picking things. I was really happy with the zucchini and broccoli this week. One zucchini plant has finally recovered well from the vine borers. It takes time, but now I'm getting some nice zucchinis. The broccoli is from my spring planted broccoli. I never planted any in the fall so whatever I get I'm very happy for.

Before the rains started I picked over the dried beans. It doesn't do them any good to get wet for long periods of time. While I was there I picked another butternut that was finally ripe. And two Tetsukabuto. I thought I didn't have any Tetsukabuto squash. But they were just hiding. The yield is still too low to grow again, but I'm happy at least to try it. I have one more butternut and one more Tetsukabuto that will ripen before our first frost, but I think the rest of both will not. I should just pull out the rest of the vines, but it is so hard. For all I know we will get a month of 80F weather in October. Hey you never know. Last March we got into the 90Fs and some years the ground isn't even unfrozen by then. So this year I'm having more trouble making the usual assumptions about when to do things.
  • Beans 0.94
  • Broccoli 0.94
  • Cucurbit 11.98 lbs
  • Herbs 0.64 lbs
  • Peas 0.33 lbs
  • Weekly total 14.82 lbs
  • Yearly total 563.86 lbs
  • Tally $1039.28

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.

38 comments:

  1. Beautiful squash and peas! we're all done with squash here, and only have 1 lonely pea plant that survived the bunny attack.

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  2. Love that basket of green! Everything looks great. I would like to try dry beans next year; do you get enough to be worth the space in the garden?

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    1. Yes and no.

      Yes because I have a garden that is too big for me. I give away a lot of food that I've overproduced every year(mostly to my townhouse mates). So growing something that I'll actually eat versus growing something I'll just give away is worth the space.

      Yes because I love dried beans with a passion. Even when I had a smaller garden I grew them because I loved them so much. And they are just so pretty in jars after they have been harvested.

      No because for the space they don't produce very much weight wise and you can buy cheap dried beans at the store. Personally I buy more expensive dried beans at the store (about $4/lb) because they are from a local bean farm and very fresh. Most don't think the freshness of dried beans really matters, but I feel it does. Plus I can experiment with some strange varieties instead of the normal.

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  3. A very nice harvest of greens there! If I´m lucky I might have 1 single zucchini the forthcoming weekend, if the frost or the slugs not get it first! Have a nice week! :) Mia

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  4. I too am having trouble deciding when to do certain garden chores. I have tons of flowers on my bittermelon vines and am hoping we have a warm October, who knows I may just get a good harvest.

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  5. Lovely harvest for this time of year, as we transition to the dark days. Things definitely slowing down out there, and we're grateful for anything that the garden is producing... though this spate of rain certainly isn't helping.

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  6. How nice to have zucchini still. Vine borers got mine. I debated about pulling the tomato plants but when I see what little sun they get now it wasn't worth waiting until the frost hit them and then having to pull out mush.

    Thanks for hosting this every week.

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  7. Some very nice zucchini especially since the plant has recovered from borers. The rest of the harvest looks great too. I hope your squash have time to ripen. I hate to pull plants when they are still alive and may have a chance to finish up. I have a few green Amish Paste tomatoes still on the vine that I hope will begin to turn red. The rest of the tomato plants have been cleaned up.

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  8. I find it hard to pull out plants too always hoping for a little more time before the first frosts.
    Great harvest, nice looking zucchini and pumpkins.

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  9. I've never had squash recover from vine borers, did you do anything special to help it recover? Please share if you did.

    I'm like you with hesitating to pull the plants if there is a chance that we might end up with a warm autumn (I'm your neighbor in CT by the way).

    Love the photos as usual!

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    1. No I did nothing to help it recover. But I've only found the Costata Romenesca variety to recover. The others just die. Some years I'll dig out the borer and bury part of the stem to encourage root growth, but with zucchini I haven't found that it speeds up the recovery any quicker. I'm not sure they grow roots out the stems as easily as a winter squash does.

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  10. I have a tendency to leave everything in just in case and if you've got the room I don't think it matters much although I also don't tend to rest my beds as long as I should (if at all) as a result.

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  11. Both the broccoli and the zucchini plants are pretty inspiring. The zucchini looks good especially considering the plant battled SVB infestation and getting broccoli STILL from your spring planted crop is amazing.

