Harvest Monday

home grown celery

Welcome to another Harvest Monday! Sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions this is a great blog hop to visit with gardeners from all around the world. (you don't have to be a blogger to go visiting, either).

With the lovely warm days and cool but not freezing nights the garden is really picking up, both out doors and in the greenhouse.

Besides my usual salad mix of lettuces, chickweed, lambs quarters, chard, spinach, sorrel, cilantro, I had a few mache plants this week too, just forgot to get a pic of them.

I cut one whole celery plant as a veggie for soup because it looked like it just might be trying to bolt. I haven't bothered with any blanching strategy on this celery, so I don't know if possible bolting or not blanching was responsible for the slightly bitter flavor or something else. But it wasn't bitter in the soup, so it's all good.

tiny broccoli head

The broccoli continues to put out side shoots but they also have just dime to quarter size heads on them. I've decided I don't really care, I just slice up the whole shoot, stem, leaf, itty bitty floret and all. Actually they say the leaves have more nutrition in them than the heads anyway.

snow peas

I've been picking a handful of snow peas every couple of days from the plants in the greenhouse.

greens!

I really love the Giant Red Mustard; a bit too spicy to eat raw in salad, it's wonderfully mild and sweet when steamed or braised. I've been picking mixed greens for cooking a couple of days a week. This photo show from left to right, Giant Red Mustard, a tend tip from wild Lamb's Quarters and some green chard called Perpetual Spinach. I usually chop them all together and braise in chicken stock, sometimes adding a handful or two of shredded cooked chicken meat at the last minute. Some times I also have kale in the mix.

Chicken and greens!

Yellow turnips, white & purple carrots, red & white radishes

There are still a few root crops in the garden, some Golden Globe turnips, some white carrots (maybe Belgian whites), some Purple Dragon carrots, radishes of several colors. The carrots were volunteers at the edge of a bed from plants grown last in 2009. I got busy and forgot about them....





And then I have literally hundreds of baby plants indoors under the lights, you can see some of them here in my post about soil blocks.

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.

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! 

HOME GROWN FOOD SECURITY October 3, 2009

HOME GROWN FOOD SECURITY

October 3, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Some of my family & friends do not understand my passion for my garden and canning and preserving the food I grow. To me this is my own form of  Social Security. If things go to pot me and mine will be provided for. If, when I retire, the system doesn’t give me enough money to live on, I will be fine, because I have taken on the responsibility of providing for myself.  Some object that it is cheaper to buy things at the store. That could be, in some cases, modern agriculture and mass production have given us cheap food and goods. However, cheaper is not necessarily better. Some of these systems are actually making us sick! Look at Mad Cow disease, swine flu, bird flu. There is evidence that genetically modified foods are very bad for us [and, if given a choice between natural and GM grain, animals will eat the first and refuse the second! Lets be as smart as the animals!] Besides all these reasons, I enjoy what I do. It gives me a great sense of pride and accomplishment to look at the shelves in my kitchen, bursting with food I put there myself. Besides which, there are many things I can make at home that you cannot possibly buy at any price.
Bean soup, potatoe soup, dilly beans, green beans, pickled peppers, tomato sauce, pickled eggs… there’s more you can’t see, blueberries, apple sauce, jams, jellies, pickles, sauces, marinades. This year not everything was grown at home. I took advantage of terrific sales and the farmer’s market. But next year most of the cupboards will be filled with home grown goodness.  Also not in this picture are the things that I’ve dried, plums, apples, raisins, tomatoes, jerky, herbs for seasoning and tea.