Harvest Monday 19 May 2014

This weeks saw two baskets of greens and radishes. This includes the first harvest of the bok choy. Both the early bok choy and the tatsoi are ready to pick now so I can have fresh cooked greens as well as the salad greens.

And two baskets of kale blossoms. In addition the first baskets has the lone two choy sum stalks that grew. Sadly lack of rain and watering on my part killed them. I did water some things in the days before the rain. But not noticing is a problem with the thicker row covers. I just can't see in as well. At least the two stalks that I did get were thick and quite delicious.

I got the first harvest of my rhubarb which is the first of the fruit harvests this year. I know it really isn't a fruit but it is lumped into that category.

I do my tally for fruits very differently than for the vegetables. Vegetables are annuals for the most part. Yes some herbs and asparagus aren't, but the majority are. So making a yearly tally makes sense if you want to see if your garden is paying for itself or not. I know the answer doesn't really matter as the garden is so much more than just a source of food, but I started to do tallies because I thought the numbers would be interesting to know. And I kept doing them because the harvest totals let me know how a new technique or timing schedule was working. But I digress.

The fruits are different because you can plant a fruit tree or sometimes a bush and not get a harvest for years. But when a tree starts to produce it can put out pounds and pounds of fruit for a very long time. So my fruit tally is a running tally over the years. Sadly it seems every year I spend more money than I bring in from the fruit. Evey year I plant something new or put up a new trellis. This year I put in a weeping plum and some strawberries.

Last week I ordered some soaker hose and a timer for the raspberries. The raspberries were put in against the house. Actually they are surrounded by two bulkheads, a brick path, and the house. Which makes them easy to control. But sadly they are also in the rain shadow of the house. And they have slowly been dying as they don't get enough water. Three of the plants have already died, and we only have two left. I'm sure they would spread if we could keep them watered enough. So I spent yet more money on the fruits.

It will be interesting to see how long it will take me to break even on the fruits. I might never if I keep putting more things in, or like the strawberries, I replace them with other varieties. I know of four trees that are being evaluated right now and might get ripped out at sometime for various reasons - a Honeycrisp apple that doesn't want to grow, a Green Gage plum that attracts every aphid in the yard and is always sickly, two figs that aren't really hardy here, but I'm experimenting with keeping them alive over the winter. But I'm giving them more time to see if they can live and produce. So I can see potential expenses in the future. But maybe not.

• Asian Greens: 0.53 lbs
• Greens: 1.36 lbs
• Herbs: 0.29 lbs
• Roots: 0.59 lbs
• Weekly Total: 2.48 lbs
• Yearly Total: 6.16 lbs
• Yearly Tally: -484.23

• Fruit
• Rhubarb 2.14 lbs
• Spent 28.54
• Tally (all years): 77.64 lbs $-1022.78

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.

Welcome Rain

I was very happy to see the rain come in last night. The last rain we had was on the 10th and we have seen some hot weather for May. We had three days in the 80Fs (over 27C). The plants were feeling the stress. I hand watered some of the beds, but not enough and not all of them.

It is amazing what rain will do for a garden. My lettuce grew by leaps and bounds overnight. I swear the Fun Jen doubled in size. It was struggling before. I wasn't worried about it as it has gone out of favor in my kitchen. Plants come into and out of favor at the drop of a hat. One year it was my favorite. Now I wonder if my townhouse mates will eat it. Sometimes I'm fickle that way.

The spinach that just wasn't growing has sped up overnight. The soil is warm. The weather is wet. Maybe it will produce this year after all.

Yesterday my onions were looking a little yellow. But they are all green again. They look so healthy now.

The cabbage bed is looking a lot healthier too. Sadly my little choy sum along the end of the bed died from lack of water. I didn't even notice them or I would have watered them. I did get two nice stalks out of the plants before they died.

And the early planted Asian greens look so lush right now. They are in their prime. I picked one of those bok choys for lunch today.

And the rubarita was pretty good last night as I listened to the rain start. Right now the rain is starting to clear out and the weekend looks lovely.

