Harvest Monday - Aug 27, 2012

This week saw nice harvests from the garden.  A major portion of beets were harvested, they were mostly smaller size, but it has been a couple years to actually harvest some from the garden.  So they were very welcome!  In the previous years, beets have been eaten by voles(or some such tunnel digger) and deer.  This week also saw me blanching and freezing long beans for the first time.  They were getting to be larger quantities and along with bush beans a tad too much beans to eat:) 

Visit Daphne's Dandelions for others' harvests of the week.

Beets

 

Bush beans, cilantro

 

Swiss chard and beet greens

 

Long beans, cukes and 1 cherokee purple tomato

 

Kale and tomatoes

 

Beans, fenugreek leaves, eggplant

 

Long beans

 

Zucchini and lone tomato

 

Beans, cukes, tomato, long beans

 

 

 

Garlic and Onions

Garlic and onions were harvested a few weeks back and left in the basement to dry.  They were finally dry enough for me to clean them up and present them neatly!

While sorting out garlic, I came across something that I found very interesting.  Remember when I mentioned in my previous posts that we were on vacation for the better part of garlic growth and didn't trim(and eat) the garlic scapes.  When we had returned the garlic plants were all dried off along with the scapes.  Ok, so this is what I came across as the stalks dried.

If you can't see it with all the dried off stuff, check out what I have here-

Bulbils!  They're the tiniest garlic cloves ever...

 

I googled and found out that these bulbils are another way of growing garlic!  I am so excited to try this.  Although it takes two seasons to get full sized bulbs, I literally have hundreds of seeds here to expand my garlic harvests! 

 

After sorting out the garlic into good, bad and the ugly - I've kept aside the good garlic for replanting, the bad to be used in kitchen and the ugly goes into recycling garden waste.

 

The good garlic - 30 of them

 

The bad -  smaller and damaged to be eaten

 

The ugly - rest of the plant to be tossed into yard waste

 

Now onto the onions.  This year, my onions(as usual) are mostly medium to small.  I have no idea how to grow large onions.  If anyone has any tips let me know. 

 

I've always been intrigued by the pictures of braided onions and this time, while working on the dried stalks, decided to start experimenting with braiding my very own red onions.  I meant to check out Daphne's blog as she had explained sometime back, how to braid onions and garlic, but since I kept going anyways, this is how it turned out. 

 

Not bad, huh?

 

There's all 4 of them!

 

Rest of the smaller onions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harvest Monday - Aug 20, 2012

The weather this week is much cooler than previous weeks.  This morning we were around 60F.  Boy, does it feel like fall already!  I haven't been harvesting very many tomatoes yet, but the plants are full of tiny tomatoes which will be ready sometime in Sept, ALL of it at the same time.  That is what I hate about tomatoes in my garden.  First, it does nothing and then bam!, I am inundated with so many tomatoes at once.  Anyways, to see the positive, atleast I will get tomatoes - better late than never..

Please visit Daphne's Dandelions to check out other gardener's harvests for the week.  This week I had the following harvests - in pictures!  What is not included - First of the season red raspberries(3), chives, thyme and sage(set to dry).

Mint

Long beans, banana peppers (and 1 unknown dark green pepper), bush beans, chili peppers, cukes

Turnips, cukes, fenugreek(methi) leaves, bush beans

Long beans and Methi(fenugreek) leaves

Turnip greens

First big Tomato and long beans

Chili peppers, cilantro and Orange bell pepper

 

Garden Update - Part 3

This is last post to the garden updates!  Garden #1 has 4 raised beds.  Three of them built this spring, the last one is new one, for Fall garlic to be planted.  This was the garden ravaged by deer last year.  I finally had to get a  7' tall fence with deer netting to keep the deer out.  That worked beautifully.  You can barely see the fencing, but believe me the top of the white PVCs hold the top of deer fencing and all 3 raised beds are covered by netting!  It is a pain to get in and out of the netting, for me, but anything to keep the deer out of the garden.

I also find that with the raised beds, I have more space than having just one big piece of plot.  I have so many things planted in them. 
From left to right -
Bed #1 - Empty. Garlic to be planted. 
Bed #2 - Okra, Eggplants, bush beans, 2 tomato plants, chili peppers, banana peppers, bell peppers
Bed #3- Kale, Swiss chard, bush beans, carrots.
Bed #4 - Peas, orange beets, Red sails letuce, fenugreek leaves, radishes, turnips, cilantro.
The two pots (kept on the edges of raised bed) hold fenugreek seeds (planted).  Earlier the pots were on the ground with a tray underneath, but I found a snake hiding. So I had to keep the pots from touching ground.

View from the deck - Garden #1

Mint

Garden #2 - Mostly tomatoes. Also Long beans on verical trellis.

Blackberry plants - the one in far corner has netting to cover berries.

Two Plum trees - Lost blossoms to frost this year.

Bitter Melon - 2 plants.  Blossoms, no fruit yet!

Garden Update - Part 2

This is my second post, following Garden Update - part 1. 

Kohlrabi, Swiss Chard, Banana Peppers

Bell Pepper and Eggplant(no fruits yet)

Cucumbers

Tomatoes - Not as many as last year!

Banana Peppers, Kung Pao Peppers

Garden#4

Long beans and cucumber(net is to protect from deer)

Polaris blueberry

Basil

Thyme(looks much bigger in picture)

Fairy Tale eggplants

Sage

 

Harvest Monday - August 13, 2012

This week the harvests have been good.  I'm very pleased with the carrots.  They're much 'nicer' than previous years.  Usually my carrots are crooked and tiny.  I've attributed it to closer spacing.  This year, I took my time seeding each seed and giving it more space.  Wow, what a difference!  Also, my asparagus long beans have been producing steadily,  Yukon gold potatoes were harvested.  Unfortunately, only one of the fingerling potato was produced from 2 buckets of potato seeds.  Since we were on our way to vacation, dirt was piled all the way to the top of the buckets even though the seeds didn't sprout.  I hoped that they would find their way to the top(somehow), they didn't (:

Long beans and banana peppers

Red Sails lettuce (seeds from Daphne)

Zucchini, first Cherokee Purple(seeds from Daphne), cukes, chili peppers, blackberries, long beans

Bush beans and fenugreek leaves

Yukon gold potatoes

Methi leaves

Long beans, bush beans, cukes

Fairy tale eggplants

Swiss chard, bush beans, chili peppers, cilantro, zucchini

Carrots

Thanks to Daphne for seeds and also for hosting Harvest Monday!