Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Harvest...12/13/10

Well. It's Tuesday again. This time my challenge was my card reader. Unfortunately it is officially dead. I'll need a new one soon. After all Christmas is near and pictures must be taken! :-)
We had back to back freezes this week and this morning was -3*C. Yes. Celsius. It looks better that way. It was 27* outside. Another hard freeze. It took the last of what had survived under covers. All but the Cole crops and a few peas and carrots still hanging in there.

Lemons and limes. I don't have any weights on this harvest. It was a scramble as the freeze had already set and we were no where near prepared for it. There was 2 colanders of these. Plus 3 oranges. But, I did get a half of a paper grocery bag full of tangerines. They are much prettier than the nearly ripe lemons here. Bright orange. Wish I was able to show you. They are much smaller than normal tangerines, and there is one seed in every other section, extremely juicy. It's just unfortunate that they don't keep for long term.

Lettuces I did weigh at 9oz. so 1/2 pound, not bad for they are fairly young still.


Some green tomatoes that were already blushing. They will turn in no time. These are the last for not only this year but this season. I won't see any of these things until late in spring. Also some Royal Burgundy beans, (my favorite this year) Serrano peppers, okra, Cubanelle, and 2 lemon peppers.
Here is part of my garden all iced over.
I was too chicken to go outside and take pictures.

I did manage to get the frost bitten plants out this weekend. I know that I have plenty to do to keep me busy until it's time to plant again. The beds are no longer raised as they were. The new sod has grown nearly as tall as the beds, and the extra height will not only be aesthetically pleasing but will be better nutrient wise for the plants. When I built these beds last year I was in a rush for completion and didn't dig them as thoroughly as I wanted to. The amendments will do wonders.
I believe this is my last harvest for 2010. I'll be back soon though. There is other harvesting to be done while it's this cold. There is another trip to Alabama to gather pecans. So far this year we have 5 pounds. I'd really like to have more. We use roughly 1/2 pound a week for normal use. I'm capable of using the entire 5 pounds just in holiday baking. Good thing I had some left from last year. I understand it's not just our trees that didn't cooperate. The entire county had an off year. It does glean a little hope for next year because after an off year it's said that the following is a bumper crop. Maybe we'll have some to sell. That would be a first. Normally friends, family and our freezer manage to eliminate what we are blessed with.

Till next time!

Barbie~

4 comments:

  1. It is so sad when the garden freezes. I miss my tomatoes. I would kill for a green ripened one on my counter right now. But in no time it will be spring.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Winter has finally arrived for you too :-(

    We had freezing nights just before Thanksgiving but fortunately I had enough notice and spare time to be prepared, my Meyer lempn tree came through ok. I supposed you could juice the citrus and freeze it if you can't get through it all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm glad you were able to harvest some of your citrus. Most of ours wasn't ready, so it's still out there on the trees... We'll see how it did in a couple of weeks. I did harvest some lemons, oranges, and tangelos Monday evening after I posted our harvest, so it will be on next week's post. It looks like our greens are surviving ok, so I'm happy about that.

    Your pecans sound wonderful, stay warm!

    -Mary

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hope your citrus plants aren't ruined. Up here in New England we have a long long way to go before we have any local veggies.

    ReplyDelete