An Early Morning in the Kitchen

I hate days that I don't get enough sleep the night before. Why I woke up at 5am this morning I'll never know. I'm a very light sleeper. I'll wake up to anything. Sadly if it is after five I tend to wake up for good. I'm not a napper and the only time I can sleep in is if I'm sick. I like my eight hours of sleep but some days . . .

At least the morning was productive. Yesterday I picked just over two pounds of rhubarb and turned it into juice. I chopped it up and added a bit of water and boiled it down for 15 minutes. Then I used a muslin and strained the pulp out. Yesterday afternoon had gotten hot and humid. So I decided to put the juice in the fridge and deal with it some other time. Well an early morning is just the time. The kitchen at least starts out cool.

I had three cups of juice. I wanted to make a simple syrup with it, but I thought the 1:1 ratio of sugar to liquid was a bit too sweet. I wanted to taste the rhubarb. So I added two cups of sugar and boiled it down for 5 minutes. Like with jam the top gets a bit foamy and it needed to be scraped off before canning (10 minutes in a boiling water bath).

The final product looks prettier than I expected. My rhubarb is mostly green, so I don't get the pretty red color. But amber isn't bad. I ended up with four and a half half-pint jars. The half of a half-pint will go straight into the fridge for trial this evening. The question is do I pair it with gin or tequila. A Rhubarita sounds pretty tasty. Would a gin and tonic taste good with rhubarb instead of lime? Would the tonic be too much and should I stick to a gin fizz? Last year I made lavender syrup and trialed that one out. I guess this year it will be rhubarb syrup. Don't you think a rhubarb mojito sounds good? Too bad my mojito mint isn't up yet. I hope it didn't die last winter.

As soon as the jars were in the canner I had another hot chore to do. One of my squash was getting moldy so I wanted to cook it. Most of it will be pureed, but I am roasting one of the squash. I figured roast squash might go well in a summer salad some day.

I feel like I've been productive already today and I haven't even had breakfast yet. Maybe it won't be such a bad day after all.

The Rock Wall Garden

My rock wall garden is a long thin garden. Just 2.5' wide and maybe 70' long. Mostly it contains espaliered trees along the fence with a row of strawberries in the front. Today I weeded it and then mulched it with salt marsh hay. I don't use mulch in my main vegetable garden as it attracts too many slugs and snails, but I neglect this part of the yard more, so it needs to be mulched to keep the weeds down and the moisture in. And I hope I don't lose too many strawberries to the slugs.

Three of the trees were put in last year. And the above apple tree didn't put out any branches that I could tie to the wire on the left side. So last winter I chopped the top off of the tree a few inches above where I needed the branch and prayed it would put out one in the right spot. It was annoying to have to cut off so much growth, including two nicely placed branches higher up, but I didn't want to be missing a branch in perpetuity. At least now the missing branch is growing if small. And I have two choices for the main stem to go up. I'll have to choose one soon.

The other two trees are growing well. They both have four branches. Maybe this year they will reach the top of the trellis. It would be nice to have the foliage to cover the fence. I keep thinking I should have made one wire even lower to the ground, but too late now.

It looks like at least one branch on my fig trees made it through winter. I haven't seen any growth on the other fig yet. I've got my fingers crossed for them. And the plum tree that has had so many troubles over the year is looking good this year. But then it usual does in the spring. I'll have to watch it before the aphids take over and keep spraying the fish emulsion and insecticidal soap. I just hate spraying, but the dang tree (a Green Gage Plum) attracts so many aphids. At some point I may just rip the plant out and plant something else that doesn't have the troubles it has.

The strawberries in front seem to be doing OK this year. Last year they barely lived through the summer Some disease got into the bed and spread. Right now I'm not seeing any signs of it though. It has been dry recently. Starting tomorrow though we are in for a week of rain and unsettled weather. Hopefully it won't hurt the strawberries.

