Harvest Notes: 9/18/12

The garden is definitely starting to slow down, though you won't be able to tell from this post.  I have been pulling the tomato plants one by one as they slowly succumb to blight - I'm down to five from 14 - so there have been a lot of bowls of half-ripe and green tomatoes around my kitchen lately.  I've also lost a couple pepper plants (I'm not sure why), and the squash and eggplant are on their way out as well.  Here's the tally since my last note:

• 1 tromb. squash
• 1 zucchini
• 3 yellow squash
• 2 small buttercup squash
• 12 red pepper
• 2 green peppers
• 54 small peppers (most half-ripe)
• 10 chilis
• 28 small chilis 
• 1 rosa bianca eggplant
• 5 small eggplant
• 1 small watermelon
• 3 handfuls green beans
• 9 lbs, 7 oz ripe tomatoes
• 6 lbs, 11 oz green tomatoes
• 1 small head valerie lettuce
• 3 carrots

Harvest Notes: 8/29/2012

I've started pulling the tomato plants out of the garden, as some of them are pretty much finished and just spreading spores to the other plants.  That means I've been bringing in a few green ones, which I decided to record separately.  I'm also bringing in a lot of buggy and bug-eaten produce lately, and many of my tomatoes and peppers have "cloudy spot" - little white splotches in the outer layer caused by beetle feeding.  Still, the garden is remarkably productive.

• 6 tromboncino squash
• 19 lbs tomatoes
• 2 lbs, 8 oz green tomatoes
• 20 cucumbers
• 25 red peppers
• 3 mystery (would-be-butternut) squash
• 6 green peppers
• 4 yellow squash
• 3 zucchini
• 3 small japanese eggplant
• 17 lbs, 15 oz potatoes
• 36 chilis
• 6 small purple peppers
• 1 watermelon
• a ton (maybe 40 plants?) of basil
• 2 crazy carrots

Harvest Notes: 8/9/12

So much food has come in since I've been away...and quite a bit before we left, as well.  Most of it has been recorded, I think.  I owe a big thanks to Ellie, for taking care of my garden while I was gone, and for recording what she picked, too.


Harvested by Ellie:

1 tiny eggplant
3 medium, 6 small bell peppers (the “small” were really tiny since I thought I was eliminating the ones with black mold, but really they just had sun scald)
11 lbs tomatoes (I weighed the first 8 pounds, then estimated after that)
3 sprigs basil
1 small and 1 medium yellow squash
2 large cucumber
1/2 pound (very rough estimate) chili peppers (Several developed black spots, so I picked those even though they weren’t red yet)


Harvested by me at various times over the last three weeks:

7+ lbs cucumbers (several just got thrown in the bowl without being weighed)
15 green peppers
19 chili peppers (anyone want chili peppers?)
 14 red peppers
8 eggplant (mostly small japanese, but also two fair-sized rosa blancas)
3 yellow squash
2 zucchini
3 carrots
10-ish onions (I pulled the last of them before we left and dried them while we were out, then forgot to count them before I mixed them in with the others)
2 watermelons (small, like personal-sized)
4 sprigs basil
28+ lbs tomatoes (these have also been getting chucked in the bowl all week without weighing)


Seeds I've collected this week:

lettuce (from the backyard garden)
coneflower
marigold
lazy susan?  (i'm not sure about these...)
cilantro (I let last year's biggest plant go to seed - so much seed)


I'm a little confused why my cilantro seed looks just like the cilantro seed I buy in the packets, which doesn't look like coriander (seeds, for you Brits) that I buy at the grocery store.  They look similar, but the cilantro seeds that I grew are not spherical, as though they've been deflated.  Does anyone know anything about this?  I've yet to test them, but I think they will germinate.  I think.

Harvest Notes: 7/15/12

The first-planted row of tomatoes are just starting to really produce.  Also this week I dug the rest of the Yukon Gold potatoes.  (They're a much earlier variety than I realized - a point in their favor!)

• 8 lbs, 13 oz potatoes
• 8 lbs, 6 oz tomatoes 
• 10 onions
• 9 chilis

The last harvest notes definitely should have included some sort of note about the raspberries from our yard.  We picked a couple handfuls daily for a couple weeks, and the birds had an absolute feast.  It was a really good raspberry year!  Our berries are pretty small - probably because the brambles don't get enough light in between our house and the neighbor's to make full-size berries - but they are plentiful.

Harvest Notes

The good news is that the harvest this year is really great so far.  The bad news is that it's really been all I can do to pick it, clean it, and fit it into the fridge.  Weighing and even counting have been out of the question!  Here is my best guesstimate about what I've picked since the last harvest note:

• 12 broccoli heads (20 total for the spring), plus several small side-heads
• 14 spinach plants (I planted 27 total for the spring, but 1 died after transplanting)
• 5 heads romaine (12 total for the spring, minus 1 still in the garden)
• 14 heads loose-leaf lettuce (I planted 27, lost 5, and still have 8 in the garden)
• 4 gallon-size bags (cleaned) of pac choi
• 3 bowls of sugar snap peas

I remember when N and R helped me plant the loose-leaf lettuce.  It took up such a small space in the garden, I was tempted to plant more!

