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

Eggplant from plant #8

Welcome to Harvest Monday! This is a great blog hop sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions so hop on over and visit with gardeners from around the world.

I don't think I got pictures of everything this week, just too darn busy with work and this week I only got off on Sat, I ended up having to go in on Sun. My boss hates to give me overtime, because I've been there so long I have the highest wages, but it looks like I'll have about 8 hours of OT this week.


In the meantime, eggplant #8 produced it's first fruit and it is more a pinky lavender than the dark purple of the others. I will probably also save seeds from this one, even though it is later getting going than the others.

Tromboncinno, on Wed.

On Wednesday I bumped my head on this, the first Tromboncinno squash.

Same squash on Sat, 30" long

By the time I picked it Saturday morning, it was 30 inches long and the skin was still so tender I could pierce it with my fingernail.

Tromboncinno

When I looked up, I realized that the squash are running over the top of the shade cloth and are headed for the roof. I might have to climb up on the roof to pick them! But this one was fairly easy for me to get to.

I picked these two for the Farmer's Market. They were the only squash I sold, I think because there were so unusual. We had a glut of squash at the market this week.

Scallopini

I picked the first Scallopini early in the week. It was nice, not as watery as the Rond de Nice or other zucchini.

Rond de Nice & Scallopini

On Saturday I picked more Scallopini and a couple of Rond de Nice. I noticed on Sunday evening that there are several more Tromboncinno growing and there is a very large Rond de Nice which I will probably feed to the chickens. I don't know how I missed it!

Also this week I picked lots of small tomatoes and pulled some green onions. I didn't take a pick yet, but some of the red onions from unnamed sets had fallen over and the necks were drying up so I pulled them. They were the smallest in the bed. Looking at how things have grown there I think the problem might have been not enough sun as that bed is shaded during the cooler months and the size of the onions correspond with the sun pattern on the bed. That is, the biggest ones are at the front edge where they get the most sun and the smallest ones at the other end where they get the least sun. I will try onions again in a bed that gets more sun and see if that doesn't help. I'm just adding the onion weights as I use them, while waiting for them to finish curing.

This coming week there will probably be a lot of squash. I'm not that big on squash so will probably end up feeding a lot to the chickens, if I don't sell it. Egg production is still down, one hen is in a complete molt, but her new feathers are finally coming in and look very nice. Two of the other hens have slowed down in the heat, giving just one or two a day and some days none. And the other hen has been broody; her eggs hatched on Thurs, for pictures check out my Population Explosion post. That same post has pictures of the ducks and some of the other chickens also.