Harvest Monday 6/23/14

Welcome back to Harvest Monday!

I am unfortunately still dealing with thievery and nastiness in my garden. I am ready to turn it all under and wait until fall to start again. That is a sad day, indeed. All of my harvests this week were wild ones...

Blackberry season is upon us. The blackberries at home? GONE. The berries are all gone and one of the plants was chewed through. I'm not happy with that, but I was thrilled to gather a few handfuls like this for desserts. No cooking or prep needed, just pop 'em and go!

This harvest however, well it needed quite a bit of prep work. My son is learning how to filet and how to prep pan fish. This guy was too large for a pan fry, and needed to be filleted. But he was part of a stringer that ended up being a wonderful dinner for 5. :-)

Ah, yes this also took a lot of prep work. all the meat on the right was from a regular rack of ribs, the meat on the left is all wild pig. YUM... this was all smoked on Saturday and what you see here is after 9 of us were finished. My fridge is full of leftovers now and that makes for easy meal prep this week. :-)

Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to go by Daphne's Dandelions. She's got the scoop on what's happening in gardens around the globe.

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.2.14

Ah, yes. Harvest Monday. I missed a few weeks, and didn't link into Daphne's place a few times so it seems I've been gone forever. But, I haven't. I've been harvesting little bits here and there. The last of the blueberries are in and I'm already mourning their loss. It's only been a few days since the last picking but my fridge seems empty without them.

Also harvesting tomatoes, beans, peppers and carrots. It's been a good couple weeks and I've had the best harvest ever of beans. These beans are a bush variety and thanks to ducks and chickens - well fertilized. :-) I don't know if that is the main difference or if the weather was just perfect for them lately, but this is the smallest planting I've ever done and I harvested almost twice as much as my Romas in twice the space. I plan on cooking them tonight to do a taste test and if they are nearly as good as the roma beans I will be letting them go to seed.

Here are the pictures for the week:

 

The ducklings are doing well and the chickens still hate them. It's something I'm going to have to deal with soon...they need to be housed together and soon. We plan on taking the majority of the ducks to Alabama on the 4th of July. But, the one that stays needs to stay in the chicken run. This should be interesting. I don't know what to do to help the situation as the ducklings where inside the run in a wire cage for weeks with no attitude change from the hens. I would think about replacing the hens at this point to introduce an entirely new flock together but it's not chick time at the feed stores anymore so I would be forced to buy from a hatchery and I'm not sure that is a good answer. I'd need to find homes for the rest of the chicks.. Ah well- so I keep trying. They do well together in the yard, but not in the run.

 

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.24.13

Ah, it's Monday again! Time for another installment of Harvest Monday!
It's almost the end of June and the garden chores are getting interesting. The giant zucchini plant disappeared, but not willingly so. It took a chunk of me with it. The corn fell down. I'm still hoping and praying for the remaining 8 stalks to mature though it is doubtful.I did clean up the stalks that were broken. I found a little surprise there.

It may not be much, but apparently one of the stalks hadn't broken all the way through and one of the ears had matured before the others did. I don't know how it did that as the other ears are still not mature, but I'm not complaining. At least I got one ear! Interestingly enough my cucumber plant had sent out a side vine and low and behold a GIANT cuke had set up residence in the corn stalks. A freebie. A little on the hollow side, but it was still perfectly edible in my book. Sucker weighed in at almost a pound by itself! (OK 9 ounces, but I was still impressed) It was larger than my 9" ear of corn after all.

 If you've been around the blog at all you know I did a little taste testing earlier in the week. My fig tree granted me 4 more of these little beauties for a total of 5 figs this week. YUM. I think I need more fig trees. They were delicious!

The first batch of limas are in. Tropical storm Andrea stole a good half or more of the first crop of them. The only good news about that is that MAYBE some of those limas are now growing instead of just rotting because of all the rain. There was just enough here for a good side dish. Love me some limas. The holsteins were finished drying, too. But, they aren't as pretty dried so I took a picture of the few that were picked last and still good shellies. These were finished with my limas for eating instead of saved for seed. They taste like a cross between black eyed peas and... well... I guess black beans. Me like.

Enter the seed for my Fall crop of beans. Daphne sent me the original beans, My first pole beans ever. Thanks Daphne. Unfortunately due to our rains and the garsh darned squirrels the tag is no where to be found so we'll call them Daphne's beans. Nice and beany flavored. Cooks up great. Get a string as it matures, but worth the effort for flavor. The beans are rather huge and it may be worth growing for the beans themselves if I didn't like the green beans so much!

