Harvest Monday 2.9.15

Well, February is moving along rather quickly here.

This weeks harvests include broccoli, snap peas, some bright lights swiss chard and strawberries. Most of the produce is eaten long before I can get it inside. But, I did manage to bring these in:

I'm not the only one who likes to snack on garden goodies. I find my daughters chewing something outside rather frequently and when I ask what they are eating? The answer is always, 'Food'.

I suppose it's good that they are eating fresh, organic produce but dang if I'm not jealous if they beta me to the berries. ;-)

On top of the kids eating randomly out of the garden the ducks have finally figured out how to get in and what they like to eat. UGH. So now I'll have to figure out how to keep them out. They are very respectful of even super low fencing and it took a year for them just to climb the 6" up into the garden bed. Guess I should just thank my lucky stars that it didn't happen sooner.

That's it from my end. Been cooped up nursing sick people and the school just called for me to pick up Katie bug. Wish me luck. I sure hope it stops soon.

Linking into Daphne's Dandelions. Make sure you stop by her spot to get the 411 on what is being harvested from all different regions, and see all the regulars on Harvest Monday!

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 2.24.14

WOW! Time is certainly flying around here. I picked up mulch this weekend and didn't even find enough time to get it spread out. It just seems like there are never enough hours in the day right now.

This weeks harvest brought some lovely additions to the lineup. It's definitely not winter any more here and while I'm quite sure we will see a couple more days that cool off I don't think we'll see 40's at night any more and certainly not below 60's in the day.

Why do I think this? Because this weekend while I was trying desperately to beat the clock and get some of my planting done - it was like soup outside. Normally we have a few weeks of warm (OK, hot) weather without the humidity. It's our version of 'Spring' around here. It only lasts for a few weeks, but once the humidity steps up it's officially Summer. I'm thinking we may have bypassed that whole Spring thing instead.

OK- So what did this warm weather bring to my line up?

Why the first tomato of the year. This was the plant that took the few frosts we had and kept kicking! It was the only plant to not succumb to the freezing temps and I only covered it twice - only the nights when it truly froze and not frosted. It thrills me to know end to have it on my table, but... DARN it's not a slicer. I am so ready for some slicing 'maters. This year I'm turning to hybrids mainly for my tomatoes. Burpee's Big Boy and the small salad tomatoes (Fast girl or something to that effect) for me. I'm sure to plant a few others along the way but these are the the plants I"ve chosen for the main crop. I'll need a few sauce tomatoes and cherries for salads when I plant those I might pop in an heirloom just because they are such lovely tomatoes. 

ANYWAY- I also got to harvest the first green beans of the season! WHOOT! I wasn't sure these plants would survive, and indeed and entire crop of flowers was frozen off of them, but the plants managed to make it through with only some of the outer leaves frozen and the fruit drop as well. Now that the warm up has occurred they have flowered over and over. I'm so glad I took the time to figure out the best place to plant these and protect them from the weather. 

Another 6oz of broccoli...again. For whatever reason that seems to be the magic number for these plants. I'm OK with that. 'd rather get 6 oz a week that none! :-)

That's it. Only one picture with a couple harvests.

See you soon!

Barbie~

2/17/14 Harvest Monday

Hey there! It's Harvest Monday again! This weeks harvest includes most of the things you've been seeing here this winter. But this time I threw in something different, just for fun. LOL.

Cabbage made it on the list! Finally something different. I adore broccoli, but it's nice to have something else coming out of the garden, too. 

I got 2 of these bowls of broccoli from side shoots, and my head of cabbage as well. The hens are still giving me a decent supply of eggs. I've only gone 5 or 6 days the whole winter without one or the other of them giving me a little present. Good hens! I'm considering chicks right now, but it's such a catch 22. If I get chicks I have a better chance of being discovered. SO it's get new chicks, get rid of aggressive hen - BONUS... get chicks, get found out - BOOO!!! What's a gal to do? Additionally something has been getting into their pen lately. Food consumption has tripled. I'm thinking it's probably rats, and there isn't much I can do about that. I can't afford a $150 treadle feeder...so I'm not sure what else to do. :-( 

My first set of green beans is due this week. I can't wait to eat them!

Thanks Daphne for hosting, as always! Don't forget to check out her blog for loads of other harvests from around the world.

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 2/10/14

It's harvest report time! 

This week the picking have been somewhat meager, but when you can harvest anything in January and early February I consider it a lucky draw. 

