Monday, January 7, 2013

Harvest Monday, January 7th, 2013

I should have done my final tally post for the year last week, but I totally forgot about it. So I will do it today.

Total $2174.53 712.78 LBS
Alliums 146.46 50.14
Asparagus 1.38 0.24
Beans 93.96 31.90
Broccoli 56.95 22.78
Carrot 76.78 35.96
Corn 38.81 30.64
Cucurbit 319.38 156.27
Greens 784.73 239.68
Herbs 196.29 15.24
Peas 114.14 20.42
Other Root 34.59 15.38
Sweet Potatoes 196.24 65.41
Tomato 114.83 28.71

As you can see I grew a LOT of greens last year. Over two hundred pounds. I do love my greens. It was the most given away of any of my vegetables. But it is also the one that I most want to make sure I have, so this coming growing year I'm going to have the same space in growing greens. One difference in distribution is that I'm going to try to grow more more efficiently and get an extra plot of dried beans out of my mix. So I will have two of my 4'x8' beds in pole beans and one in bush beans. The bush beans will be my fastest producer of dried beans (Tiger's Eye) and will be followed by greens. And then later in the year a greens bed will be switched into bush dried beans as a succession crop. I've got my fingers crossed that the rotations will work out.

I also have too many sweet potatoes. I like them, but I just don't want to have to eat them every day. So I'm going to give one bed to them instead of two. The extra bed will be put into blueberries. If anyone knows of a high production blueberry I'd love to hear about it. And as many of you have guessed I'm not growing even one tomato plant again this year. The solanums have been banned. For those that don't know me, I've got a bad sensitivity to that family of crops, so I can't eat them.

My tally pages are kept in a spreadsheet to make the calculations easier. But I have many pages with different information like when they need to be started indoors and such. One page is for notes for the next year. The biggest note I have is for my onions. One of my readers diagnosed my problem as onion fly. The symptoms fit perfectly. So I did a little research. I'll probably have to cover them with a row cover when they come out. In our area they have three hatchings usually. The first starts at 700 growing degree days. Cornell keeps track of the GDDs for the northeast. So when it starts to get close to 700 I'll be putting on that cover. I already watch the GDD for the squash vine borer.

I'm still eating from my stores. I had two parties this last week. I brought mashed sweet potatoes (sweet potatoes) and rosemary bread (rosemary) to New Year's. The other was my birthday party. I put out some pickled garden veggies. I made rosemary bread (again with rosemary from the garden), and a vegetable platter with a tzatziki dip. The platter had salad turnips and carrots from the garden. They used up the last of the fresh carrots. And the dip used my garlic and dill. I certainly made other things. I made another soup and brought up spinach, kale, and cooked carrots from the freezer. It is really the start of not using anything but storage veggies. I have a little bit of Asian greens left, but not much. Right now I'm confident that I'll make it into March at least without additional outside veggies, but time will tell.

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.

14 comments:

  1. Congratulations on a fantastic harvest year. I too am eating from storage, but must purchase greens and some other items from the store.

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  2. What a huge harvest! I've never had as much as you yet :) Best regards.

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  3. Your year was really a bountiful one! The veggie platter pic is making me hungry - even though I just ate breakfast. :D

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  4. I love reading your blog. My blogs are about our homeschooling, but our farm is Shagbark Farm Ohio. We grow raspberries and herbs. We are installing and orchard this year, adding fruti trees and blueberries. Other farmers we know recommend Nourse Farms Blueberries: A mix of Duke, Bluecrop, Chandler and Nelson.

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  5. Happy Birthday!!!! My blueberries are only comin on 3 years old and were in the 75% off bin when I bought them. LOL. Hoping this spring will be a good one! But even so I"m pretty sure what I grow wouldn't be the type for you.

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  6. What an amazing year! I'll be curious to see how your rotations work out this year...sounds exciting! Oh,and your veggie platter looks amazing!

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  7. I'm just in awe of your bounty and record-keeping. You make garden dorks like me hang my head in shame.

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  8. Over $2000-worth of veg! That is a very creditable achievement (though the 200 lbs of greens is perhaps more so).
    Re Blueberries - I don't know whether this is available in the US, but the one that does best for me is called "Earliblue" - it's an early one!

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  9. Oh WOW! I still don't have much Asian greens growing yet in our Asian garden.

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  10. Wow, that is indeed a lot of greens! And you grow such an interesting variety of greens.

    I'm experimenting with growing blueberries in pots. I planted 2 bareroot plants last spring and each plant produced a few berries last summer. They have been growing nicely and at least tripled in size, but now they are completely confused and have been blooming since the fall. They've both set a bunch of berries. I tried to remove the blossoms but they just keep producing more so I've given up trying to pinch them all off, it just seems to encourage more blossoms! Even a few nights with temps down to the high 20ºF's haven't discouraged them, they haven't even dropped their leaves. One plant is Misty and the other is Sunshine Blue. It will be interesting to see what they do this spring.

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  11. That's a fabulous haul from your space! I have too few greens in my garden at the moment and I'm really feeling it. I love the idea of a whole bed of blueberries - delicious thought.

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  12. Great harvest total. Interesting reading of your switching from beans to greens to beans. I need to think about that. Beautiful veggie tray! Nancy

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  13. Such a big haul - you're very lucky.

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  14. That is a mighty list of produce Daphne. I love the planning that happens in the downtime, that eagerness to try thing differently or to try new varieties. There's always some thing to think about when it comes to gardening, something I love about.

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