Monday, June 3, 2013

Harvest Monday, June 3rd, 2013

For a start I think I'll write about my expenses, something which often gets into my tally, but I don't often write about. I bought three bales of salt marsh hay this week. One went to the asparagus patch and one got spread on my newly planted fruit trees along the rock wall garden. The other will be for my other fruit trees on the rock wall garden, but I won't do that until the strawberries are done because I want to move them around when they finish fruiting. It added $41 to the expenses, split between the fruit and the vegetable spreadsheets.

I do both spreadsheets differently. The vegetable spreadsheet is done year by year. I do amortize the cost of really big things, but all the little things or something that lasts just one year is always added to the year it is bought. The fruit spreadsheet works differently. I'm keeping yearly track of what I spend and what comes in, but my final totals are a running total for all the years. Fruit often doesn't produce anything the year it is planted. Getting paid back for your effort takes patience. So if you look the the tally on my sidebar you will see I keep track of where I am in getting paid back for those expenses. Right now at the beginning of year three I'm pretty far down. I'm hoping my fruit trees and berry bushes pay off and they will more than pay for themselves, but it still remains to be seen.

Now on to the good stuff, what was picked this week. And I picked a lot. Much of it was picked to make way for summer crops to go in (Asian greens, radishes, spinach, onions).

Tuesday's Basket

Chocolate Mint that I dried for tea

The last of the radishes

The spring spinach that was pulled

Bunching onions

A small sample of the Asian Greens that were harvested

All the lettuce was harvested before the heat wave hit

A huge Michihili cabbage that was thinking about bolting

So many Asian greens were picked, but this baby bok choy wasn't much of a baby

One of a couple strawberry harvests

The first time I've picked garlic chives in more than snippets

English thyme for drying

It was a huge harvest week. I kept some for myself, but a lot was sent over to my townhouse mates. I am trying to preserve some in potstickers (I need more wrappers) and my townhouse mates froze some in vegetable rolls. I think maybe I should have used my email list to get rid of more, but I didn't so I'd better use it up somehow. I still have a lot in the fridge.

  • Alliums 0.36 lbs
  • Greens 5.17 lbs
  • Greens Asian 16.28 lbs
  • Herbs 1.02 lbs
  • Roots 1.32 lbs
  • Weekly Tally 24.15 lbs
  • Spent $14
  • Yearly Tally 53.13 lbs, -$186.56
  • Fruit
  • Strawberries 0.81 lbs
  • Spent $27
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. What a Harvest! I want my garden to produce like that.

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  2. That is a lot of greens harvested in one week. Wow! The Michihili cabbage is HUGE! Growing chocolate mint for tea is a brilliant idea.

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  3. That is a huge baby choy! I need to start drying mint too. The chocolate mint is so nice for tea, I should start a second container of it.

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  4. I absolutely love that bok choy. I have never thought of planting it. I wonder if it would be something good for my garden. :)

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  5. That's a very nice harvest - lots of different types of good eatin'.

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  6. Those strawberries look perfect!

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  7. That is one gorgeous Shanghai bok choy.

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  8. Whoa .... look at that not so baby bok choy! Very impressive, probably can make a couple of meals!

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  9. Great big beautiful harvest! I had to pull out all of my spinach this week and most of my lettuce. It is just getting too hot and getting ready to bolt. I tried to hang on to them as long as I could though. I'm hoping the lettuce that is left will last a bit longer in some shade.

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  10. I need to get an email list of folks who might wish to share in extra harvest... that is a great idea as I am not able to use or preserve everything for ourselves and it would be nice to have others to share the surplus with. You certainly had an abundant harvest this week. The strawberries and the Asian greens are particularly "yum" looking!

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  11. Oh my Gosh. All those greens. I nearly forgot about greens. It's been SO hot here. We are almost out of season and into the monsoons. It will be sweet taters okra and cowpeas before long. Not much else grows in the super humidity here.

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  12. Beautiful harvest and that's one huge bokchoy!

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  13. My bok choy amounted to nothing this year. When it finally decided to grow it bolted. Been enjoying snow peas though.

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  14. I've been debating getting some sort of dryer or dehydrator. I can't figure out if it's worth the money. It would take a long time to pay for itself.

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  15. The chocolate mint looks wonderful. Since I can grow it year-round, I should keep a pot of it. Thanks for the idea.

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  16. Wow, you're garden harvests are soooo...much ahead of ours, we're just starting to set the plants out due to snow and heavy rains this spring!!

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  17. I am impressed at how organized you keep your harvest records. Do you base the amount your harvest is worth on average grocery prices in your area?

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    1. I base it on the farmers market prices if they have them with a preference to organic over IPM over conventional (most prices are IPM prices). Basically they are what I would buy if I were buying all the veggies. Of course the numbers are a bit bogus because I wouldn't be buying so many veggies. I would just buy enough for me.

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  18. That is a very impressive harvest Daphne! It'll be another month or six weeks before I can produce anything approaching that.

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  19. A great harvest! I'm harvesting only aromatic herbs, herbal teas and gherkins for now, but my tomatoes are ripening...

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  20. Your garden is certainly in full swing now. That bok choy is impressive, not a baby by a long shot. Everything looks so good. Great job!

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  21. Huge harvest of greens! Mine look like they survived the heat and now we are back to cooler weather, so maybe they won't bolt yet.

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  22. I've been trying to interest our local food bank in taking some of my excess of lettuces and greens, but haven't had any luck so far. It's a shame, as although the chickens enjoy them, it would be good to feed them to people, too!

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  23. I wish I could be more like you and keep accurate amounts!! What kind of lettuce is that in the first picture? Your radishes look good. Will you plant more? Spinach and strawberries look wonderful too! Nancy

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    1. There are three that you can see in the first photo (and one kind you can't). The big bunches, which you probably mean, are all romaine. One is Paris Island and the other is Little Gem. I'll try to remember to plant more radishes closer to fall. They get too spicy for me in the summer.

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  24. That is an impressive harvest, especially so early in the summer.

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  25. The michihili cabbage is my favorite variety, love it sautéed up with lots of garlic and served over noodles. Hard to think we're not that far away, but the progress of our gardens so different!

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  26. Do you dehydrate the mint in the dehydrator you have pictured in this post? I hope to get enough mint this year to make some tea. I was thinking of air drying it but also contemplating investing in a dehydrator.

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    1. Yes I dehydrate all my things in my old cheapo dehydrator.

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  27. Beautiful harvests. I'm particularly in awe of the spinach and strawberries as both look amazing and I have neither at the moment.

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  28. I am impressed that you weigh and keep track of your harvest. I'm always too excited to use and/or directly eat mine! Thank you for sharing!!

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  29. I'm so impressed with you folks who keep meticulous records. I'm just not wired that way, being too lazy or too afraid to display my failures, or something!

    I like how you know what your cabbages are thinking.

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  30. I love the variety of things you're growing. We haven't pulled as many things as you have because of the heat. I'm surprised, but our lettuce is still going strong. It has been our Asian greens that have mostly been bolting.

    That chocolate mint looks very tasty!

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  31. Wow, all those greens and strawberries look so pristine and delicious, I harvested some peas and lettuce but didn't get around to post it, will do next week.

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  32. I bet all those Asian greens would make fantastic spring rolls too, either the fried ones or the fresh Thai style. Sometimes the hardest part of having a garden is finding enough ways to use and/or preserve all of the food!

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    1. I am going to make eggrolls when the Napa cabbage gets picked. I'm hoping to have some carrots by then, but I may still have to use my frozen ones. I need my carrots to hurry up.

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