Harvest Monday 6.8.15

A week into June and the main harvest has been AVOCADOS! Yippee! We got a few last year, but this year I have lots and lots. There has been avocado slices on salads, and mashed avocados in sandwiches, some guacamole and now I'm at the point where I can't quite keep up eating them all as they come in. So- Now I will start trying to figure out how to preserve the stuff. I've heard of people freezing it but I just don't know how well it works. Anyone have experience? I know I can at least vacuum seal and freeze the guacamole, but I'm not sure about any other uses for it besides that. Shame, too because what I see on the trees should be the perfect amount for 9-12 months...but no way to keep the fruit from falling and becoming useless.

Such is the gardeners life. Oh! I almost forgot the other big harvests have been tomatoes (2 bushes are diseased already but the fruit is mostly edible)lemons, limes and jalapenos. I mean - seriously? Could the irony here escape anyone at the moment? It's the perfect guacamole ingredients. I'm adding some garlic to it, but other than that it's all homegrown. :-) LOVE IT!

Pomegranates have been coming in, too. Unfortunately they are not ripe, they are bursting from the rain we've had. :-( Booo!!!!! Normally our springs are really rather dry and that just hasn't been the case here. Our daily rain pattern doesn't usually pick up until late June but this year it started in March. So the not-quite-ripe burst fruit is going to the chickens who just don't seem to care that the fruit is more tart than sweet. LOL. They are also eating my aphid ridden kale and unfortunately the butterflies that seem to be showing up en mass this month.
Hope all is well where you are. Don't forget to stop by Daphne's to see what gardeners are harvesting all over the world!

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 5.18.15

Good morning, er... afternoon! It's harvest Monday again. This weeks harvest is a throw back to cooler days. I still have quite a few carrots int he garden. It's been rather hot out for a good while so the carrots aren't the sweetest, but they are most certainly edible still. Especially shredded and left int he fridge for a while.

The peach harvest ended this week. The last few were put in the fridge, and the squirrels managed to eliminate the need for harvesting the remaining 1/2 of the crop that were in the top of the tree. Grrr...lucky for them I did get some peaches this year. They aren't falling for the trap any more and I'm not sure what to do about that. I will have to find another way or move the trap. Either way I'll figure something out because now they are knocking down the avocados. 

So a few have been brought inside to see if they will ripen and be edible at any point. The larger ones are the only ones that have a chance, but I will continue to try as long as they continue to knock 'em down. Only good thing here is they are showing no interest in the fruit itself. They seem mostly unharmed if a little bruised.

 



Tomatoes are finally sizing up. I've been getting a small handful of cherry toms each week, but these little beauties are making my mouth water. I'm going to be angry if the dang tree rats mess with these!

I already have their use planned. They will be the first FRESH caprese I've had in a while, and I CAN'T wait! Too bad it will still be a few weeks. (pooh)


We've been working diligently outside the past few weekends and it seems like I'm turning wheels for no reason. We are having our home painted starting today and we needed to remove everything from against the house. It meant cutting the kiwi back to the (almost) ground in order to remove the trellis, cutting back all my flowers, and bushes away from the walls, removing some of the older plants, and putting all my potted plants outside. Along with that I had to take down 2 portions of fence, a gate and had to re-arrange the living situations for all the birds. None of them are thrilled, but they are all safe and moderately happy. They'll live this way until next week sometime (at the earliest!) when I can put their living quarters back in order.

We were planning a trip to Alabama to have a meeting with a builder and discuss our wants with them. We are looking at putting in a basement and a shell. We'll do all the plumbing, electric, cabinetry and flooring as we are able to. I'll keep ya posted on the progress with that. It's exciting, and scary to have another mortgage over our heads. Talk about budgeting!

Unfortunately now that this is all taking place I may have to stay behind in order to care for the critters. I hate to miss out on the meeting, but I know my hubby can take care of things and I will be kept up to speed on the important details.

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 8.11.14

Well, things have been super busy around here. With the garden, with the house, with the kids, with schools tarting next week and with a schedule change at work. But, since it's Harvest Monday - I'll start off the posting extravaganza with that.

This weeks harvests include a few avocados, a bucket worth of guavas, some eggs, and a gypsy pepper.

This handful of strawberry guavas is what I am getting on a daily basis. Well, I should clarify this is what I get when I can get to the bushes in the morning and it's not raining. Rain causes the fruit to drop, and the squirrels LOVE these. I'm breaking out the squirrelinator 2000 this next weekend. I'm just waiting for the newly germinated corn to get big enough to withstand a possible trampling. The ducks normally don't go near the gardens, but occasionally one will play chase and that causes a momentary lapse of reason and they will run through quickly.