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  12. I battle myself a bit about when i should pull everything out...part of me wants to just rip it out and be and the other part of me wants to wait until the last possible minute. I guess I'll find a balance in there somewhere ;-)

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  13. Yes the weather is just so crazy. We tend to get only light frost in Oct anyway, other years a hard one around Halloween, then often a couple of warmer weeks after that. So other years the end of Sep I go out and whack off all the flowers on squash and tomatoes because they wouldn't get ripe but this year who knows. I might not do that for a couple weeks yet as it's still pretty warm.

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  14. Oh I enjoy looking at your pumpkin harvest :). Miss zucchini looking at yours.

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  15. Your zucchini look to be doing much better than mine. While I do not have anymore SVB damage to them, they are growing super slow. Looks like you have done super with Butternuts this year.

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  16. I'm jealous of any broccoli you have! Our fall crop is still several weeks away from being ready. I did notice that 2 of our 20 or so plants have tiny little heads starting!!!

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  17. The weather irregularities really do make it hard to plan. The old guidelines don't apply. The newest USDA zones show the warming but the unpredictability is confounding.

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    1. I was talking with my husband about this. He said it must have been nice to have a nice long growing season. But of course I didn't know it would start so soon, so all my transplants were started at the normal time. If you can't predict, you can't time it well.

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  18. I'm not in the swing of this yet, I keep forgetting to take photos... We are harvesting salads, broadbeans, carrots and lots of herbs lemon balm yesterday
    Love Leanne

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  19. Nice looking harvest as usual. It is so cold and miserable here with rain that the broccoli side shoots are just sitting there and not growing.

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  20. I sure know what you mean about not assuming there will be a Fall. Let's just hope this year is a bit closer to normal.

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  21. Great looking peas. I'm trying to get a fall planting of peas going but they are getting nibbled by a critter and now they are getting blasted by heat (surprise!) so it may not happen this year. Your spring planted broccoli looks great too, I've already ripped my plants out, they were pretty much done. And I never did plant any winter squash this year, I would love to have your harvest.

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  22. Beautiful harvest as always. I didn't plant butternut this year, got some small kabocha and only ONE small winter melon, a disapointing year for winter squashes.

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  23. Beautiful green harvest in your basket! I guess we all don't quite know what to do this year because of the weather! Nancy

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  24. Your harvests look fantastic! Enjoy -- our weather has lost its mind also.

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  25. Nice to be getting squash and broccoli still. I'm still thinking about taking a chance and growing the Teksukabotu squash next year. Not much too lose since none of my squash did well this year.

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  26. Everything looks amazing as usual, I'm very curious about Tetsukabuto.

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  27. Broccoli from your spring planting? Wonderful!

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  28. Great harvest, love the zucchinis. I know what you mean about trying to second guess the weather, I keep wanting to pull the broccoli but they keep giving me a reason to leave them in the ground a little longer.

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  29. Great harvest Daphne. I'm with the others about your spring broccoli How were you able to pull that one off?! We're feeling the same way you are about our winter squash experiment, seminole. They look nice, but didn't yield well.

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    1. I planted Fiesta. It doesn't have the best looking main heads though they are large, but boy does it give side shoots. When it started to get that black rot (no clue what it is, but happens in the middle of the summer every year here) I stripped off all the old leaves on the main trunk and most of the side shoots only leaving two per plant. It worked. It isn't producing a lot, but it is enough for me.

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  30. Great looking harvest! I'm curious about the Tetsukabuto squash. From the look of it, I'm assuming it's something similar to Kabocha, which is my favorite. I hope you'll post about the taste of them!

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    1. It is a Japanese squash. Very popular in Japan. Other than that I know nothing about it. I'll try it soon. One of the squash has some damage on it so it will be one of the first squash used.

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  31. Nice harvests for the fall! I want to grow brocolli next year..

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  32. I want to try pumpkins next year!
    Hello, new follower here! I would love to have you link up with my Clever Chicks Blog Hop this week!
    http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2012/09/clever-chicks-blog-hop-2-featured-post.html

    I hope to see you there!
    Cheers!
    Kathy
    The Chicken Chick

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  33. Hello Daphne,
    It is my goal as editor of the newsletter for the Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society (ACNARGS) to help the members (many of whom are middle-aged or older) enjoy the gardening features of the digital world. That is why your blog was mentioned in this issue: http://www.acnargs.org/newsletter/201210.pdf

    FYI the ACNARGS is located in Ithaca, NY, home of Cornell University. It should really be called the Finger Lakes Chapter, imho. There is probably a story about that, but I don't know it.

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