Harvest Monday - October 31, 2011

As you have probably read about on so many blogs in the eastern US, we got snow. But it wasn't as much as Robin who lives in Pennsylvania or Thomas who lives in eastern Massachusetts. We are so urban, and the city holds a lot of heat. We only got about two inches. And as you can see on the brick path, much of the snow melted as it hit. The plows didn't even come out in our town.

Last week was the last of my CSA so this week I was just picking enough for myself. I brushed the snow off the Asian greens row cover and picked a few plants. Some tatsoi, white stemmed bok choy and some Shanghai bok choy. I like to pick for the week when it is so cold outside. In the morning especially I won't go out in the cold. If I make eggs and there are greens in the fridge, I"ll use them. If not I'll eat them plain. So I have to make sure the fridge is stocked.

The Asian green patch is now in a new mode. In the last few weeks I thinned it out, making sure I picked enough from every row that the other plants had room to grow. I sent the extras to my CSA and to my townhousemates. This week I tried to pick what I would eat for the week. It has become cold and in a couple of weeks the ground will freeze. Recently this has been happening around mid November. Last night was a freeze (as I write the temp is 27.8F). It will unthaw during the week, but I'll soon have to get the plastic hoop up. The cold weather means the plants will stop growing. They will hold in the ground just fine for a month or two. At least that is the hope.

Last week was also clean up week. I got all the bean trellises taken down. There were two varieties that had some beans that hadn't dried on them. So they were shelled to be eaten fresh. These were runner beans and Cherokee Trail of Tears beans. The smaller green ones are the same varieties, but the beans just hadn't matured yet.

• Beans 1.31 lbs
  
• Greens 1.70 lbs
• Weekly Total 3.01 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 538.19 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $1178.81
  
• Fruit 1.87 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.

What's Growing in the Fall Garden

Though I've ripped out most of my plants in the garden, I still have a few producing. Or in the case of carrots I have tons. Above is a spot about 2'x8' section of my circle garden filled with carrots ready to pick. Since the circle garden is surrounded by bricks and brick path and close to the kitchen door I want to save these and cover them when the ground starts to freeze. I want to bring carrots to Thanksgiving. BTW the netting on this bed is for the almost gone lettuce. The birds would eat it down to the stubs if I didn't do this.

Then there is the main part of the garden that is lower in sun. These carrots were planted earlier than the ones in the circle garden, but with the lack of sun they are small and many aren't even big enough to pick. Over the next few weeks I'll be eating the ones that are large enough. I'll leave the rest and see if they make it to spring. This area is a massive area of carrots. I've probably got over 30 sqft of carrots in this bed, but only if they can mature in time.

The Argentata chard did so much better than the Ruby chard. There seems to be some disease maybe that is distorting the leaves of the Ruby chard, but the Argentata is fairly immune to it. I never knew anything could affect them besides leaf miners. Live and learn. I'll grow the Argentata exclusively next year or at least as long as Fedco offers the seeds.

Also in the Chenepodium family is my spinach. It has been struggling this fall. The leaf miners did a number on it earlier and rotted out their leaves. So I picked all the dying rotting leaves and they have recovered somewhat, but at this point it will be spring spinach and not fall spinach. I'm sure it will overwinter just fine.

My kale is growing so fabulously. I used to have a row cover on it, but in the last couple of days I haven't seen any of those white butterflies. So I'm guessing it is safe to uncover. Which is good since I wanted to stake them for fall and they were getting too tall of the cover. I'll leave them unprotected this winter and harvest the leaves in January maybe. I want to see which ones survive the winter. These are a mixed batch. I'm not sure which ones they are, but hopefully I'll be able to narrow it down. If they all survive, well then I want to find the tastiest and best growing for next year.