This weeks harvest looks much the same as the last few weeks...

Lemons grace my table again. There is one single honeybell orange that is almost ready to pick soon and a couple limes. I keep thinking the citrus fest will end and yet it continues... (I am so not complaining!)

4oz of broccoli this week. I did catch Savannah out there chewing on some. I will never know how much because she wont even admit that her mouth was full when I caught her! 

Another pomegranate graced our table as well. This one was hiding on the wrong side of the fence. These are the best poms because they escape my notice until they are at the bursting point. SOOO juicy and delish!

I lucked out and managed to keep one single tomato plant alive through the several freezes we've had. Turns out it's a roma and I'm now rather anxious to get some of the fruit ripened and on the table! I could use some fresh maters right now.

It's nearly Spring here and our temps lately have been getting into the 80's again. I am hopeful that it means our freezes are over for the year and I really want to get some more goodies in the ground. I did plant out a 3 or 4' section of peas, mostly sugar peas and some snow as well. They should be peeking up above the soil line today or tomorrow and that makes me HAPPY! :-)

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 1/27/2014

Sad as it is to say this is the first Harvest Monday for the year. It's not that I haven't been busy in the garden. It's that I haven't had access to my blog or emails until this past week. It's really amazing how dependent you are on the providers. Even when you think you aren't. I rarely used my Yahoo account or gmail either. But, when they went down simultaneously I discovered that a lot of my other accounts are based on those not only existing but functioning. My email server on my phone, this blog, facebook, my address book....etc. So even though I only used each account minimally it still affected me in a big way.

Now that I have a new gmail account things are looking up again. This harvest report is long overdue. So I will show you what I can!

Woah- turns out the picture uploader has changed since I was here last, too. WOW. That was much faster than the old way. LOVE it! 

So loads of fruit, and a few veggies, too. 

Pomegranates are absolutely beautifully sweet this time of year. Just the right balance of sweet and tart. They are darn good in the summer, but the winter ones are sublime! Lemons continue though the tree is looking bear now and I'm almost ready for it's annual trim-a-thon. The tree is still suffering form greening but the aggressive pruning and fertilizing seems to be keeping it going.  Once this tree succumbs I will not replant citrus outdoors. I have a few indoors (Key lime and red lime) That will have to do for now. Our area is just too infested with this disease. 

Purple sweets were pulled after the first frost took the vines down a notch. The one featured int he photo by itself? Monstrous. That sucker weighed over 2 pounds!

I harvested a head of broccoli at 6.8oz... so deceiving to see something so large be so light weight. Unfortunately my hens harvested 3 heads of broccoli as well as 2 plants of just forming brussel sprouts. They did some damage to the cabbage plants but nothing that will ultimately affect those harvests. (lucky for them!) 

Figs are coming one at a time every 2 or 3 days. It's a small harvest, but a sweet one. I have a new (purchased a few months ago) Celeste fig that will be added to the fruit trees this year. I waited to transfer it as the plant was having some serious issues. Wilting being the most worrisome, even right after watering. Once I decided just to up-pot it I found the problem. The root ball combined with the crappy soil in the pot was shedding the water faster than concrete, so water I might but the roots weren't getting anything to drink or eat. Now that it has had it's first re-pot it hasn't wilted once so I am now quite hopeful. I'll be looking into propagating figs soon, as we really want some in Alabama as well. Oh! Speaking of which, we planted out the first 4 trees into the orchard there. I'm so excited I could pee myself... oh wait.... *nevermind*

;-) 

Believe it or not I still have one tomato plant hanging on. The frost cloth has been wonderful for it - even though the rest of the plants have all succumbed to the cold. It's a toss up on if the cage is helping more (allowing the cloth to barely touch the plant) or if it's the location (in the high beds) of the plant. Either way I'm not complaining! The fruit may be small, but they will be ripening soon and I'm all for home grown tomatoes!

WOW, that's long. Sorry for the length. I guess after being gone for so long I had a bit to tell y'all. I'll be back shortly with pictures of my boy.

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.25.12

Monday. Dreary Wet. Rainy. Monday.

Here is the main harvest for this week. Pathetic - but it's a harvest!

A small eggplant, a large jalapeno, a bunch of broccoli side shoots and a single deformed cucumber. At least I had something to harvest. Considering how bleak my garden looks right now... I'll take it!

Update on Debby later. We are VERY wet.

