Harvest Monday: June 18th

My best harvest so far! Mostly because I decided it was high time to start pulling things so I could plant more tomatoes.  I even remembered to take photos this time.

Saturday alone I managed to harvest over 7 lbs. of veggies.

3 lbs. strawberries

A pile of celery

Some pearl onions that were starting to look like golf balls sitting on the dirt.

Garlic braid, I have no idea what variety this is but it doesn't seem to get very big, the tops had all fallen over.

The last of the Swiss chard and first planting of lettuce, and the first of Alex's carrots.

My garlic were ready according to everything I know (which isn't much), but the bulbs were very small and even the largest only appeared to have about 4 cloves to it.  Oh well, maybe next year I'll plant some other variety, these were given to me last year by a friend and i figured I'd give them a shot.

Alex is super excited about the carrots finally coming up, the Sugarsnax are fabulous and the first to arrive.  I think Little Finger and Atomic Red could wait a bit longer to harvest.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions and is a place to share your harvests and what you do with those harvests with the garden blogger community.

Next week, more strawberries, peas, onions and carrots (I'm hoping!).

Garden Update

 This week I pulled a lot of kale and a few broccoli and celery and finally got a chance to plant some more tomatoes.  I also put in a couple cucumbers, peppers, and eggplants.

Back to front: peppers, cukes, eggplants.

 All of this transplanting gave me a chance to see how the starts were doing in their pots.  Quite a few that were planted 2 to a pot were rootbound, so I divided them into the newly empty pots. 

Cucumbers and the largest tomato plants.

 Not long after posting about the health of my little plants, the tomatoes started having their leaves blacken and crisp up and then fall off.  I'm guessing it's some type of fungus; the grow room maintains a temperature between 68 and 82 degrees, but when it's hot and humid outside it becomes very humid in there.  So all of the plants got moved outside, for sunshine and cool nighttime temperatures.  I'm brewing some compost tea to spritz them with as well, and if that fails to improve things I'll try garlic water spritz too.  I'm hoping one thing or the other will help them to survive this.

Yellowing cucumber leaves.

 Strangely, all of my pickling cucumbers are still in good health but the Lemon and Marketmore 97 are having yellowing leaves and gray spots.  This always seems to happen to my cucumbers.  All the cucumber disease pictures online look pretty much the same though, so it's hard to tell what might be causing it.  I may take one of the plants to the Farmer's Market next weekend and ask the Extension Agents there if they can identify it.

Sweet Million afflicted by fungal disease.

 The Sweet Million was the hardest hit by the fungus, it has been transplanted into the garden now and I'm hoping it will perk up nicely.  At this rate I am beginning to doubt I'll even have tomatoes this year.

Cabbage head developing

 Meanwhile, in the garden proper, the cabbages are growing strong and have small but firm heads coming in.  The cauliflower are absolutely huge, but still show no signs of heading.

Pearl onions

 While the pearl onions are growing well and beginning to show their glossy white bulbs, the spanish white onions are not bulbing at all. 

Pea flowers!

 Finally the peas are flowering, they seem late to me, though it's probably just my imagination.

Zucchini

 My one and only zucchini is ridiculously healthy and putting out it's first male flower.  There are several female flowers on it as well but they are not quite ready to bloom.

Garden from the East side.  The thing above the fence is the butterfly bush.

All in all everything is doing well.  I'm concerned about the tomatoes, but I have faith that once they are planted they will recover well.  I am anxious to get them into the ground and be done with all this waiting.

Harvest Monday: June 4th

Despite the muggy, overcast days and rain over night I have been harvesting quite a bit this week.  I really need to stay on top of taking pictures of my harvests though.  Over the weekend I harvested a few heads of lettuce for the house, and several more for my mom.  I also sent my mom a pile of kale, pearl onions, celery, and some fresh herbs.  All in all, she got a full reusable grocery bag full of veggies weighing in at just under 3 lbs.

This morning I got my very first harvest of strawberries too!  Three whole berries, one of which the slugs had already ravaged...but two out of three ain't bad.  I believe these are Benton strawberries, and they are delicious and require very little on my part, except picking.