 

So while the garden is slow to produce now it is giving me my seeds for next year. The long term summer crops are doing their thing and all I'm doing is trying like mad to keep up with maintenance. Oh, and since I like to keep records here I had a complete crop failure due to the rains and it looks like that was my dragons tongue beans (bush) :-(  Shame. There are just not many green beans you can get this time of year here. Hoping the yard longs give me something soon or I'll be eating the cowpeas as green beans instead!

 

See you soon!

 

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.17.13

It's Harvest Monday.

It is. I promise! I may be slacking lately, but it's not on purpose. The sickies are still hanging around my house. Hopefully a bucket of Lysol and another week will set things right again.

Meanwhile, the garden has taken a real beating. I pulled out all the bush green beans, and the Holstein beans, the zucchini and the cucumbers. It's looking a little barren in one of the new raised beds. I'll need to get around to replanting it this week. I'm thinking about covering it with some netting and trying for another batch of cucumbers there and maybe some determinate salad tomatoes. Things that will stay low enough under the cover and behave. LOL.

Meanwhile my corn fell in the last massive wind/rain storm we had and it was really bad timing. The tassels and silks are already out and some of the stalks broke - at least half. Bad news for the remainder of the corn that still need pollinating. I guess I'm just not meant to have a decent crop of corn. But, I'll try again in the fall like always. I'll leave the stalks where they are because the lone cantaloupe is still developing in the stalks and I'm not losing it! The netting is almost 1/2 developed and I can't WAIT to taste that baby!

What I did harvest is a pound of the Holstein beans (dry), 7 huge cucumbers. The last for a long while. :-(

 

 The last zucchini on the plant. A monster no doubt. It was good and will be missed. I couldn't believe that the plant had shot out several new plants from the underside. I had never grown this variety before and will be trying to look through my seeds to see which one it is because even after it was completely attacked by bugs it just kept on going. The plant this baseball bat came off of had split in half from a cucumber worm burrowing and was still trying to produce. Unfortunately the gnats that the frass was attracting coupled with the fact that I was only getting 1 fruit a week now? Eh- not worth keeping in the garden. I don't need a bug attractant.

I also got another good couple of piles of tomatoes, a butternut (The only one! This plant is gone now, too)

 

 

And my girls constant working to keep me in eggs. Bless there little souls. Love my girls.

 

The garden is no longer being very productive. There are a few tomatoes left and of course the sweet potatoes as I need them for meals. The okra are tiny yet, but growing. They should be producing by July 15th. When we get back from our next trip to Alabama in July I'll be starting my Fall tomatoes and getting ready for the fall garden. I can't wait. Something to look forward to while the garden is going into stasis!

 

Linking in to Daphne's Dandelions. Make sure you check out her place to see all the great things being harvested all over the world!

 

See you soon!

 

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.3.13

Wowsa! What a whirlwind! This Harvest Monday will span the last 2 weeks. Because I'm a ditz and didn't post last week.
Last week was Memorial Day, but that is no excuse. I simply was busier than a Groundhog on, well... Groundhogs Day.

Here's the recap of what i thought to take pictures of...

Beans, cukes and tomatoes are the star of the show this week. 7pounds of tomatoes, 4 pounds of cukes, and just as much for beans. Amazing harvests have graced my tables and my cooking pots and I am humbled by it all. I only wish I was able to store more of it. I have only a single jar of pickles to show for this. BUT! We have enjoyed the heck out of it. Eating most of our meals straight from the garden has been refreshing and the kids have been just as thankful.

 

After all these harvest I decided to go get the last of those potatoes. I just wanted to get rid of any problems for the tomatoes that they were growing next to. Not that the tomatoes were having problems yet, but I couldn't imagine the bugs that the potatoes had would be good for the tomato plants. So I set about my chore, and gathered another few pounds of spuds...

Unfortunately I broke one of the main stems of the super roma. :-(
 

Now I have another 6 pounds of green Roma's sitting on my counter. Hopefully they will ripen. These all seemed to be ready to turn soon. I tossed any that were terribly small or damaged in any way.

 

Needless to say I was in a small tomato glut this week. It didn't last long. The first tomato glut is always met with a serious intensity from all of us here. It's taken very seriously that those first 'maters are eaten with abandon. This years first seem to be very thick skinned for some reason. It may be what has saved them so far from the bugs. I'd be OK with that. I'm willing to trade a little less bug damage and gardener worrying for a thicker skinned tomato.

 

We also had an incident with our sprinklers again this last little while. Thankfully we had a wonderful harvest right before our problem or I would have been crying huge crocodile tears. Most of the plants are doing fine now, but the green beans seem likely not to recover. It looks like there is an issue with our electrical panel that carries the sprinklers and pool pump. I don't have money any time soon to have an electrician out so I guess we will just have to keep a closer eye on it. Good thing it just pops the breaker. Bad thing if I don't notice it in time.

