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!

Harvest Monday, Aug 6th, 2012

This week, last of the red onions got harvested.  They were bulbs bought from Menards and I think the results were better than last years.  Last year, I got the onion bulbs from Walmart and most of the onions produced flowers and as a result onions were small and 'woody'.  This year, very few out of the entire set produced flowers.  Onions were mostly medium sized, with a few large ones. 

To visit other gardeners produce for the week, go to Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Red Onions Harvested

Kale

Asparagus beans, bush beans(first of the season), cilantro, cucumber, tomato

Asparagus beans, cilantro, radish pods, blackberries, cuke, zucchini

Zucchini, tomato

Cucumber, green chillies

Bush beans

Garden Update - Part 1

This is Garden update (Part 1).  Since there are many pictures of my plants, I will divide them up into different posts.  It will help me refer back to them in the future to know how the plants were during the first week of August. 

Zucchini plant

Tomato plant

Tomato patch

Chinese long beans

Pepper and Eggplants

Jalapeno

Melon plants, kohlrabi(left)

Bell Peppers

Kohlrabi (starting to form)

Carrots

Red Onions

Melons

Watermelon

This is how the garden grows...

While we were on vacation for over 5 weeks, the garden was on its own with a timed sprinkler system for watering.  I had seeded, planted and fenced the garden before leaving.

Most of the plants survived!  Seeds germinated into plants, tomato plants were blooming and I could see a couple of small tomatoes, bean plants suffered from heat with yellow leaves and didn't grow much, fenugreek plants browned, peas were also beyond their harvesting and I collected some dried peas for replanting, chinese long beans were starting to put out tiny beans and blooming as well, peppers were growing. A couple of pepper plants did not make it, but overall I was happy with the way the garden grew in my absence. 

Eggplants and pepper and onions

Swiss chard, pepper plant(in front) and grass growing everywhere.

Melon plants and weeds

Radish plants going to seed.

Cukes and Asparagus beans eaten (eaten by deer from the outside)

Bush beans, weeds and okra

Peppers, eggplants, onions and tomatoes

More tomato plants.

Harvest Monday - July 30, 2012

Ok, I have been busy and didn't get around to doing any posts on before and after garden pics, since my return from the vacation!  I will get around to it this week...

As for the harvests, I am pretty pleased so far, not because I am hauling in huge harvests, but because the troublesome deer has been kept at bay.  Since my 7' tall fence and deer netting everywhere, I haven't been bothered by pesky deer eating my plants.  Touchwood!  It feels like such a huge victory not to have your plants eaten :)

From my perspective, my harvests are trickling in and I, myself am amazed by total harvests - when I have to do harvest Monday postings.  They do add up and pretty fast too!  Sometimes, I can't believe that my little garden is doing so much work:)

Harvested half of the onions this week.  I only plant red onions.  Onions started from seeds were just the size of, say a raspberry.  Has anyone successfully grown large red onions from seed in the same year?  If so, please let me know how to do it.  My plants died off and when pulled, there were tiny onions only.  The other set of onions pulled were those replanted from last year as they did not size up last year.  I had saved them and replanted.  Most of them were medium to small size.  The third set of onions is the pack of tiny red onions bought from Menards.  The plant has fallen and onions are mostly large to medium.  Will need to pull them in the coming weeks.  I guess I am not a very successful onion grower with no idea of how to improve for next year(:

Moving on, here are the harvest pics for the week that will be linked to Daphne's Harvest Mondays -

Blackberries(most eaten right off plants!), cucumber, beet leaves

First harvest of long beans!!

Lone zucchini

More long beans and first tomato of the season!

Cilantro, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers and long beans

Mint, cuke, beet, turnips

Replanted onion(tiny ones saved from last year) wasn't large (:

Still tinier onions grown from seeding (:  Will replant them next year.

Harvest Monday - July 23, 2012

I haven't posted anything in over a month!  That's because we were on a vacation to the other side of the world!  I will make another post on how the garden looked when I got back.  For now, it is all about what I harvested in the last week. 

The first task when I got back(other than weeding) was to pull garlic as the plants had turned brown and some of the browns had disintegrated!  They were not as large as last year, and I attribute that for lack of water/hot weather/non removal of garlic scapes which prevented a large bulb from forming.  This year, I plan to plant back most of the garlic in the fall and expand my garlic garden :)

For everyone else's harvests of the week, head on over to Daphne's Dandelions!

Turnips

Zucchini and Turnips

Garlic (damaged when digging)

More Garlic

Radish pods and white Radishes

Zucchini

Blackberries

Cucumbers

Turnip

Lots of beet leaves and swiss chard

Radishes, Turnips and greens