And last but not least are my herbs. I so love fresh herbs. I chop them up in the mornings for my eggs. I toss them on a slice of bread and melted cheese. They have finally filled out their circle. Now my chore will be to keep the English thyme from invading the French thyme. I like the French better, but the English seems to survive better. I also have some Rosemary in this bed. It is supposed to be hardy to zone 6 or 7. I'm hoping it survives. I also have two along the foundation of the house. One that is a hardy one like the above and one that is Tuscan Blue, which is one of the best tasting. I don't have high hopes for the survival of Tuscan Blue, but I had to try.

I also have my Asian greens bed producing, but I'll take photos of that another day.

Planting Garlic

Tuesday I got my garlic planted. I like to plant it in the last week of October, which is usually about the time of our first frost. Most years I plan ahead and prepare the garlic cloves, but this year I just picked the largest bulbs, took them apart and used them as is. I'm being such a lazy gardener this fall.

I like to plant my garlic six inches apart in a grid. I plant them four inches deep, then mulch with an inch of compost. In past years I've mulched deeper, but our city climate seems pretty mild. I think that will be sufficient.

Cleaning Up

I know over the last two months I've been not blogging except to keep Harvest Monday going. All my extra energy has been spent trying to keep the garden up. But I've been feeling much better over the last week and figured I ought to get back into the swing of things. Or maybe I want to start again because my townhouse mates took down all the solanum crops for me. Seeing them every time I went out into the garden was pretty depressing. They offered to take them down as soon as I got sick from them, but I figured they ought to be enjoyed even if I couldn't. Now that they are gone, I'm much happier.

I've been working over the last couple of weeks to take all my trellises down and get all the beans into the compost. Yesterday the last of them came down. The overhead view shows that there isn't much left in the garden anymore. I'll show you all that is still producing in another post, but for now it about taking them down.

My compost is over flowing. I had to get the finished compost taken out of that almost empty bin. I've spread it over parts of the garden that have been cleaned up. Now I finally have room to turn it. I'll probably get to it during the next non rainy day. But today is raining and tomorrow it might even snow. Wow. Snow. We have had such a warm fall it is hard to imagine weather that cold. But Thursday night we might get our first frost and snow. Maybe.

It is pretty empty. I put the tomato trellises on the surface of the cleaned beds because otherwise the cats leave me unwanted gifts. We have about 5-7 cats that regularly visit the yard. So any empty soil is always kept covered. But I do provide for the cats. I have a spot that they can use when they want. I clean it every month. It is under the chimney to my gas fireplace so it is even a dry spot for them. I'm hoping with all the cats I won't get too many mice and voles.

Harvest Monday - October 24, 2011

The cold weather really has moved in. We haven't had a frost yet, but as I write this our temperature is at 37F. So I was out removing things from the garden. My townhouse mates were too. They removed the eggplants, picking as they went. And they removed all the pepper plants and harvested a huge amount of them. They were going to make some hot pepper sauce with the spicy ones. None of these were weighed, but they picked a couple of huge bags of peppers and quite a few eggplants.

I was out picking the last of the celery. This doesn't look very big, but trust me it is. I had to cut them in thirds just to fit them in my fridge. There are six pounds of celery in that pile. What I kept I'll clean and chop up and freeze. I'll keep a little fresh as it is truly soup season now. I made two different soups last week.

I picked the last of the leeks. If you see the one on the bottom is is perfect. I don't think I've ever grown one that has been as huge as the ones you find in the supermarkets. Mine tend to be an inch wide or less. Also in there is probably the last zucchini. I never pulled them even though they stopped producing and lo and behold, the strongest of them put one more out. A tiny one, but still a zucchini toward the end of October here is really unusual. I picked more carrots. These were smaller than last weeks. I picked them over in the shadier part of the garden. Some have sized up OK, but not great. I figure I'll pick all the ones big enough at all over there first. When it gets colder the carrots outside my kitchen door will be easier to get to and have a tendency to freeze less as they are surrounded by bricks and not wood.