Linking into Daphne's Dandelions on this very wet Monday. Make sure yous top by and check out what others are harvesting all over the world! (I bet they aren't so wet!)

'Till next time!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.18.12

Linking into Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday. Make sure to join the fun over at her place. Stop by to see all the different things being harvested all over the world!
Harvests are much slower now.

This is the main harvest this week:

The onions I harvested? Just over ten pounds worth and when all was said and done I was only able to save my sanity and 25 ounces. Talk about a let down.  19 ounces in garlic. 1 pound of leeks.

This weeks harvest totals - 1lb 2oz concord grapes, 8oz tomatoes, 2oz broccoli, 6oz okra and a few measly greenbeans I'm not counting because I fed them to the hens (next door) I also got 2oz basil and a large fistful of parsley that I started to dry until I realized there was something wrong with it. (looked like pin holes through the leaves...*sigh*) so I'm yanking out the old parsley and starting a new batch. This one was 3 years old so I had to expect it to have something wrong sooner or later.

The garden is (mostly) bare and awaiting turning under. I got all those spots yanked out that needed it and now summer planting can start as soon as I can get the turning, compost topping and sowing done.

'Till next time!

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~

Lessons - learning...

Times TWO!

First of all is a sad and BAD lesson.

Squirrels like immature persimmons. Yup. That's right. Freaking, Fracking, Stinking, I'm gonna run 'em over and then back up over 'em and then get my shot gun out.... OK I'm in a residential neighborhood so I'm not gonna get my gun out - but I might just sic my kid on them with his paint ball gun... with pellets in it. GRRRR..... Squirrel stew is sounding good about now. With new potatoes and carrots because I still have about 10 left from my potato haul and I still have carrots. LOL.

Onto better things. The second thing that I learned. First let me begin this by saying that while i've been gardening a long time- I've only grown certain things for most my life. Namely my grandmothers garden and she grew watermelon, bush beans, some tomatoes and left most of the other stuff to other local farmers where we would trade and barter.

 I have had a broccoli plant that I've been letting bloom and keeping trimmed for nigh on 8 months now. Over the winter I needed something to keep the pollinating bugs in the yard and happy. I chose this plant because it was consistently in bloom and required little to no extra care other than for me to go out weekly and collect the seed pods so that I didn't have 5,000 broccoli plants growing in this one tiny planter. Being the thinking ahead kind of person that I am I chose to put this particular plant under my peach tree. Smart, right? Bring the pollinators right where I'll want them in the spring. Teehee. I thought that was sheer genius. And, it was.  Somewhere around November we had the tail end of a tropical storm that knocked this (then) young broccoli plant down. It actually knocked it in between the slats of my planter and I could not right the plant without damaging it further. So, I determined that I would simply leave the plant there and see what happened. This is where my lesson comes in.

Like tomatoes and squash broccoli is capable of laying down additional sets of roots. Did you know this already? I most certainly did not! But, I do have some proof to show you. This picture shows you not the main roots, not the secondary, but these are the Tertiary and quaternary roots. OOOOoooo big words. Third and forth sets of roots. This particular plant continued to set off side shoots for the entire 8 months (if you ever wondered how long your broccoli plant will keep producing now you know) and as long as I didn't clip it in the first few days it would send it to flower. Now, IF as I did when it started to warm up and I no longer needed the flowers you then keep the flowering section trimmed off the plant it will not try to blot as fast. So by keeping it trimmed or letting it bolt you can control if you want to harvest from the beast or not. That is not to say that while the plant is in flower you cannot harvest from it - you just have to be vigilant. If you don't cut the floret in just a day or two it will be bolting already.

I'll stop talking- here is the picture -

Keep in mind that I yanked that sucker up. I had no intentions at the time of trying to save those roots or show anyone what it had done. You can see that the lower part of the stem had gone completely woody at that point and made a true root. The plant was easily 3' across and 5' tall - well it was 3' tall but only because it had fallen. The woody portion that you can see in the picture from one rooted section to the other is the length of my forearm... and I have very long arms. I'm 5'9" tall if that is any indication to you.

The actual root section was so large and so infiltrated with the peach tree that I had to leave it in the ground. That was the not so stellar thinking on my part. But, this learning curve really got me thinking  about how these plants survive in the wild and I can just see not only the pods burst open over and over spilling MILLIONS of seeds per plant, but the longevity of this plant due to it's ability to grow up, fall over re-root and gain strength each time. Amazing plant, and we as gardeners tend to think of it as a short term plant. Huh...