I did a few more chores before coming in this morning. I weeded a bit around the yard. Raked up some pine needles to mulch two of the blueberries. And planted six creeping phlox where the now defunct cranberries used to be. It turns out that section of the yard is in the house's rain shadow. So they just weren't getting enough water. We decided to just put in some low growing easy to care for plants. We wanted something higher for the area, but the vent for the water heaters comes out here and we can't block the vent.

Applesauce and Cleaning Up

Seven pints canned plus two quarts in the fridge

I know this is a weird time to be making applesauce. I usually make applesauce in the fall. And I did last year. I think I made 29 pints of sauce last year. That ought to be more than enough in a usual year for us. But not this year. My vegetable and fruit hating husband actually likes applesauce and he is trying to put more fruit into his diet. So many nights after dinner he has a cup of applesauce. Well once he started to do this it used up my stores very quickly. I even made a couple of quarts about a month ago. Luckily I could still get bags of IPM Macintosh apples. To me applesauce just isn't applesauce without at least half of them being Macs. I like to mix apples though as it makes for a tastier sauce. Since the other kind they had that was IPM was Empire apples. I got those too. Last time I could find some Cameos which makes a great combo as it is a sweeter apple.

After lunch it was clean up time. I had two beds I wanted to clean up so the soil could warm up better before planting. The first was the old broccoli and chard bed. It was the last bed that hadn't gotten any compost.

After pulling out all the old plants I dumped the two bags of compost on it and spread it out. It will get turned into the first few inches of soil when I fertilize and plant in a week. This bed will have corn and squash.

The other bed I wanted to clean out was the spinach. This bed will be my sweet potato bed so it needs to be very warm before planting. I usually plant on June 1st, but I always take a look at the long term forecast before doing so. If we are having a cold spell it is better to wait.

I also cleaned up my three thyme plants, my rosemary, and did some weeding. The above thyme was the worst off. You can see it just has a small part that had any growth. So I ripped the rest of the plant out and just left those branches. I layered the thymes that were a little better off to make more. If this doesn't live, that is fine, I'll just transplant more here.

Gratuitous Johnny-Jump-Up Flowers

I also layered my dianthus. I'm trying to get my perennial dianthus to cover the area around a little path in the garden. Last year I broke up my plant and put little plants all over. Some lived and some didn't. So this year I'm layering more of them to get the area covered. I think in a few years it will be very pretty.

Boston Area Gleaners and a Few Odds and Ends

Oh my aching back. My husband tells me I'm an unpaid migrant farm worker. But I know the truth. I only picked lettuce stooped over for three hours and not all day.

Today was the first day that the Boston Area Gleaners (BAG) harvested this year. It was at Waltham Fields Community Farm. Matt, the BAG coordinator, and three of us volunteers spent the morning in one of their greenhouses picking baby lettuce. We probably picked around 100lbs. Matt drops gleaned food off at a lot of places that need fresh produce, but this time it was given to Food For Free, which itself distributes the food to many different places that that help those in need. I started volunteering last year and it is fun as we get to visit a lot of different farms through the growing season. City Growers was by far the most interesting as they use vacant lots in Dorchester and Roxbury to grow food.

They are expanding to the North Shore this year. So if you are interested or know anyone that lives on the North Shore that would be interested let them know about it. They have a lot of farms that want to join in, but they need people in the area to pick the produce.

As to my own garden I went out and spent money yesterday. I got two bags of composted manure for the last bed that still needed compost. I almost made enough compost for the garden last year, but not quite. I also picked up some salt marsh hay for my strawberries. I like to keep them thickly mulched to keep the cats out. Sadly it encourages the slugs, cut you can't have everything. I also bought flowers. Yes I plant flowers too, but I don't talk about it as much. This time I got flowers for my front planter. Last year it was pinks. This year I went with salmon colors. Now if I can just keep it watered and alive all summer long. I do so much better with plants in the ground as I can't kill them as easily.

Harvest Monday, 12 May 2014

The harvests have started to ramp up a bit in the garden. This week featured salads with lettuce, mizuna, and chives most days for lunch. I also got a little bit of cilantro. The cilantro didn't overwinter much this year. But the few plants that did are starting to bolt so they had to be picked.