Every week I pick Asian Greens. I thin out the largest of the baby boc choy (both white and green stemmed) and the tatsoi. Every week they fill in the gaps and get bigger. I tipped one up in the corner so you can see how big they are getting. The biggest are just under half a pound which is huge for a baby choy. Every week before harvesting they look so beautiful in their beds (I really need to take a photo) and every week they look so sad after harvesting. But the holes left in the bed give me a chance to put down some sluggo. There are slugs in this bed and I pull some off the greens every week, but with the sluggo the leaves aren't shredded at least.

The slugs like the Fun Jen the best. I think it is because it is such a mild Asian green, but they are still doing well. Only some heads have tattered tops. I think this plant really acts as a trap crop for the rest of the bed. Most are looking pretty good though. So I'm pretty happy with them. I pick the largest of these each week too. Almost everyone thinks these are lettuce when they see them, and in fact that is how I use them. They make very good salads.

• Alliums 1.49 lbs
  
• Carrots 1.23 lbs
  
• Cucurbits 0.21 lbs
  
• Eggplant unknown
  
• Greens 11.39 lbs
  
• Herbs 0.18
  
• Pepper unknown
  
• Raspberries unknown
  
• Weekly Total 20.50 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 535.17 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $1164.01
  
• Fruit 1.87 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.

Harvest Monday - October 17, 2011

I was gone all week long to visit my parents in Colorado (last Harvest Monday was scheduled). When I got back the Asian greens had filled in the spaces that I had thinned out. So they needed to be thinned again. The Fun Jen will get a lot larger, but the bok choy is pretty much at its adult size. There are a few little ones hiding though. I cut the larger ones out to give them a chance to grow up.

Yet more Asian greens from my little 2.5 x 8 foot patch. Along with carrots hiding under the tatsoi and some huge bunching onions. The fall garden by the kitchen - my circle garden - is growing well this fall as is the rock wall garden. But the main garden where my spinach is is stagnating. It just doesn't get enough sun to let things grow well. I have a huge patch of spinach there, but I won't get anything this fall. I'll have to wait until spring when all the leaves are off my neighbor's tree and the sun comes out from behind his house. I get lots of sun in the spring, but not enough in the fall. The carrots show this too. The carrots in the circle garden are already being picked, but the carrots in the main bed are still very small and struggling. I hope they have time to bulk up, but I'm not counting on it. I should have planted peas there since at least the peas are tall and can reach for the sun. I'll remember that for future years and make sure to have the shorter fall crops in the circle bed and any tall fall crops in the main bed.

My dill has self seeded everywhere as has my cilantro. The cilantro is just an inch tall (again it is in the main bed with little sun and the bad part of the main bed at that), but the dill is growing well and I have lots to pick. Last night I made carrots and dill for a dinner. They were very good.

• Alliums 0.86 lbs
  
• Carrots 1.99 lbs
  
• Greens 3.60 lbs
  
• Herbs 0.34
  
• Lettuce unknown
  
• Pepper unknown
  
• Raspberries unknown
  
• Weekly Total 6.79 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 514.67 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $1101.49
  
• Fruit 1.87 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.

Harvest Monday - October 10, 2011

This week I broke 500lbs of produce. I'm sure I broke the number earlier, but since none of the tomatoes and peppers have been weighed since the end of August I can't count them. I did a better job of photographing what I picked, but still am falling down on the job. This week the Asian greens really started to come in. Everything I'm picking in that category is just thinning out the patch.

The August sowing of carrots is starting to produce. The Mokums and Purple Haze are huge now. The Sugar Snax need more time and may or may not size up totally. But this basket really features the leeks. It is time for leek and potato soup. Well not for me since I'm still not allowed to eat potatoes, but my CSA friends got leeks and potatoes. Maybe they will eat soup.

The potatoes are about two thirds picked right now. The yields have been about half what I would like. I planted about five pounds of seed potato. I'd love to pull out ten times that or 50 lbs, but I think the total will end up being about 25 lbs. Pretty sad. It is hard to get worked up over it though since I don't get to eat them. But I'm saving a few Kennebecs for my husband. When we bake chicken I'll bake him one and me a sweet potato. Hmm maybe I should try growing sweet potatoes next year. My husband won't touch them, but I will.