Gives ya more to think about.

'Till next time!

Barbie~



Harvest Day 5.29.12

It's not Monday. So, I'm late - again. Hey,  it was Memorial Day so I had plans. Plans that got blown away by Sir Beryl. Good thing we decided not to go anywhere. Turns out that there were a much greater number of downed trees and my parents had no power up in (North of) Jacksonville for 24 hours at last count.  No fridge or freezers and that also means that their 7 (yes, SEVEN) dogs that have the invisible fence to keep them on their five acres would have been roaming free out in the storm without someone there to start up the generators. Not to mention that the picnic and all the other outdoors activities like camping we had planned wouldn't have been so fun in 45 mile an hour winds. We were only planning on going to Ocala after all. Not all the way to Jacksonville. Silver Springs State Park is what we had our eye on.
Oh, Well. Next weekend we'll have a condensed version of the same thing.

Instead I welcomed a gardening friend over to see my mess and our kids enjoyed some watermelon while we enjoyed some conversation. It was a good distraction from thwarted plans and picnics gone awry. I sure hope their plans held out and Illuminations was still wonderful for them! Thanks, Tina for stopping by. Next time hopefully the lawn mower will be up and running and my grass won't be trying to attack your ankles! Troy found a treat for Nick and is waiting to see him again, too. :-D  The pool is back and ready for action. ;-)

I spent yesterday evening cruising the garden not really expecting to find much to bring in but to my surprise I did. And, I found quite a lot!

I had a roma and a bush tomato damaged from the storms, so those came out. There are a few of the tomatoes in this picture, but most of them didn't make the cut. I don't think they'll ripen so they aren't here to be represented. If they do I'll show them later. But these four all were starting to blush so they are here. A few more carrots - that large one weighed 6 ounces! The first eggplant of the season (THANKS RICK- that is from your baby long purple plant from the swap) 2 cukes some broccoli, strawberries, purple podded beans and dragons tongue.

This is the haul from earlier in the week. A key lime, a few carrots, cucumber, zucchini, green garlic, broccoli, and below 4 pounds of onions out of the main bed of alliums, I pulled them because they were starting to multiply by division more and more. It's getting hotter out and that means less likely to bulb at this point and I don't need this many green onions for my cooking. I do after all still have this many onions in the garden still. Bummer year for the onions. But, again Florida is a huge give and take State.

There is no guarantee when you garden here. The sun is extremely low, extremely hot and it makes for quick crops, and that is good and bad. The downpours and humid conditions are hard on the plants and certainly perfect for making mold and mildew. It's an evolving process and an ongoing experiment. I'm always faced with the next question. These onions are one of the prime examples of how gardening here changes every year. Some years I get great big onions and some years it fizzles. But this year I got great lettuce and some years I get none. Go figure. Same with the carrots. I'm still getting them and it's already 90 degrees out regularly. Normally the carrots are done and gone by late March. Here it is going to be June and I'm still pulling and picking them. :-D 

I roll with the punches as every gardener does. My garden looks bear right now to me. I'm waiting for some cowpeas to come up and the old spring tomatoes will be going out - while the new fall tomatoes will be growing and waiting their turn to get into the garden. I still haven't found a good determinate/semi-determinate variety for me/this area. I feel like this is a struggle I will always deal with in some form or another. Maybe I'll just go by a crate of the suckers! Maybe, like the carrots I'm just missing something that i haven't found yet.

Oh, I did learn something kinda new this weekend while I was cleaning up around the place. Will share tomorrow. ;-)

Gotta get ya back here some how!

'Till next time!

Barbie~

HARVEST? MONDAY 5.21.12

I don't have much to share. But, linking into Daphne's Dandelion's to share it! Thanks Daphne for always being a great hostess. Don't forget to stop by her place and say hi!

 The last week has been about the summer change.  Here is the one basket I remembered to take a picture of.

These carrots have changed my mind about how I'm growing carrots from now on. I loved growing them in with the onions all willy nilly. It worked out well - and this giant type also worked out well. They took no longer really than the smaller types and I got so much more! Look at the normal sized on in there next to the larger ones. Wow! What a difference. Considering how MANY carrots this family eats....I'm thinking go BIG or go HOME! er... OK I am home- but you know what I mean.

The biggest honking carrots, and nice sized green garlic (I'm begining to think I'll only get green this year) a good cuke, some okra, berries, zucchini, broccoli, a few beans, a young red onion. A decent haul. I got a couple chilis and 2 small romas this week as well as a few more okra and broccoli- but that is about it. I really was concentrating on getting things changed over.