Later in the week featured my sage. I picked a lot and dried it for later in the year.

I forgot to take a photo of the harvest itself, but my kale was starting to blossom. I eat the kale flowers as a sort of poor man's broccoli.

And my over wintered spinach was starting to bolt too, so I picked the little that was good and froze it for next winter. I still have a few packets left from last year that I'm eating up.

I went out about every other day to pick lettuce to make sure I had enough for my lunches. I wash the leaves when I bring them in so lunch is easier to make that way.

My favorite part about this week's harvests are the radishes that I've started picking at the baby stage. I think I like them best, not for their taste (for me cilantro wins in that category), but they are so colorful amid a sea of green in the garden.

And one of my lunches with leftovers and salad. It makes for an easy lunch.

• Asian Greens: 0.20 lbs
• Greens: 1.99 lbs
• Herbs: 0.88 lbs
• Roots: 0.33 lbs
• Weekly Total: 3.36 lbs
• Yearly Total: 3.68 lbs
• Tally: -485.12

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.

Planting Corn

I like to get my first batch of corn in early. But corn won't germinate until the soil is 50F (10C)and it won't germinate well until the soil is 60F (15C). If you look at the thermometer you will see it is an old milk thermometer that I repurposed for the garden. Right now the soil is 54F and our weather is predicted to be hot for the next two days. I'm hoping that is enough to get the corn started well. The temps will drop after that, but nighttime temps will mostly stay above 50F so the soil should keep warming up.

I plant my corn in a two sisters bed. I put three seeds a foot apart for the middle five feet of each bed. I'll thin to the strongest seedling. I used two 4'x 8' beds that are right next to one another as you see above. So if all goes well I'll have 80 corn plants in these two beds. Early planted corn can be fickle though. It doesn't always germinate well. I'm trying a new variety, Honey Select, and I don't know how well it does in cool soils.

Though I haven't planted them yet, I will plant squash at the ends of each bed. And I'll train the squash to grow under the corn. I've found this keeps the raccoons out of the corn very well. I've seen racoons in the garden when the corn was ripe and I've never lost an ear. And the last thing I want to do is attract racoons this year as rabies is going through the town's population.

The corn bed is in Bed 1 this year, which is right next to the fence by our driveway. Last year I planted two currents here and I was happily surprised to see that they were in bloom. This one is Pink Champagne which is supposed to be less sour than the red ones. I also have two red currents. One on the other end of the same fence. And one that I'm trying to train up and across the fence on the other side of the garden. I don't know if I'll succeed in the espalier, but it will look really cool if I do.

Before I went in for the morning I picked some more lettuce for my salads. They seem to be giving me almost enough to have salad every day at lunch time. So I'm happy with that.

And the radishes are getting bigger. I get a few each day of these too. I'm getting pretty excited over eating fresh from the garden again. I don't have much yet, but I am getting more now.

I do have one issue with the garden though. Bed 2 has one 4'x 8' section that was going to be dried beans. I've decided not to grow dried beans this year because I think I can't eat them anymore. If it ends up that I can, it will be easy to buy dried beans. I'm replacing one of my dried bean beds with more corn and squash. But the other I haven't decided what should go there. Maybe I should grow some parsnips? I've never grown them before. If I do, do I need to protect them from the carrot fly which is so bad around here? And what else should I grow? I keep debating. Maybe I'll grow a few beets for my townhouse mates. I hate beets, but they like them. Should I start more celeriac (also a new plant I'm growing this year). It is a good winter keeper. Variety for the winter is always good.

Preparing for Winter

Yes it is springtime in Boston, but here I am preparing for winter already. We get about 3-4 months every year where the ground is frozen. So to eat from the garden during that time, I have to preserve my crop when it becomes available.