I've also been picking my beans and pulling out the plants over time. These are the Borlotto beans. I was growing them as a dried bean, but they just took too long. So I picked a lot as shelling beans. The dried beans I've been picking aren't in the harvest totals yet as they are drying in paper bags. I've shelled all that I've picked already. Since it has been so wet over the last couple of weeks I like to get the bean out of the shell as quickly as possible so they don't mold out. I've lost a bit to mold, but not as much as I feared.

• Alliums 1.83 lbs
  
• Shelling beans 0.66 lbs
  
• Carrots 1.21 lbs
  
• Cucurbits 16.36 lbs
  
• Eggplant unknown
  
• Greens 2.74 lbs
  
• Herbs unknown
  
• Lettuce unknown
  
• Pepper unknown
  
• Potatoes 5.64 lbs
  
• Raspberries unknown
  
• Weekly Total 12.09 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 507.89 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $1069.62
  
• Fruit 1.87 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.

Harvest Monday - October 3, 2011

Though this was harvested ages ago, I finally had it all dried and weighed this week. I had enough to send to my CSA and my townhouse mates. I still had plenty for myself to use as a spice and for seed. Though the odds of me needing seed are slim. I put the chaff which had a ton of seed all over the place in the garden. I'm sure I'll get a lot coming up next spring. Cilantro (same plant as coriander but called a different name when grown as a leafy herb) really is best self planted. Or sort of self planted like I did. Just toss the seed heads where ever you want them when the seeds ripen. The only flaw is that you do have to plan ahead.

The squirrels have been tasting things this week. I was afraid to leave the butternut squash out any longer. Though the skin is hard to get through if they get desperate enough they will succeed. For now I've got a couple with little teeth marks that tried to get through. I'm sure they will scar over just fine, but they will be the first used. None are terribly large. They average just over two pounds each. I didn't pick any of the Black Futsu. It isn't quite ripe. I have one starting to turn orange, but the others are quite dark green. The squirrels haven't touched them. I have to be honest. With the weird warty black skin and the strange grey cast they get as they ripen, they don't look very edible to me either. I hope they do ripen up though. I really want to try them.

It is raspberry season. Though most of the raspberries are picked and eaten out of hand, I finally took a photo of one day's harvest. This variety is Jaclyn. At my old house I grew Heritage which I loved. These taste just as good and the berries are huge which makes for easier picking. Our Alpine strawberries are getting picked and eaten out of hand too. A photo of them is elusive. The Yellow Wonder are so tasty. I wish I had only planted that one variety. Our red variety Ruegen just doesn't hold up.

Then came the chard. I had to clean it out. I hadn't looked under the row cover and some moth had gotten under. They looked like cutworms - those grey worms that curl up, but unlike cutworms they didn't hide in the dirt. They hid at the base of the plants. Some were out foraging during the day. I had to cut out a lot of too damaged leaves. Boy they did a lot of damage. As I was cleaning the place up I harvested three pounds of the leaves. The chard didn't do as well this year as previous years. I think they do better when I harvest them more regularly. Either every week or every other week. I just let them go this year. And the carrots and onions look so small in this photo, but don't be fooled. That is a pound and a half of green onions there. And almost that amount of carrots. Those chard leaves are huge. I've been really impressed with the Argentata chard this year. The Ruby chard just isn't pulling its weight. I love the red color, but I like the taste of the Argentata and it is way more productive.

• Alliums 1.57 lbs
  
• Carrots 1.32 lbs
  
• Cucurbits 16.36 lbs
  
• Eggplant unknown
  
• Greens 3.00 lbs
  
• Herbs 0.19lbs + lots unweighed
  
• Lettuce unknown
  
• Pepper unknown
• Raspberries 0.18 lbs
  
• Tomato unknown
  
• Weekly Total 22.44 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 495.80 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $1037.69
  
• Fruit 1.87 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.