First strawberries

In other news, I hit the jackpot at the produce market the other day.  Bought a 20 lb. bag of organic carrots for $11, and two pounds of white mushrooms for $0.99/lb.  I would have gotten more mushrooms but I bought up all they had.  I spent all day Saturday peeling, slicing, blanching, and freezing the carrots.  Now I have 21 half quarts of carrots in the freezer, all ready to be used in meals.  Best $11 I've spent in a while.  Those carrots will likely last us all year; and the ones in the garden will be for fresh eating.  I also washed, sliced, and sauteed the mushrooms to get 8 cups of sauteed mushrooms to put in the freezer.  I'm very happy about the mushrooms and will be on the lookout for more deals like that, no one in the house eats them but me and I find that they often go bad in the bottom of the fridge when I buy them fresh. 

Now if only the sun would come back, I could be outside working in the garden again.  The blackberries aren't going to chop themselves.

Harvest Monday is sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions.

Ewww! Slugs! Garden Update

All this wet weather has led to a major slug problem.  One of my full grown lettuce plants disappeared yesterday, nothing but scraps were left.  Luckily the culprit stayed at the scene of the crime long enough for me to catch it.  A slug the size of my thumb! I chucked him over the fence at the new house in that lot... I didn't mean to hit the house, I just forgot it was there for a minute! 

After a few minutes of slug hunting and removal I figured I was better off sprinkling some more bait around, some of the beasties were so tiny I just knew I wasn't going to get them all.  They eat so much!  So I baited around the most susceptible plants; lettuce, chard, cabbage.  Hopefully the bait will be more appealing than the plants for a bit.  I really should just harvest more of the lettuce before it's too late, but I already have 3 heads in the fridge and wet weather does not make me crave salad, so it may be in there a few days.

This morning I removed the cover from the pumpkin and bean bed too.  The plants had grown high enough to poke through the chicken wire and touch the row cover.  I figured I should remove it before they started growing around the wire, or got powdery mildew from contact with the wet fabric.  The plants all look great, but I damaged a couple bush beans removing the cover.  I'll just replace them this weekend, there were only a couple, and the seeds won't be far behind the ones that have already sprouted.  The pumpkins and zucchini in the bed are looking healthy and are showing some growth since they were planted. 

This weather is depressing, and rough on the garden too, can't wait for the sun to come back.

Harvest Monday: 5/21/12

I actually harvested this on Sunday, but wanted to take part in Harvest Monday for once.  This week's major harvest was kale, Swiss chard, and onions.  The kale in the whiskey barrel has been struggling and just not keeping up with the kale in the beds, since I didn't amend the soil in the barrels at all it was understandable.  So I did the merciful thing and just pulled it out.  Which actually worked out well since it was raining and I felt like making some soup for dinner.  Zuppa Toscana was the soup of the day; I did fancy it up a bit with the two Walla Walla onions I have been trying to get a bulb from for the past three years, a few good sized chard leaves, the kale, and some beautiful oyster mushrooms and new potatoes from the farmer's market.  Served with a hearty loaf of sourdough, also from the farmer's market, it made the perfect treat on a wet Spring day.

Sunday's harvest, onions, kale, and chard.

I also took a little time to thin down the celery, when I transplanted them they were packed into their containers pretty tightly.  Now that it's obvious which plants are going to do well I yanked out the littler ones.  After rinsing them well I tossed them into my stock bag in the freezer.

Celery thinnings.

 A whole different kind of harvest was going on yesterday as well.  I spotted a ladybug flying past, tracked him to the shed, picked him up and set him on my aphid-plagued mini rose.  I actually spent more than a few minutes watching him harvest aphids like a kid gobbles candy on Halloween.  An hour later he was gone, but I'm hoping he decided it was worth his while to stay in the vicinity.

Phone camera does not do justice to this little guy.

 **Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, stop by to see who else has posted this week, or add your garden harvest to the list.  Have a great Monday everyone!

Always Late to the Party

Many other garden bloggers take part in Harvest Monday, hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, but I tend to forget to post that sort of thing.  So since I am posting about my harvests I thought I'd give Daphne a nod, even though it's actually Tuesday.

Kale, chard, and onions

Ta-Dah!  Ok, so it's not much... the onions needed thinned so I pulled the small ones and those that were a bit too close, then snipped off the largest of the kale and chard leaves.  They were fabulous in quiche last night.  Total weight for this harvest was 1.5 ozs.  Total weight harvested for 2012: 15 ozs.

Not to worry though, most of that was lettuce, which may as well be weightless.  Once the peas and strawberries start coming in the pounds will start adding up!