More sweet potato slips went in. 6 more - so 12 total. I won't be breaking a record with that number, but I have so many other things i want to grow that I don't have space for much else. They are all bush type of course. The peanuts are all up, the soybeans didn't germinate very well. I'm quite disappointed. I think I'll risk moving the plants and distributing them so that they can at least benefit from the area given to them rather than leaving them crowded to one side, as it seems the ones that did germinate all were together. (figures) There wont be any more slips going in now. I used the butt of the potato to generate the last of these. They had some great roots though! Awesome for not having transplant shock. LOL

The last stand of sweet corn for summer is up. I'll try again in fall. I don't know what my failure is with it all the time. Like carrots I just keep trying. I'll figure it out at some point! ;-) The last batch from a few weeks ago was delicious, just miniature. I'll plant popcorn in the heat of the summer. Funny- the corn always grows up in the plots in Alabama. Humph. Guess the clay holds the nutrients better and longer. Even with all the amendments and how wonderful things are doing (compared to how they USED to do) I still can't get corn to grow. Oh, well!

I also cleaned out the rest of the non vining green beans, so any green beans you see now until fall will be non green, flat Italian, or for the first time ever, POLE! Speaking of - it seems to me that I may have stumbled upon something. My dragons tongue beans are not very, uh - 'poley' they are much more bushy. They are also not holding up well in our humidity. :-( They have loads of beans that isn't the problem at all. Its that the poor little plants have already gotten mildew. *sigh* Can't win for losing 'round here I suppose. You should see those beans here next week.

Hopefully the growth of the seedlings will be good this week and I can do some update shots soon. Right now it would just look like a blank garden and then a lot of the same old stuff you always see. (the allium patch, the blueberries, etc)

Summer is here officially - we have our first Tropical storm off the coast of Florida and it's 'officially' hitting 90 each day this week. Yikes!

Stay cool my friends!



'Till next time!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 4.30.12

April is on it's way out. This is the last Harvest for April, and it seems like it just got here. This Spring is nearly done here. The bugs are out in full force by 10 am yelling up a storm announcing that it's too hot to be out. Yet if it's the weekend I'm braving the heat sweating my booty off in the sun. The nights are still strangely cool thanks to the cold front that came through last week, but the highs in the daytime are hitting 90 religiously now and there is no more turning back I'm afraid.

The garden is starting to show the heat stress already and the humidity is in full force now. Fun times the next few weeks!

This weeks harvest:

Mulberries continue to come in at 2 cups (1lb 6oz)every day or two,  or whatever I feel like picking at the time. 3lb 5.6oz green beans, 3lb 2oz onions, 1lb 5oz carrots, 4lb cabbage, 5oz parsley,  6oz broccoli, 4oz strawberry, 5oz blueberry.

a bucket of parsley for drying and chimichuri sauce...

A few zucchini blossoms, I only get these on the weekend when I'm there to go out in the morning.

Oh and the best of all- a pool that is FINALLY ready to swim in... Did I show you this already? I apologize if I did - but it is VERY exciting news around here!

This is probably the best news so far. It gets the kids approval for sure! ;-)

Off to check my seeds and see what type of cowpeas I'll be trying this year....

'Till next time!

Barbie~

*ETA* Linking in to Daphne's Dandelions - I'm so embarassed that I forgot!!!! Don't you forget!!!

Harvest Monday 4.23.12

Hey hey hey! It's Harvest Monday again. Well, What do ya know? Monday's tend to roll around pretty quickly around here. Joining in over at Daphne's Dandelions once again. Don't forget to stop on by her place and see what people are harvesting from all over the world!

This weekend was a rain filled one. It started Friday and didn't end until last night. It was certainly good for our parched Floridian soil. Most of our local wildfires are out, but I haven't heard yet about statewide. Hope to hear from other bloggers soon. At my house we got only a little over  a quarter inch Friday, 1.5 inches Saturday and close to another inch yesterday. You'd think we'd be drowned in that, but our sand wicked that up lickety split and it was dry as a bone this morning. Windy and cool with a high of only 74 today. It actually feels like Spring! Woah - weird for us. This whole weekend is strange for us. The temps never got very high and it is always odd when the skys don't turn blue after a rain shower. Normally rains only last a few hours tops. Even the times when I report several inches of rain it is typical that that accumulates extremely rapidly.