Harvest Monday - September 26 2011

This was Sunday's harvest. The only harvest that got photographed and weighed this week. I love how the zucchini are still pretending to produce. They never get big. If I don't pick them right away they rot out. They just don't have the energy this time of year to make a big zucchini. But little ones are well loved. One is perfect for me as an addition to a stirfry.

This week also features the first Fun Jen, which is the light green leaves at the top. These were just thinnings from the Asian green patch. Fun Jen makes great Asian salads. I never cook with it though as the leaves don't hold up well to heat.

The kale is also the first harvest of the year. I pretty much transplanted them and put them under a cover and ignored them until now. They really needed a weeding, but just so a few of the weeds didn't go to seed. Soon they will outgrow their cover. They are getting very tall. I think I want to stake them before winter hits. The snows really knock them over and I'd rather they stay upright. The kale is a mix from Fedco. Some varieties I can tell what they are, but most I don't know. They dinosaur kale isn't doing well here, but the red one is probably growing the best of all. If it can survive our winters unprotected I'll have to try to identify it. Last year I only had some dwarf curly kale. It went into the winter tiny and they all survived and produced in early spring. If I could get one that would produce in the fall and the spring I'd be really happy. But it might take two patches for that. The mature ones might not make it through the winter as well as the small plants.

I also have lettuce, herbs, a few beans (mostly they have stopped producing), peppers and tomatoes being picked. They don't get weighed or photographed. The weather is really starting to fluctuate a lot and it is getting colder. I'm hoping one of my friends wants the huge piles of basil in the garden right now. They won't last much longer. They die long before the first frost. Personally I have plenty frozen already and don't need more except for a few leaves here and there.

• Cucurbits 0.33 lbs
  
• Greens 2.87 lbs
• Herbs unknown
  
• Lettuce unknown
• Pepper unknown
  
• Tomato unknown
  
• Weekly Total 3.19 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 473.36 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $981.88
  
• Fruit 1.69 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.

Harvest Monday - September19 2011

I'm still not gardening much at all, but it still is producing some things. Above are my townhousemates harvests from Thursday. They weren't weighed. But I was told it was delicious.

Then Sunday I picked some things for my CSA. She picked some tomatoes too. She could have picked a lot more peppers, but she still had tons of chili peppers from last week. In this was a few pounds of some shelling beans. These are Tabais beans which are traditional for cassoulet. I should have enough for me too. I can't make a regular cassoulet since I can't have tomatoes, but I can fudge it up enough to get something yummy I'm sure.

While I was watering my new Asian greens bed I found some alpine strawberries were ripe and one everbearer regular strawberry. The yellow ones are divine. The red ones were just OK. I think if they self seed (which I'm told they do. I'll be replacing the red ones with yellow. I hope so. But I think most of them are red right now.

I picked a few other things during the week, but they were neither photographed nor weighed. Mostly I've been eating a really bland diet, but I am starting to feel a bit better. I've been out for walks a couple times recently. I get really tired, but I'm on the mend. It turns out I'm not allergic to tomatoes at all. I have solanine poisoning. This is the poisoning you get when you eat green potatoes (which I didn't). But my doctor says it is absorbed through the skin. I'd hug my tomato plants for long periods during picking and pruning. I typically wear short sleeveless dresses in the summer and as Granny noticed I go barefoot. So I'm totally exposed to all the plant. And I don't take showers as soon as I get inside. This year was worse with the contact because of the narrow paths and the double row of tomatoes instead of single.

