Harvest Monday

October 26, 2015

This week has been pretty crazy. I wouldn’t even know what happened if I didn’t look at the pictures we took! We harvested our sweet potatoes this week. We don’t have a large scale but our largest sweet potato was 2lbs 4oz.(spread out to dry after digging) (hauled in from the garden for sorting) (My 8yo planted some slips this year. These are some of her sweet potatoes.)

They are currently curing in the pantry. In early November, I will wrap them in newspaper and store them in the basement to continue to sweeten.

We ate the last of the garden beans this week. Well, the last of the fresh ones. We have some that are frozen for the winter. We continue to harvest peas and raspberries fresh from the garden.

Once the raspberries are spent, I will need to cut down the canes that bore berries and transplant the canes that popped up all over the place. I just truly don’t know where to transplant them! I don’t have anymore room in the current patch. Any suggestion on location? I am thinking the North side of the garden as a type of border but at the same time, I don’t want them to be an easy target for the many critters we deal with either.

I made thai noodle soup this week for the first time. It was like a healthy ramen noodle. Yum! We were able to use cabbage leaves, celery, and cilantro from our garden for the soup. However, I had such poor germination for my carrots this summer/fall, I had to use store-bought carrots for the soup.

I also planted the last of my seeds for the year. I am hoping this round will give us early carrots, beets, spinach, and lettuce in the spring. It is more of an experiment than anything.

I was going to cover all of the new plantings this week but we had a warm up so that will have to wait. Our cabbages are sizing up. Last year, we were able to harvest in January but it was more of a forced harvest because they were not covered properly. It will be interesting when we harvest them this winter.

All of my summer sowings for fall harvests did poorly. I will work on that next year. So, now, I am keeping all of my seedlings alive by covering and looking forward to some winter and early spring harvests. 🙂

What is going on in your garden? Check out what other gardeners are up to at Our Happy Acres 🙂

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Harvest Monday

October 19, 2015

We harvested more green beans, raspberries, and tomatoes this week. We also harvested more fall green beans, garden peas, and carrots. As we were cleaning up before the first frost of the season, we found some potatoes and a cucumber!

We had our first frost Sunday so Saturday we cleared out all of the tomatoes and beans.Tomatoes were on either side of this old chicken tractor. After the tomatoes were cleared out, compost was added. Now the ground is ready for next spring! The chickens love when we clean out the garden! (Last of the tomatoes!)

We ate the last of our squash this week. Sad day 😦 I hope one day I will learn how to grow summer and winter squash. It is our favorite and the squash bugs won’t let us get more than a handful of either each year. We cooked the last two butternut squash for our pumpkin baked oatmeal this week and next. After Halloween, pumpkin patches will give away their pumpkins and we will be set for the year (and so will the chickens!). We’ll have to survive for the next couple of weeks 🙂

This upcoming week, we will be harvesting sweet potatoes, putting up more hoop houses, and covering the rest of our fall/winter crops. Busy, busy! Check out what other gardeners are up to at Our Happy Acres.

 

Garden in October, Eastern NC, Zone 7b

October 1, 2015

Beginning of SeptemberBeginning of OctoberAt first glance, the garden at the beginning of September and the beginning of October looks pretty much the same. I have cleared out a few patches, and we now have hoops up but other than that, nothing looks like it has changed much. Until you glance to the left side… the weeds are trying to creep into the garden and take over! We’ll have to take care of that this month!!!

I am still growing brassicas to transplant, though time is running out to do so. The covered seedlings are doing better than the uncovered ones (surprise, surprise).

Our late-season butternut squash are getting bigger. I am skeptical they will have enough time to size up fully though. Our first fall frost is in middle/late October. At the very least, I’ll let them grow as big as possible so the chickens can have a treat. Walking through the garden, you can see how pitiful our tomato plants look. We are still harvesting about 1/2 a gallon each day but my OCD self can’t stand the ugly so I am clearing out the tomato patches whenever I get a chance.Under our covers, we have broccoli that is growing well. I know there will be no fall harvest but if I can keep them alive throughout the winter, maybe an early spring harvest is possible. I am playing with ideas on how to have a fall harvest of cabbage and broccoli (since I am unable to start them indoors).And cabbage…Next to the covered brassicas, we have our fall beans that are producing like MAD.And our fall peas. The kids said they saw some that were ready to harvest. I’ll have to go check it out. We look forward to fresh peas each spring and fall!As far as fruit goes, we are harvesting about 3 cups or so of raspberries every other day. A few strawberries here and there…And we have a few late-season watermelons. I am not sure how they are going to do but if we can keep the critters out, we’ll see 🙂 We also have some celery we have been growing all summer. The plan was to have them shaded by the tomato plants growing all around them. It seems to have worked! I am going to harvest most of the celery this week but it will grow back. These are celery plants I transplanted from a stump of store-bought celery. Oh! And the sweet potatoes! They have bounced back from the deer attacks. They are looking great! We just finished the last of our garden potatoes and are looking forward to harvesting our sweet potatoes this month!Chickens

The chickens are right in the middle of moulting so we are only getting an egg every other day or so. We are eating a lot of oatmeal as we patiently wait for their feathers to grow back. This month, we harvested 58 eggs, our lowest number for the whole year. January was our previous low, with only 61 eggs. I am glad we have kept up with our egg harvests this year. It has been very interesting to see the fluctuations and the reasons behind them. Seeing it on paper helps me be more determined to eat with the seasons and not just buy eggs when we feel like it.