I waited and waited for this gypsy pepper to turn, but it didn't and I wanted to eat it, and so I did.

Gratuitous avocado shot. Same avocados, I just forgot to get pictures.

 Another shot of the guavas. This basket was gathered over the weekend and I boiled these down. Now I just have to go buy a new strainer and get the seeds out of the pulp and make some jelly.

I'm still debating on if I want a mix of flavors (grape/guava...strawberry/guava) or if I would like to try it on it's own. Either way that is this weeks project. I only cooked enough down for about 2 jelly jars. Just in case. I mean really, what if I don't like it after all?

This is another gratuitous shot of a random pollinator. I do love to try to get good shots of them.

That's it. I ate a few seriously bitter carrots out of the garden, and replanted beans (and the previously mentioned corn) I still need to weed half the garden before I reseed and I'm praying after schools tarts I can get some brassicas in there.

Hope you are having a wonderful week.

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 7.21.14

Welcome back to Harvest Monday! Many thanks to Daphne over at: Daphne's Dandelions for hosting once again. I don't know what I"d do without it, I just love being able to go see what people are harvesting all over the world. It gives me a weekly jolt of inspiration.

This weeks harvest continues the avocado fest. It will only last an other week or so because my tree didn't produce a ton this year. Instead it grew a good 15 feet. Have to trade growth for fruit production. Now that the tree is getting rather sizable next year it will be kept trimmed to promote branching and fruiting rather than growth.

These lovelies are amazingly delicious. I like a good grocery store avocado, but these are even better. Completely pesticide free, and hey! The stupid squirrels don't eat them until they start to ripen. BONUS! This means I can pull them off the tree and let them ripen indoors.

Another bonus is that the tree is rather weepy. Weeping? What is appropriate here? The boughs hang low and are difficult for animals to climb. LOVE THAT! It also supplies a nice amount of shade for my poor hot duckies. :-)

Also on this weeks harvest is truly a tropical/Floridian type delicacy. I've never seen this fruit in a grocery, but can occasionally (rather quiet rarely!) find them in a farmers market.  GUAVAS!






Here is a close up of this lovely little diddy.

Richard, the kids and I have had a massive debate on what these taste like fresh. (I've only previously had syrup & jelly) We've come up with this:
The flavor profile of a kiwi, strawberry, and banana with the acidic bite of pineapple. The texture of an overripe banana and those seeds BTW, are not edible. I was under the impression they were, but quickly learned otherwise. I thought they would be like blackberry seeds and be something you could work around once it was in your mouth. Nope. Those little suckers are like rocks. HA! Only good news is there are about 6-10 seeds in each one so not too terrible. Only bad news is these fruits are the size of a half dollar piece. Around the amount of a strawberry.

It took some doing but I finally figured out a decent way to get the seeds out. Unfortunately it requires sticky fingers and a spoon. Bright side to that is I get to lick my then sticky fingers. Win some, Lose some.

Oh, also found out the hard way that the chickens will do ANYTHING to eat them. I've found Campbells way up in the bush stealing them as soon as they blush. When I manage to get them before they do I have 2 hens that hop/fly up and me and my hands trying to get me to drop one or otherwise throw them and run.

So many lessons to learn this week.  While planting the guavas in the chicken run has worked out really well, not getting many of the fruit stinks! Good thing I've got a few more plants on the side of the fence as well. This years crop will most likely only be for fresh eating but, if I can squeeze it in I'll make some syrup as well.

That's it for me. I harvested a half dozen tomatoes which were cracked and gross looking. Only was able to use the bottom half of them so no pictures there. I also harvested 3 large carrots, but they went to the chickens. Too bitter in this 99* heat.

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 7.14.14

It's Harvest time, again! Yippee!!!

I had a couple of weeks there I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get back here to report a harvest again. But, here I am! Linking in from Daphne's Dandelions, don't forget to drop by and see what others are harvesting all over the world.

This week brought me - green garlic. It appears that yet again my garlic will not be making bulbs. So, I took a few of these for cooking. YUM... so fragrant and delicious. If I didn't like actually having storage garlic for use later in the year it wouldn't bother me to use this all the time!

This single garlic stem covered my 4' table from one end to the other. HUGE. The usable white part was over 20" long. So growth isn't the problem necessarily. It's hard to grow certain things in Florida, and for me - this is one of those things. Some gardeners still manage to grow it fairly well, but the bulb size is never overly large.

The other thing I've been harvesting is my avocados!