He thinks I just absorbed too much. I've got all the typical symptoms of solanine poisoning (fatigue, headaches, dizziness, nausea). It is a neurotoxin that does a lot of nasty things to your body. It typically has a 1-2 month half life so it takes a while to get out of the system. I've now cut all solanum crops out of my diet, and not just tomatoes. This is what has been getting me better. The small quantity that was still in my diet was enough to keep my levels too high. The last time I had a little bit of pepper I got very sick again that night. I won't be eating any of those again for months. Usually the little bits of it that you eat are easy enough for your body to handle. I just got too overloaded with it. But the good news is the odds are I can eat them again in 4-8 months since it isn't an allergy. But in the future I'll have to be careful since I'm obviously more sensitive to this poison that most folks are.

• Beans 2.73 lbs.
  
• Cucurbits 0.30 lbs
  
• Eggplant unknown
  
• Greens 3.02 lbs
  
• Pepper unknown
  
• Tomato unknown
  
• Weekly Total 6.04 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 470.36 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $975.10
  
• Fruit 1.69 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.

Harvest Monday - September12 2011

Monday's two harvests. It was definitely the week of the cherry tomato. They had been lagging around for a while, but they really ripened up this week.

Sunday's harvest was for my CSA. I only picked some. I let my CSA folks pick any tomatoes they wanted and peppers. I'm currently not eating them so they have become a free for all for them and my townhouse mates. The ones they pick are not getting weighed. And any lettuce my townhouse mates pick.

• Beans 0.12 lbs.
  
• Carrot 4.74 lbs lbs
  
• Cucurbits 2.14 lbs
  
• Eggplant 1.10 lbs
  
• Greens 1.16 lbs
  
• Pepper 3.24 lbs
  
• Beet 0.31 lbs
  
• Tomato 4.81 lbs
  
• Weekly Total 17.64 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 464.31 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $955.11
  
• Fruit 1.69 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.

Harvest Monday - September 5, 2011

This is the one and only large harvest I had. The rest of the harvests were just going out to pick what I needed for dinner. I had very small harvests this week. I'm recovering from my allergy induced asthma and I'm staying inside. I have a feeling I might be allergic to tomato plants so I've been avoiding the cherry tomatoes (though I'll pick them for my CSA this morning). The beans take too long to pick so I've been ignoring them. I go outside as little as possible.

So life is depressing here. In addition all my plants in the brassica bed (which should be my big harvests right now) had some disease go through while I was on vacation and they are all dead now. The broccoli is the sole survivor, but even it is slowly succumbing. So I've got no Asian greens anymore. I'm so sad to lose my Chinese cabbage. I wanted more of the Michihili. The kale bed is fine so far. So between that and my chard which I haven't picked yet, I'll have greens to eat.

I ripped out the flowers in front of my house and planted a new bed of quick maturing Asian greens, but I don't know if they will mature in time. If the fall is warm and long they will be fine. I could have ripped out some of my cucurbits but the main beds right now don't get a lot of sun due to the low arc this time of year and the neighbor's house and tree. So the rock wall garden by the driveway is the best bet for growing in the fall. And the only place without perennials in that bed is the first part you see when you drive in. My flower bed. So the beautiful zinnias that used to greet my guests are now gone. I did get a good laugh this week though. I pulled out all those beautiful flowers. My husband asked that evening what I did that day. I told him he saw when he drove in. He didn't even notice the ugly row cover over them.

This is the first year I've been chased inside into filtered air due to allergies. I've always had my windows wide open this time of year doing things outside. Yeah I had a few sniffles and had to take some meds, but I've never been really sick due to them before. I was out two hours at a BBQ on Saturday and was sick as a dog afterwards. So I'll be starting shots very soon. I have an appointment with the allergy specialist this week. Next year I ought to be a lot better. But this fall gardening season will be done with a mask and very little will happen. It is the reason I really haven't been blogging. And I've been avoiding a lot of other blogs too. Too depressing to think about. But don't worry about me, I'll get over it. And as I always say when something bad happens in the garden, there is always next year.