Our TO DO list for October includes:

• Harvesting beans, peas, tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, and maybe some watermelon
• Clearing out the tomatoes
• Planting more leafy greens and root veggies to eat throughout the winter and early spring
• Spreading more compost over the whole garden
• Cutting down old raspberry canes
• Transplanting new raspberry canes

What does your garden look like at the beginning of October? Are you attempting a fall/winter garden? Any tips for me?

Garden in January, Eastern NC, Zone 7b and Harvest Monday

January 12, 2015

I am combining Harvest Monday with my monthly garden update this week. It is AMAZING to see how the garden has changed in the last two months!

Beginning of NovemberBeginning of DecemberBeginning of JanuaryWow. In the course of two months, the bushes and trees went from green, to red, to nothing! I never realized how quickly that happened before documenting it in pictures.

We dipped into the teens multiple nights this week and never got out of the 30s many days. So I went ahead and harvested a bunch of veggies — better safe than sorry! The garden is still covered. I am hoping the kale and broccoli plants will survive the cold and will bounce back. We will see.

Celery (from store cuttings) Used them juicing and in soup.

Cabbage (softball size but again, better safe than sorry! And they made enough coleslaw for three nights!)Kale (salad) Lettuce (salad) I remembered to take a picture one night as an example of how we ate from the garden this week:This is my 2yo’s plate. Sloppy joe (marinara sauce from our tomatoes & wild onions), coleslaw (our cabbage), roasted sweet potatoes (ours), steamed green beans (ours). Bread is homemade from freshly milled flour.

All-in-all I spent money on pinto beans, chickpeas, carrots, mayonnaise, mustard, some spices, honey and olive oil (bread). (I buy dry beans, soak, cook, and freeze them in 15oz bags) I may have spent 50c on the whole meal (no more than 10 cents/child, including seconds). Tell me eating healthy is more expensive! Pbsh!

Most of our grocery money these days is going into buying fruit! Fruit is costing us so much, I have fruit on the brain. I ordered extra watermelon and cantaloupe seeds for next summer. I ordered ground cherries. And this past week I ordered two sweet cherry trees and two fig trees. I wanted to order concord grapes as well but the order was getting pretty expensive so I guess I’ll have to wait until next year for those.

My hope is that soon, I will not have to buy any fruit during the spring, summer, or fall and maybe we can dry some fruit so we will not have to buy very much during the winter months either.

Right now, we freeze strawberries and blueberries for use during the winter. We went strawberry picking last May and we are still eating raw strawberry jam. We eat our blueberries in cereal and oatmeal.

Are you harvesting? Are you still eating from your stores? Whether it is your goal to eat only from your land one day, eat only in season, or you just like looking at others’ gardens, check out Daphne’s Dandelions this Harvest Monday 🙂

Harvest Monday

November 3, 2014

Our first frost date is October 20th (zone 7b). The temps have held off for awhile but this week, we had our first frost and last night we got down to 30.

I knew, with how life is, that whenever the first frost was predicted, I would not have time to do anything in the garden that day. So I have been stripping the tomato and pepper plants and cleaning up the garden for the winter for the past couple of weeks.I have filled the wagon about seven times…

Tomato/Pepper patch cleaned out:
And half of it covered with manure from the coop (darker mulch on right & light mulch in front both from the coop):Our L-shaped volunteer tomato patch and all of the tomato plants in the raised beds and pots were cleaned up as well. I harvested all of the peppers and tomatoes.The peppers were chopped and frozen while the tomatoes are ripening on the counter.Other harvests this week include…

PeasA few beets randomly popped out of the ground on their own. I juiced these and froze the juice and pulp (separately) until the rest plump up. We drink the juice and use the pulp to make blueberry/beet pancakes.

Kale and Raspberries… Every once in a while we are able to harvest a bit of spinach and lettuce. I’m not sure why most of the seeds did not germinate. We are thankful for whatever we get though 🙂I am happy to announce we were able to harvest strawberries this week! Our strawberries are everbearing strawberries. However, I have not seen any flowers or anything and as our first frost date is quickly approaching, I figured I may as well cover the strawberries for the winter.

I prepped the area this week by making sure all of the weeds were pulled and what do I see? Strawberries! It was a pleasant surprise, for sure 🙂We also were blessed by our neighbor this week as he allowed me to harvest some baby kale from his garden. He also allowed the children to pick some pecans from his tree. They needed to dry before we could open them. The children have LOVED breaking them open with rocks and eating them as snacks. We don’t eat snacks at our house so anything out of the garden is a treat 🙂 This past week, they have been playing campout. They have been eating peas, pecans, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, and wild onions. Love it! 🙂

If only feeding them was that easy all the time 😉 We love eating from our garden! Here is an example: Sweet potato, green beans & kale from our garden. Only one pecan made it on the plate as the rest were eaten right before supper. We also had baked beans but I took the picture before serving those since they are not from our garden 🙂Are you harvesting still or prepping your garden for the winter…or both, like us?

Check out what others are harvesting over at Daphne’s Dandelions!