Mid Summer Re-Cap

Since I just got all of my harvest records for the year finally put into a spread sheet, I thought I'd celebrate by doing a bit of a recap of the garden year so far.

January was a bit sparse, due to a lack of planting in the fall. Most of the harvest was salad greens, with a few radishes, beets and turnips. Total weight was 7.54 pounds, worth $28.75. (at average equivalent retail pricing)

February was more of the same, with a wider variety of greens, herbs and edible flowers coming in, along with broccoli and pea shoots. February's harvest was 12.88 pounds, worth $56.47.

 March was more salad mix, along with carrots, turnips, celery. peas, green onions and mixed greens for cooking. March's harvest weighed 25.63 pounds, worth $81.05 March also saw the beginnings of the poultry flock, with the purchase of 4 hens and a rooster.

April gave lots more salad mix and cooking greens plus two types of snow peas, broccoli, asparagus and my first ever artichoke.

May gave even more greens, artichokes, strawberries, purple beans, potatoes and the first small tomatoes. May's harvest weighed 21.575 pounds and was worth $90.85.

In June the garden really started revving up, while for the most part tender salad greens were non-existent, many other things were coming right along, potatoes, carrots, cooking greens, lots of tomatoes along with peaches and plums. June's harvest weighed 101.88 pounds, worth $314.61. June also saw an expansion of the poultry flock with 5 ducklings.

July's harvest topped June's by a few pounds and a greater variety. More tomatoes, corn, eggplant, squash, summer apples and herbs. July's harvest totals were 112.41 pounds worth $195.49. July saw a large leap in the poultry flock with the acquisition of 4 Welsummer poults, 11 Muscovy ducks and a broody hen hatching out 4 chicks.

Total year to date, from an average size yard, not fully developed or planted yet, is 311 pounds of fruits and vegetables worth $747.22. And of course the year is only half over. I have a feeling that August to December will bring in even more than the first half of the year did. For one thing, fall will bring lots of pumpkins and winter squash. Also I'll be planting a lot of crops for the fall and winter months as well as things that will winter over and be harvested early next spring.

I haven't yet rounded up all my receipts and tallied up expenses, but I'm pretty sure that even with the high price of water this summer I'll come out to the good when all is said and done.

Harvest Monday

lettuce, kale, tatsoi and one lone mache plant

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a great blog hop hosted by Daphne's Dandelions. Stop over there and enjoy visiting with gardeners from around the world!

This week has been warm (for Feb.), dry and very windy. Also very crazy at my work and this week isn't much better. Going on 8 days straight tonight and the past two being graveyard. Looking forward to having 3 days off at the end though. Also looking forward, they are forecasting rain around Wed. and we sure need it badly.

Mostly harvested the usual salad greens this week, many types of lettuce, kale, cilantro, sorrel, chickweed, spinach, along with a couple of tatsoi and one lone mache plant. I did discover that I have mache volunteers in one bed, but they are tiny yet.

Here's a few more pics from inside the greenhouse. You can see some construction details in my post from the other day, Simple Homemade Greenhouse.

Blue bellied lizard

I have several small lizards and a couple of spiders running around in the greenhouse. This lizard fell into one of the big tubs and couldn't get out so I rescued it. It's belly is like electric blue.

The strawberries are beginning to bloom

Salad Bowel lettuce

This 24 inch pot of Salad Bowl lettuce gave me 6 oz in one picking.

tomato blossoms

The crazy Yellow Marble tomato is blooming!




And now I am off to bed; one more night of graveyard....

Harvest Monday & Seed Giveaway Winner

Baby lettuce and edible viola blossoms

Welcome to Harvest Monday! This blog hop is sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions. I do hope you will stop over there and see everyone else's harvests; it is a lot of fun to see fresh homegrown food from around the world!

So a recap of the weeks harvesting, mostly a lot of baby lettuce, which is good considering that Organic Spring Mix is over $5 a pound at the store and I can eat at least two pounds a week.  I've been tossing viola blossoms into the salad mix too. I tried my big purple pansies and they were OK but nothing to brag about. The violas have a slightly sweet taste with a lingering floral essence. They are more bite sized, too.

Baby lettuce and Easter Egg Radishes

Another day there were several Easter Egg Radishes to pull along with the baby lettuces.

Radish, mizuna, spinach, lettuce

On Sunday there was another radish, some mizuna and some baby spinach in addition to the lettuce.  There was also 2 ounces of little tomatoes. I've moved the tomato pot into the greenhouse for more protection. We haven't had a hard freeze yet but when we do I expect the tomatoes will be done for, even in the greenhouse.

Yellow Marble and Princepe Borghese Tomatoes

Harvest Totals Week of November 21-27
Lettuce and other salad greens   2 pounds, 2 oz.
Easter Egg Radish                                     1.5 oz
Tomatoes                                                   2  oz
TOTAL            2 pounds, 4.5 ounces






Now I know everyone wants to know about the seed giveaway! To read more about how I'm doing this you can read this blog post. To read more about this weeks giveaway go to  my very first Seedy Saturday post.  If you want to get in on the action stop in next week for Seedy Saturday. I am trying to get the Mr. Linky thingy so that others with seeds to give away can join in but have been having technical difficulties. I will keep trying but if not I might allow links in the comments for that day.

So now, the Winner is......drumroll please...... BeeGirl! I'll be sending you an email through your profile, but if you don't get it be sure to contact me with your snail mail address so I can send your beet seeds to you! Congratulations!

Building Soil

mmm there's supposed to be steps in there someplace!