• Alliums 0.86 lbs
  
• Broccoli 0.26 lbs lbs
  
• Carrot 0.38 lbs lbs
  
• Cucurbits 2.00 lbs
  
• Greens 1.16 lbs lbs
  
• Weekly Total 4.66 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 446.67 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $898.07
  
• Fruit 1.69 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.

Harvest Monday - August 29 2011

My first harvest was the harvest I found when I got back from vacation. I had beans in the fridge and tomatoes on the counter.

Tuesday's Harvest

Since Tuesday was my first pickings since being away, it was pretty large. It featured a huge zucchini and lots and lots of peppers, both hot and sweet.

Friday's Harvest

Friday's harvest also had a huge zucchini, but not as large as the first one. And the first of the butternut squash. This one set early. The others have all set in the last month. I hope they have time to ripe.

Saturday's Harvest

Saturday's harvest was about bringing things in before Irene hit. I probably would have left the eggplants up for a few more days, but better safe than sorry. I picked any of the Lemon Queen sunflower heads that had gotten heavy with seed. I figured the weight alone swinging back and forth would bring them down. Those boards are about 4" wide so that large head was 8" across. I picked a lot of these bags of dried beans. These were the cranberry beans. I'll be adding to them over time as the pods dry out. Neither the sunflowers or dried beans have been weighed the seed has to be separated first.

And Irene? Well she did a bit of damage, but it wasn't too bad. She bent down one of my dwarf fruit trees as you can see above. That tree is now upright and staked. My beans were leaning over I have them temporarily propped up. But they will need a better job probably tomorrow. I'm busy all today and they aren't about to fall over if they didn't yesterday. I lost one sunflower, but the rest are leaning crazily into the path. I hope I can pull them back. We lost one branch of our maple tree. It didn't seem to hit anything. And ripped one of the row covers off my bed. So all in all not too bad. The beans were fixed in the middle of the storm. Yes I'm a crazy gardener that went out into the storm to deal with her bean towers. The eye had passed when I got out to fix my peach tree though. I got about three inches of rain according to my weather station. But the output said it was raining cats and dogs (yes it literally said that, made me laugh) and at the maximum rate. So I think was it raining too hard for the gauge. If I get a chance I'll deal with my other rain gauge and see if it said three inches too.

• Beans 3.32 lbs
  
• Cucurbits 7.01 lbs
  
• Eggplant 1.70 lbs
  
• Pepper 9.10 lbs
  
• Potato 6.03 lbs
  
• Tomato 7.66 lbs
  
• Weekly Total 34.82 lbs
  
• Weekly Spent $0
  
• Yearly Total 442.01 lbs
  
• Veggie Garden was worth $886.09
  
• Fruit 1.69 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.

Batten Down the Hatches

Yesterday I spent a little time in the garden in hopes of keeping my plants upright during Irene. Irene will probably not be a hurricane when it hits (there still is a chance), but the forecasters think maybe we will get 50-60 mph winds. That is enough to damage the garden.

There isn't a lot I can do with my walls of green. The beans are seven feet tall and a fairly solid mass. I've found that toward the path they have been starting to lean into the bed. This is because the pole inside the bed tends to work its way farther down into the soil as the soil is fairly loose, but the soil outside of the bed is the path and gets compacted. So that pole can't work down. So slowly over time the trellis has started leaning into the bed at the end. The other end doesn't get walked on as much and seems to be fine.

So I put up a few more supports at that part of the trellis. As you can see I put two metal t-posts to hold it up here. I put one on another trellis that wasn't as bad. This one is the worst. The beans here are very very heavy. The runner beans really put on a huge amount of mass over time. I hope the trellises can survive the winds. I'm not too optimistic however. So I did a good picking of the dry beans. Any that had started drying came off, but there are a lot of very green beans in there. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Then I tied up the peppers and the eggplants. They all have bamboo stakes near them and some have a lot of heavy fruit still hanging on them. The winds could tear the branches right off even with the ties I put in, but it is the best I can do.

Wish me luck. Irene hits on Sunday and will be all gone by Monday.