The first thing I did yesterday was pick the sage. It was starting to put out buds. This is often the time that is recommended to pick as the herbs are more flavorful then. I don't know if that is true or an old wives' tale. But the leaves are pretty tender and good then, so I do tend to follow that rule. This year I have a new dehydrator. My old one was just a heating element in the bottom. It had gotten pretty sad over the decades and part of the heating element wasn't working anymore. My new one is SO nicer compared to my old one. It has a thermostat and a heat distribution fan. It really drys things very evenly, especially compared to my old one. No more rotating the herb trays - either top to bottom or side to side.

My herb circle is starting to perk up. The oregano on the right is really taking off. It won't be long until it too gets chopped back for a harvest. The two types of chives I only use fresh, so I don't need to preserve them. On the left of the lower chives is where my dead rosemary used to be. I ripped it out and put in three little winter savory plants. I hope they do well. I don't even know what winter savory tastes like. Hopefully I'll like it. The thyme, especially the French thyme, barely made it through the winter. I might have to put in a new plant. I have another one growing elsewhere because it often likes to die. So I will probably layer it (if it hasn't done that itself) and replace it.

The overwintered spinach didn't do so well this year. It is bolting already and never gave me much of a harvest. I did pick what was good. Many of the leaves are deformed and unhappy. I wish I knew why it didn't do well this year. Usually these plants put out foot long leaves by this time of the year. I wonder if it is because I started them so early in the fall. I even got to harvest a bit then. I might have to experiment this fall and do half early and half later to see which gives me a better harvest.

This is the meager harvest that I blanched and froze. I still have some frozen spinach from last year that I'm eating up. If I could eat it fresh in salads I would, but overwintered spinach tends to be very high in oxalic acid and gritty because of it. I like to boil the spinach to get rid of a lot of it. I blanch for 2 minutes and then get it quickly in an ice water bath. Then squeeze the water out and put it up in one person servings - maybe 2/3 of a cup each.

The spring spinach is great for spinach salads and eating fresh. But it is being so slow this year. I hope it starts sizing up soon as I want a good harvest. Last year I got about 11 pounds. I'm sure I won't get nearly that much this year.

And I know I don't usually show off harvests except on Mondays, but aren't they just so cute. I way over planted the radishes and they all come in at once. So I figured I ought to pick some early. And then just keep it up until they are too old to eat. The largest is about 1.5" long and about a 1 cm wide. So they are small little things. But still large enough to enjoy.

Strawberry Hoops

I noticed the other day that my strawberries were starting to bloom. If I let them, the squirrels will eat them all long before I get a chance. So I had to make some more hoops.

I make them about 3 1/2' long and then bend them into the hoops. I use 9 gauge wire. I use the hoops to support some bird netting over the strawberry plants. I find if I just drape it on the squirrels will steal the strawberries through the netting. But the supports has worked so far.

I didn't have to make many. Just 7 more is all I need this year. Many of my plants are new so those won't have berries on them. But next year I might need a couple more. I like making my own rather than buying premade ones because I can make them any size that works for me. Typically you can only buy 6' premade hoops. In my garden I think I have 3 1/2', 5', 6', and 8' lengths for different things.

Harvest Monday, May 5th, 2014

My first weighed and tallied harvest.

My second one was a bit bigger. Plus I harvested some chives. Though I didn't photograph it I also harvested some sage, but it was unweighted as it was so small.

I used the harvests in my lunches. I had two lunches with homemade tortillas, cheese, avocados, green onions, cilantro, and my mixed greens. One even had fried eggs in it.

And one lunch with a nice salad. Oh how I love spring greens. I don't harvest enough yet to have this every day, but it won't be long. The lettuce is getting bigger everyday. Even with me stealing the little side leaves.

I finally started a tally sheet too. And every week I put it into my spreadsheet and add it to the tally. This weeks tally is obviously pretty low. And don't I have the worst handwriting? Sometimes even I have trouble figuring out what it says.