This week was a good week for me again. I pulled the rest of the beets and turnips so they are done for Spring. The green beans turned on production this week, Some broccoli, strawberries, the potatoes of course, some carrots, a green garlic some green onion as well. But, some how the tomatoes (just a couple romas) blueberries and cucumbers keep slipping out of my pictures. I'm not sure how I manage that! Here are the pictures I do have:

 

 

Ah, I do love living in Florida this time of year. Soon I'll be cursing the okra, and cow pea - lucky to have a watermelon posts - but for now I'm still loving it!



'Till next time!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 4.16.12

WOW~!  What a week. I've been sooo busy it's not even funny. That is of course a double edged sword.
The garden was wonderfully generous this week, and I have another 'first' harvest for me this week. (I'm a tease though, so I'm saving it until the end!)

Linking in a bit late to Daphne's Dandelions to join in the fun! Be sure to stop by all the wonderful party hoppers and see what people are harvesting all over the world!

This weeks harvest is chock full of pictures, and I didn't even catch ALL the harvests, LOL>

The week started with a turnip, some smallish carrots that I needed out of the bed, and some broccoli side shoots so I could pull the plant and put it out of it's heated misery. I still have a few plants, but these were the hottest plants, in the most direct sun. The mulberries are still coming at about a cup a day, sometimes more. I REALLY need to find something to do with them. We are all sick of eating them now and they just don't freeze well, at all. Mushy and gross, nick!

Midweek I had a nice glutton of some of everything.

and more mulberries

and more.....and I pulled some of the cabbages to turn part of the bed.

AND here is my 'first' harvest. :-D My first ever home harvested 'tater. *beam* I got too anxious to eat it though, and ended up snarffling down and half cooked (grilled) spud and burning my mouth in the process. It was still good. I had 4/15/12 on the calendar as the first date for harvest on the potatoes, so I dug through one of the buckets and found this little jewel at the bottom. After digging in the garden bed I was worried I wasn't going to find any. I guess I just hadn't dug deep enough, because the bucket spuds are not as far along and yet here is my first one. Four ounces of wondrous goodness. 

I'll wait another week until I dig the rest up. The main bed that the others are in the plants are withering and turning yellow so I know the timing is certainly right, but if this spud is an indicator I'd like just a little more size. Besides, there just isn't much time between now and then to 'dig' into such a project. *Snort*

Tally for the week: Blue berries: 3lb 12oz, Mulberries4lb 2oz, Snap peas 14oz, English peas(final) 1lb 3.6oz,  yellow wax beans 1lb 4.3oz, Green Beans 7.5oz,  Broccoli 2.1oz, Turnip14oz, Cuke 4oz, Cabbage 7lb 3oz,  Tomato 5oz,  Potato 4oz, Carrots 4oz, Greens 13oz, Lettuce 12oz

Thanks for stopping by for Harvest Monday!

'Till next time!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 4.2.12

Welcome back to Harvest Monday! :-D

It seems to be always Monday here. I guess that is a good thing because it means I'm usually sharing my gardens bounty. I love that! Linking into Daphne's place for the party. Don't forget to stop on by and check out what people are harvesting all over the world!

This is April and true to nature it started just as it should have. I got rained out of my garden, and gladly so. It was a real toad floater. If I'd have had my camera (and I'm so glad I didn't because it would be ruined now) because I really had a toad float up in the pea patch that I had just turned. I'm glad he wasn't hurt! We were in pretty desperate need of rain so I was glad for it, but my cucumber trellis fell and took out my cukes so I'm not happy about that.

Well, with no further ado - Here are the pictures that I remembered to take this week.

 Haricots Verts  & Cherokee Yellow Wax Little bitty strawberries now and great big blueberries, and they are finally starting to come in handfuls instead of drabs, just as the strawberries are fading into the background. Good timing! A beet, cabbage, onions, rosemary

 More wax beans, cukes, mulberries, snap peas, broccoli, strawberries, blueberries, My! What a week!

A Alittle shirtvesting went a long way, but is unfortunately the very last of the snow peas. This was what I took off of the vines as I turned them under. In their place was sown derby bush beans.

Last but not least MINT > OH YUMMO. This handful of mint graced a nice pot of cocoa. MMMMmmmm... and some for drying.  'Cuz that much in cocoa would make my lips numb.

I'll be back soon. I've got a little project to share.

'Till next time!

Barbie