First off, Happy Turkey Day. Today I am remembering Thanksgivings past when I lived 1,000 miles away from any family. But we always had a good holiday. Some of those years everything on the table came from our own place except the flour for the pie crust and any sugar used. The meat, milk, eggs, vegetables, pickles and relishes were all homegrown. There were always some bachelors that didn't have any where to go and we would feed them, along with a young couple who were also far from their family. We traded and bartered with these folks all the time and many of them lent a hand when we built our house. Good times indeed.

Today was a very nice day outside so I did some more clean up work out back. There really is a set of steps in that mess someplace! It's buried in silt and leaves that washed down during the July 4th storm.

Shredded tree prunings with fertilizer sprinkled over.

A big part of what I actually worked on today was to continue shredding up weed trees. I also worked on soil building in a new garden bed right next to the sidewalk. I plan to do an informal espaliered apple tree on the fence with perhaps strawberries or flowers and herbs as an under planting. So I loosened the dirt up and piled tree chips over the area. Then I put on some blood meal for nitrogen to help decompose the wood faster, some potash because the soil has none, and some seaweed meal for trace minerals.  I watered all that in.

Silt and oak leaf compost spread over the top

Then I began mucking out that set of steps. They are buried in fine silt mixed with decomposed desert oak leaves. I tossed it on the growing bed, right over the wood chips.

and mulched with fall leaves.

Then I topped off the bed with a bag of free leaves from a friend. I'll probably pick up a new apple tree around January when they come into the garden centers. By then most of the raw organics I've added should be pretty well decomposed. The next time I'm working over the worm box I'll grab a few and drop them in the bed to help things along.

Since the garden is a bit higher these days than the sidewalk I set some old boards right along it to keep the soil and leaves from washing off onto the sidewalk. I also managed to set the posts and string most of the fence (only about 8 feet). There is one small gap next to the green house that I have to cover and I have to make and hang a gate. I haven't decided what I'm going to make a gate out of. I have several options; a couple of different sorts of wood or a wood frame with wire fence or perhaps a piece of junk art.

HOW MUCH LAND DOES IT TAKE TO GROW YOUR OWN FOOD?

Home Grown Goodness

How much land does it take to grow your own food? Well that covers a lot of territory and there are a lot of variables. Are you talking about ALL of your own food? Are you talking about a typical American diet or a strict vegan diet? Are you talking about a 6 month growing season or do you only have 4 months or maybe you are luck and have 9 months.

I give you some general ideas and some resources to check out in my new article: HOW MUCH LAND DOES IT TAKE TO GROW YOUR OWN FOOD?

In the meantime I will be working on this question myself, here in my edible garden. It will probably take me a couple of more years to get my soil into the best shape for doing it, but I'm hoping I'll be totally sufficient in vegetables by the end of 2012, at least 50% sufficient in fruit by 2014 and totally and completely sufficient in veggies, fruit, meat, milk and eggs by 2020. So what are your goals for the next few years?

Today's Harvest

Yellow Marble & Princepe Borghese tomatoes

Several tomato plants volunteered in this pot, mostly Yellow Marbles, but surprise, also a Princepe Borghese, an Italian drying tomato. I picked about two ounces of them today.

Lettuce mix, baby carrots, Hopi Purple Pod Beans

Since the days are getting shorter and the nights cooler I know it's just a matter of time until ol' Jack Frost runs by and wipes out the bean plants. So today I picked all the beans and pulled the vines out. I need to get more peas planted. Besides tomatoes today's harvest was 6 ounces of baby lettuce, 2 ounces of baby carrots (roots only) and 5 pounds, 14 ounces of beans in their pods. I don't have time to shell them before I go to work but suspect the shelled weight will be somewhere around 2 1/2 pounds.

Each Monday Daphne's Dandelions has a Harvest Monday post, so I'll add my link over there. Happy Growing! 

Harvesting Has Begun ;-)

Shelly beans, lettuce, beets, Oct 21, 2011

Very strange. I know that I wrote this post yesterday, and that I published it, yet it is not showing up on the blog nor is it in my list of posts or showing up as a draft. Just strangely disappeared. So if in the future you see this twice, you will know it is because the original post magically re-appeared somehow! (edit: I have discovered that somehow the missing post has appeared on my art blog. Have no idea at all how I managed to do that!)

Anyway this was my harvest Friday, 2 pounds, 6 ounces of Hopi Purple Pod beans that shelled out to 8 ounces of beans, 3 ounces of mixed baby lettuces and 1 pound 12 ounces of beets & greens, the roots alone were 10 ounces. All of it quite yummy! Oh I love my garden!

Fresh raw Hopi Purple Pod Beans

Some folks are puzzled by the term 'shelly beans'. This refers to eating fresh those beans that otherwise you would eat as dry beans, like pintos, kidneys, black beans, etc. As you can see I picked some pods that weren't as mature as they should have been and the beans are a little small. The pink ones are about right. The ideal time to pick shelly beans is when they have completely filled the pod and the pod walls have thinned out but are not yet beginning to dry up.

Pea Planting

Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea

In 2009 I planted 6 varieties of peas. I am a fool for peas and between me and the grand kids we ate all the garden could give.

I wrote an article comparing them for Associated Content. I could probably plant peas now, but I'm not going to since I will be leaving soon on my vacation. The weather should be a lot cooler when I get home, so I will plant peas in mid-September instead.

Here are a few photos of the peas from 2009. Enjoy. (Unfortunately I didn't label the photos with the variety, and I don't remember now what some of them looked like!)

Bleushokker, a soup pea

I'm not sure which one this is, either Sweet Magnolia or Bleushokker

Maxi Golt, a shelling pea