I also spent yet more money. This time for some bricks and some rebar. I use them to hold the edges of my row covers. And this year I've got a lot more row covers than I usually do. And boy is rebar expensive. At least it is a one time expense - unlike the row cover itself that degrades over time. Sadly they didn't have any of the 4' long ones, so I had to get a whole lot more of the 2' long rebar. I still really don't have enough. I had to use one bamboo pole. It doesn't work as well as it isn't very heavy. But I weighted it down with a brick. I hope it holds.

• Mixed Greens: 0.24 lbs
• Herbs: 0.08 lbs
• Total: 0.32 lbs
• Spent: $56
• Tally: -505.93

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.

Last week

Well I've been remiss in blogging. But I did get out to the garden to do a few chores last week. Wednesday I got out and put in my zinnias. First I had to pull out the lemon balm and the yarrow that I no longer wanted. I haven't been using the lemon balm and it self seeds here like crazy. The yarrow just isn't happy and the flowers flop all over. In addition multiple of the plants die every winter. They do self seed to a certain extent and I've used that to replace them. But they just aren't blooming enough. So I'm switching to just doing zinnias along this edge. I do have some herbs at the right edge. I've got a couple of French tarragon and some very very small winter savory. One of the zinnias is dying too so I think I'll put some basil in that spot when the basil get big enough (right not it hasn't even germinated yet).

The other section is by my neighbor's fence. He grows tomatoes on his side of the fence every year. And I grow zinnias and sweet alyssum to edge the bed. Previously they were full size zinnias that get about 3' high and need support or the wind blows them over. They are beautiful and put on quite a show, but it does block my neighbor's sun and is a pain to keep supported. This year I'm trying some new ones that only get to 18". Maybe that will be short enough so they can support themselves.

Friday I got out and finally put the netting row covers on some of the beds. This is the chard. The leaf miners start to come out around Mother's Day so I wanted to make sure I got the netting on before that.

I also covered the onions and carrots. Onion root maggots hit the peak of the first flight at 700 base 40F GDD. But that is the peak. I've hard the first ones can come out around 300-400. I use a spreadsheet and my weather station info to calculate the GDD. On Friday it was 410. So They needed to be covered. Also the carrots which are above the garlic. I've tried to find a number for the GDD for carrot maggots but can't. I know from my own experience that there is damage around the middle to end of June. It takes the maggot at least a month in the soil before you see any damage. The row cover probably needs to be up by the middle of May. So all three of these pests start to come out about the same time. But now they are safe.

On Saturday I went out and weeded the garden a bit. I really didn't NEED to do anything in the garden, but it was such a beautiful day. I just wanted to be out.

I noticed that my rosemary in the circle garden had definitely died. One more is hanging in there, but barely. And one survived and is nice and green, if a bit small. So I layered a couple of branches from that rosemary. Once they are rooted I'll scatter them around the garden. I want to keep my Arp alive at least somewhere. And different winters kill off different ones. Rosemary really isn't hardy here. Our lowest lows for the year tend to be around -3F to -5F (-20C). And really hard years like this tend to kill even the hardiest rosemary plants. Having different locations gives them an extra chance to live. I think the winter winds killed the one in the circle garden. But the one that lived was protected from those winds. But that section dries out a lot since it is near the foundation of the house and can be in a rain shadow. So sometimes that one dies and other ones live. It just depends upon the year.

I probably won't replace the rosemary in the circle garden though. I think the circle will look better if I put the winter savory there. It is shorter like the other plants in the circle. I'm not sure where they will go, but I'll find a couple good spots somewhere. Maybe one along the fence where the zinnias are growing.

I did a lot of weeding on Saturday. Some of those weeds were little tiny lettuce plants. I decided to transplant about 12 of them. I can tell which ones are Red Sails, but the other ones could be anything as they are just nondescript green leaves.

I had two beds that needed cleaning out. I cleaned out one and put on the bone char which I'm using in place of compost this year. I'll see how it works. I still need to buy two bags of compost for the last bed. I should have done that last week when I was at the store buying more rebar, but didn't even think of it. Oh well. My husband ought to be traveling again sometime so I can have the car. I'm not about to bring home heavy bags on the bus.