Oh, this makes me happy. I was afraid that like the peaches once the squirrels and rats figured out the fruit was there that it would be gone. However, apparently when they are not ripe they don't entice the little critters. That's good because we have a thing for all things avocado around here. These beauties make me a little less hostile towards the squirrels. Only  a little though. THey are still stealing my tomatoes, beans and anything else they can get their paws on.

Today's avocado will be put into a salad with cranberries and a poppyseed dressing.. Oh my - I can't wait!


Not harvesting these yet, but the promise is there. So far the pomegranates have never had issues with either bugs nor critters. Something tells me that the critters don't like all the thornlike stickers on the bush. This works for me, because they are another one of this families favorite things. From popping the arils like little candy treasures to juicing. Poms are well received here.

Currently there are 7 poms on that have swollen enough I am no longer concerned about them dropping. There are another 6 that look like they have set but the branch hasn't thickened at the base of the fruit so I'm still holding my breath for another week - 10 days on those.

This tree blossomed earlier in the year and only set 1 fruit at that time. It is blooming still even with these beauties on and growing.  It's a good news/bad news scenario really. It means that the single crop I could have had (that is normally a large crop) is not going to happen. But, it also means that these fruits that are setting weeks and even months apart will provide me with a drawn out harvest. In the long run I'd rather have the fruit on an as needed basis to prevent waste, even though I probably will not get enough to juice, reduce and freeze yet again this year.

I have another bush that sits right next to this one and it tried to bloom earlier in the year. Non of those set any fruit and I can only hope that it will try to bloom again this summer so that I still might get even more fruit. That bush is older than this one and has yet to give me any fruit. I think by next summer if it doesn't set I may need to replace it!

That's it for my harvests this week. Nothing spectacular, but it's nice to have something from the garden anyway. Hope you are harvesting well!

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 7.15.13

Hey, Lookie there! It's Monday again! Harvest report time. I'm linking in like usual to Daphne's Dandelions. Thanks Daphne, once again for being such a great hostess. Make sure you stop by her place to see what is being harvested all over the world!

 

Here at my place it's avocado time! Of course, that doesn't man much. I only had about 6-8 set on the tree and then the dab-blasted squirrels got all but one before I managed to cage the thing. BUT, Oh but a harvest is sweet indeed when it is the first of it's kind. After all this tree is one of 5 avocado trees on my property. One of them was killed back this year and it looks like it will not be making a come back. It's no longer healthy so it's compost bin bound. The tree this fruit came from is Mexicola. It also got frozen not this past year, but the year before. It's only about 4 foot tall. All the other trees make fun of it. The most promising tree towers more than 20 foot taller than it. Yet, it was the first to bear. Go figure.

What? You wanted to see this luscious fruit? OK!

OOOO... It looks so large. It's only 4" long. LOL. But as they say a harvest is a harvest! It's going into guac. a small serving of guac but darn it guac non-the-less! We really lucked out because it started to ripen on the tree while we were away in Alabama and this is what it looked like the day we came home. If we had been gone another 2-3 days it wouldn't have been any good and I would have cried!

 

Also on our harvest menu this week, and only this week the Concord grapes. Of course I didn't bother to tell the husband and kids not to eat them and when I came back from harvesting the peppers for the guacamole - well it was down to this...

From 3 bunches of grapes to a few measly nibbles left for the Mom. They left me what had fallen off the bunches. Lovely. I hate to tell them but it still tasted just fine. The fruit only split because of how much rain we've had lately. But I did learn a hard lesson. I didn't trim the vines back last year in hopes they would take over the play house this year. They didn't. Not only did they not grow as much, they didn't produce as nearly much. MUST. CUT. BACK. the grape vines. :-(

 

Last but not least on my harvest list for this week are some more sweet potatoes. I saw a few mounded up and really was craving some so I felt around the base of a few plants and grabbed these out from under them.

YUM!

 

Not on my harvest list, but harvest here in Florida by my parents in Jacksonville and gifted to me while I was visiting this weekend:

 

 



A big bunch of yummy tomatoes and one of my favorite things, EVER... Canned tomatoes.

I have serious issues with canning. I just can't get post doing it all by myself the first time. I know once I do it I'll be fine, but until then I am over joyed by receiving gifts like these!

I should say I also received some beans, but there is no proof! They are all gone! :-D

Just like the first jar of tomatoes. ;-) YUMMO! Thanks again, Nancy!

 

Guess it's time to get back to work for me. Tonight I have plenty to do. I have to separate one of my flock who is picking on another member. I'm hoping to curb the behavior even though I don't think it will work. I'm going to start with a week of isolation. Wish me luck!

 

See you soon!

Barbie~