 

Oh, and can I just give a shout out to those sweet potatoes? Oh sakes alive! Hubby won't usually eat the suckers, but I put them in a stir fry and he ate them right up. YUM! OK, I didn't put all of them in there. I just love a good sweet tater. (especially fried with a raspberry sauce. WOOWEE!)

 

See you soon!

 

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.11.12

This is the last large harvest for the Summer. The rest will be the drabs and dribbles that happen due to the heat. That is until the cowpeas start setting in large numbers. That won't happen until I'm ready to start my fall garden late in the year when everyone else is already turning under and ending their gardens for the year. The cycles are wacky here for sure.

To clear the way for the summer crops a lot of the beds needed cleared the bush beans,  the allium bed (and carrots with them) both had to be cleared:

before....and after.....

It was so steamy out. It even fogged up the camera!

*note the now completely covered trellis~!* 

Green garlic, and red and yellow onions - sorry y'all get the dirty pics - they are still drying on my kitchen table. I had to run out right after ripping all this out. I had a birthday party to go to, and no time to purty up the pictures.

 

But I did get a great harvest this week. Unfortunately it's all the carrots until winter unless there is a stray hiding somewhere. I still have about 20 onions in a planter, but I don't expect them to do anything. I'm only leaving them because I didn't find time to do anything with them and I sure don't need 'em. If I run into a neighbor or a friend who would use them I'd give them away.  I also pulled the leeks in the above photo. Wrong time of year for them but I'm not arguing. They are a good size and they cleaned up really nice. They just got knocked down when I took out one of the old less productive broccoli plants. I've got 3 that produce for me still and a few that haven't been so I was getting rid of the ones that don't.

Here are the tomatoes that were harvested a little green -boy did they turn! And a single cuke.  A day's picking of the concord grapes and the rest of the carrots.

*WHEW*  What a week. Unfortunately I won't have much to show for a while, and now I have a lot of planting to do. I still need to get rid of the big old zucchini plant and start those tomato seeds for fall. It may be sweltering out now, but that is just the time to get things ready for fall!

Linking in to Daphne's Dandelions. Don't forget to stop by her place and see what people are harvesting all over the world. Thanks Daphne for being our ever present - FANTSTIC hostess!

'Till next time!

Barbie~

A comparison. Finally!

Well, I should have yet another picture to show you to add to these comparison shots, but it decided to actually storm last night so I was unable to get the picture for you. I suppose that is all fine and dandy as the look won't change much from now until harvest as the coloration is pretty well set now.

These are the Lakota squash from 3 weeks ago. I had 6 set on the vine...

 

 

I take that back. Apparently I had five! My guess is that the sixth squash either showed signs of not taking or had already begun to wither and abort when I took the first set of pictures.


These initial pictures were taken somewhere around May 13th - 18th.

The second set of pictures were taken June 3rd. So just shy of 3 weeks later....


Unfortunately most of the fruit has aborted, but the 2 remaining fruit are both already larger than 'maturity size' that is listed at 5lbs max size on the label for this variety. Of course i've done research since they have set and found that most people say they reach larger proportions that use good gardening techniques. The smaller size is generally a 3 sisters planting in an undressed field. Poor little squashes. Nobody loves them.

Anywho.... here are the 2 remaining squash as of last week....

Now the trick will be to outsmart the pickleworm (and other assorted blasted creepy crawlies) until I can bring these beauties in!

Any helpful hints, anyone? My goal is for these to be for my fall decorations. They are the perfect size - just like bowling balls and the orange has really come through now with the yellow fading back. I'm so excited - it's like... like.... the GREAT PUMPKIN CHARLIE BROWN!

Seriously. I've grown pumpkins before. Grew them last year. We made pies and cakes and breads from them, but these... these are cool. They are different and even though they may not be as good of eating as my Jarrahdales of past. The kids are really getting a kick out of them and I love that they are unique for my fall display. I believe they are a medium hardshell squash like a butternut or acorn so I have hope that they will store well into fall. After all I should be posting next week about using my last fall pumpkin from last year. :-D Just in time to make room for these in a few more weeks.

OKAY- so I am completely willing to go NON organic to keep these pumpkin/squash beautiful and wormie/hole/pest free. Give it to me. What is the best defense? All around I mean? Protect the plant and the fruit as well. I mean, we won't be eating the skin so I don't feel too bad using a pesticide - plus it will be four months and at least 3 of those months will be spent sitting inside pestiside free. :-D After being washed outside with a bleach solution of course.

Stay tuned for a bloom post. Coming soon!

'Till next time!

Barbie~