Harvest Notes



Celeriac, romaine lettuce, loose-leaf lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and strawberries

The harvests the last few weeks have been great!  I'm starting to clear out the spring crops to make way for summer ones, so suddenly we are eating fresh produce every day and not keeping up with it.

8 broccoli heads

1 celeriac root (small)

12 spinach plants

6 heads romaine lettuce

3 heads + lots of trimmings loose-leaf lettuce

handful of strawberries

1 sugar snap pea (of course this didn't make it home)

There is another round of spinach in the garden still, plus more lettuce and broccoli, and the peas are just starting to produce.  The strawberries are not doing well this year.  I've done a lousy job keeping the irises under control in the bed, so they aren't getting much sun or breeze and the botrytis and slugs are running amok.

Good Things in the Garden



Some really good things have been happening in the garden lately, so I thought I'd share.

1. R picked the first ripe strawberry from the bed in front of our house this afternoon.  It's fun to see how much he likes picking them, and exciting that he seems to actually remember it from last year.
2. 

   

   Happy grapevine (background) surrounded by floppy asparagus

   The new grapevine is growing!

3. 

   Broccoli plant, meet foot.

   The broccoli plants are huge!  And we picked the first head today, several times bigger than last year's disappointing pickings.
4. 

   

   Romaine lettuce head

   

   Valerie lettuce, and weeds

   The lettuce deluge continues.  But in new news, the romaine appears to be making heads after all.  After consulting my guinea pig - I mean taste-tester! - I have decided that commercial growers must discard those thick outer leaves I was picking before.  Which explains how they get the lettuce heads so darn clean!
5. 

   

   R really likes to help with picking

   

   Happy spinach, with interplanted peppers

   The spinach is looking great - better than I've ever grown, thanks to the lovely long spring we've had.  R and I picked a bunch on Tuesday and used it to make yummy pizzas.  This was the first time we've tried any of it outside of salads, and it was really tasty!  It has a very spinachy appearance, and I was expecting it to be too bitter or overtly spinachy, but it is lovely.  We definitely want to grow this kind again next year.  (If I know what it is; I think it's Melody.)
6. 

   

   One large celeriac - the rest are 2 inches tall

   The celeriac that sprouted last fall is quite large and is starting to make little flower buds.  Celeriac is a biennial, like carrots; it grows a bunch of foliage during the first year of its life, storing the energy produced by the leaves in a large root.  During the second year it uses that energy to produce flowers and seeds, so the best time to pick it is at the end of the first year.  (Don't ask me why I thought this was a fall crop, I honestly don't know!)  At any rate, I think I'm going to pull this one before the flowers go much further.  I don't know how much root it could possibly have grown over the winter, but I guess we'll find out!

7. 

   R helped find and photograph this ladybug

   I'm seeing so many ladybugs at the community garden this year!  R is fascinated by my claim that I like them because they eat other bugs.  He points them out to me every time we go and asks me if they eat other bugs.  When I say yes he replies, "I don't know why, dough," which is his way of asking for more information.  What can I say?  I don't know why, either!
8. 
   Another gardener at the community garden, M, planted a row of strawberries about this time last year.  It was too late to get any berries out of them then, but boy are they doing well this year!  I am definitely thinking about investing the time and space to plant some of my own.
9. I saw the first pea blossom on one of the plants at the community garden this morning. Mmmm...

Harvest Notes

Yay!  Some of the year's first harvests are starting to come in:

• 2.75 oz cilantro
• 0.5 oz spinach (mixed flat and curly leaf)
• 6.0 oz lettuce (mixed romaine, valerie & volunteer)
• 3lbs 8 oz cabbage (cleaned and shredded)

R and I had a lot of fun this morning washing and chopping cabbage to make sauerkraut.  Then we washed and chopped some more, with less fun.  Then we washed and chopped the last third of it as fast as we possibly could, just to get it finished already!

Note to self about next year's fall garden:
I picked about 10-12 cabbage "heads" - more than I needed for the kraut I wanted
Next year, more carrots and broccoli, greens - less cabbage

Harvest Notes

Early-picked carrot from the community garden

I really didn't spend enough time in the garden in last summer this year, mostly due to the mosquitoes.  Harvests right now are pretty thin - I should have lettuce and spinach right now, but they were planted too late and didn't make it.  I did get a handful of little potatoes from some that surprised me by sprouting in my container during late summer (see Apparently I'm Incorrigible), and the carrots at the community garden are turning out really good.  A few are stubby or forked, but many are long and beautiful and N says (with surprise), "They're really good!"

8 oz potatoes
8 carrots (more to come)
a lot of parsely and cilantro



Potatoes from backyard



There's still cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli in the community garden with the rest of the carrots and next year's garlic sprouts.  Some of the cauliflower is trying to produce flowers; I think both it and the broccoli were planted later than they should have been.  The cabbage is just gorgeous, so maybe in the spring I'll have a bumper cabbage crop!

Long Overdue Harvest Notes

I've had a running harvest tally on my kitchen whiteboard for much too long now - several if the items on this list were last harvested some time ago.

6 handfuls green beans
1 lb, 12 oz zucchini
5 lb, 10 oz tomato
4 lb, 2 oz potato
2 bulbs garlic
1 lb, 8 oz yellow squash
3 lb, 5 oz winter squash
4 oz green pepper
many chili peppers - 1 plant is definitely enough for us
5 large basil plants (I potted one to bring in for the winter)

I picked all my basil from the garden



Beautiful spring-planted cabbage


There are several gorgeous heads of cabbage in my home garden that I'd like to try making sauerkraut with, but I've never done it before.  Anyone ever tried it?

Harvest Notes

Wow!  It's been a while since I did this! 

The weather recently has been really hot, with several days last week that topped 100 degrees.  I didn't realize that in such hot weather most of my plants have trouble producing seeds - the corn kernels abort, flowers fall off of the squash, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and the tomatoes that are already growing won't produce red pigment to let me know that they are ripe.  This last was a particular problem, as I left many tomatoes longer than I should have and had to throw a dozen or so out that were rotting on the vine.  Also, when temperatures dropped down into the 80's this week I had a LOT of tomatoes to pick.  Here's the tally since my last harvest notes entry:

14 (imperfect) ears of corn
3.5 oz hardneck garlic
4 handfuls green beans
5 oz (1) potato - I dug this up for fun
3 lbs, 1 oz cucumber
7 lbs, 5 oz zucchini
7 lbs, 3 oz yellow squash
26 lbs, 14 oz tomatoes - about half of these were picked yesterday!
~ 10 chili peppers
2 bell peppers (lost to squirrels, but I'm taking credit anyway - grrr!)
1 kung pao pepper

Happy vacation to me!

Harvest Notes

So much good food is coming in from the garden these days!  Since my last harvest note we've picked:

5 lbs, 14 oz yellow squash
4 lbs, 1 oz cucumbers
2 lbs, 12 oz tomatoes (including the first couple big ones)
4 lbs, 6 oz zucchini
2 oz cauliflower
2 sprigs dill
2 oz green beans (they're just starting to come in!)
0.5 oz chili pepper

Harvest Notes

I've gotten a little behind in my harvest notes, though I also haven't had too much picking to do lately.  Here's everything I kept records for.  The garlic and raspberries are guesstimates, because we gave away some garlic and R picks raspberries every time we go outside.


~2 pint raspberries
2 oz lettuce
~10 oz garlic
2 lbs, 6 oz zuccini
1 lbs, 13 oz yellow squash
3 oz tomatoes (cherry & grape)
8 oz cucumbers

Harvest Notes

If anyone got excited by long blogging hiatus, I'm sorry to let you down but there is still no baby.  I am now officially "overdue", though our due date was determined by ultrasound at 10 weeks, so who knows?

Meanwhile, we've been picking things in the garden that haven't been reported on the blog:

2oz cilantro
10oz celery
~1 lb sugar snap peas
~4 pints strawberries

I'm really guessing on those last two, as they almost never make it into the kitchen to be measured.  My strawberries are doing really well this year, and I'm not sure if it's because I followed the extension service advice to cut them down to the crown last year after the main crop was produced, or if it's just because of our unusually cool spring.  In any event, I am losing more berries to bugs than to borytritis, and that makes me happy.  I didn't even spray for bugs this year, figuring that R is big enough to get into the berries sometime when I'm not looking and not quite big enough to understand why we have to wash them before eating.  Of course, we are keeping them awfully well-picked this year (they get checked at least twice a day!), which I'm told helps discourage the bugs.

Over the holiday weekend N's brother and sister-in-law brought their two girls over and we all enjoyed fresh pickings.  Sometimes I forget that I used to be uncomfortable eating unwashed produce straight out of the garden, and that others may still be.  This is one food hangup that kids never seem to suffer from, which reinforces my current opinion that the things we usually wash off of supermarket food in our kitchen sinks didn't come from the ground.

Harvest Note

Last weekend I picked the following to take on a vacation with friends:

1 lb lettuce
5 oz spinach

N felt the greens were a little past their prime (I cut down several of the plants that overwintered in my cold frame), but others (politely?) said they were great.

Harvest Notes

2 oz lettuce
2 oz spinach

My First Official Harvest

Lettuce and spinach picked from my low tunnel

Here is my first official harvest of 2011: a small bowl of lettuce and spinach from my low tunnel, picked to eat with hamburgers on Saturday night.  In an attempt at improved record-keeping (to help justify the many $$ spent on my garden each year) I decided to weigh everything that made it to the kitchen this year; this harvest was about 2oz.  At least, it was before I found the nasty, slimy, fat slug on the underside of the giant leaf on top.  I made N throw half that leaf out.  Logically, I know the slug could have crawled over any and all of these leaves, but somehow I just can't make myself eat something a slug was just picked off of.  Yuuuuuuughghghghghghgh.