The Final Harvest

These days I am busily packing up my household. For those who don't know, I was offered a new job (at last), which I accepted, the result being that I am moving. To Michigan. It was a difficult decision, but a job is better than unemployment, and the place where I am going looks like it will be a terrific place to work. Even so, I am heartbroken to leave my property here, with the apple trees just starting to produce, the native shrub hedge finally growing in, and my veg. garden soil improving each year.

Walking in and out of the back porch I kept passing the pile of runner beans that I brought inside to dry. Finally, this morning I decided it was time to shuck them, for the sun was out, the air was mild, and I needed to tackle the porch soon in the cleaning frenzy.


Each pod was stripped from the dried vines and its contents were placed in a bowl.


Idefix did as all cats do: sat on whatever I was working on. In this case, the unshucked beans.


All of a sudden, Toby bounded up and charged the fence. He ran and barked and turned and jumped and barked some more, completely beside himself. What could it be? I looked for a deer, but no deer was to be seen. Instead, I saw...

one of the many stray cats our neighborhood now has. Unresponsible cat owners have left their fertile cats outside and now we are overrun with a feral population.

Toby was defending his property and his own cat. This stray was not impressed, for it stayed there all arched up and fluffy for several minutes, no doubt laughing internally at the futile efforts of the dog.

I returned to my shucking and ended up with quite a good haul. I don't remember which beans are which, though. However, I think the little reddish-brown ones in the bowl with the large white ones are the dwarf bees, a very short runner bean that is considered "rare."

These might be the scarlet runner beans...

and these maybe are the sunset runner beans?

Would that make these the painted ladies?

Hopefully I'll have gardening space next summer and can plant these to discover (once more) which ones are which.

Roots

This was a mini harvest weekend, and here are the fruits of my labors:

Clockwise from top left: onions, potatoes, beans and peas, garlic.

It all started Saturday evening when I got home from work. On a whim (I tend to work on whims), I decided to get out the spading fork and dig the spuds. After all, the CPB had done their work and the plants were all shriveled twigs. I figured I might as well dig the things up - the odds of them continuing to grow were likely very slim. I planted about 11 pounds of potatoes this spring, and the harvest was about half a bushel. Did I get back my investment? Not this year.

Sunday morning I tackled the garlic and onions. The onions did very well this year, which surprised me. Here's a bushel basket full of onion braids, and I still have one more bed to harvest!

But one can't leave one's onions in a basket...they must be hung to dry. Not having a root celler, or a drying shed, I have to make do with whatever space I can find.

The bundles of garlic have been laid out to dry as well. Some did very well, while others were hardly worth the effort. German white seems to be the strong favorite, with nice large bulbs. Several of the best will be put aside for planting this fall (who knows...I might still be here next year).

Finishing the Harvest

Ever so slowly I am getting the last bits of my garden's harvest put where it belongs. The last giant zucchini was presented with a flourish to my parents a couple weeks ago ("that's not a zucchini; it's a baseball bat!"). The lettuce that finally decided to grow, all of three inches tall, was pulled and placed in the compost bin. The spuds are bagged and in the basement, as are the many braided ropes of onions.

But the carrots remained in a bucket on the porch. I brought some in, scrubbed, peeled, blanched and froze them, but many more remained. Concerned they would go soft dehydrating there on the porch, I brought them in a couple weeks ago, with great intentions of getting them "done." A load was placed in a second bucket and soaked in water to help loosen up the caked-on dirt...uh, soil...for a week. Knowing full well that I wasn't getting to them any time soon, I drained the bucket and dumped them in with their compatriots, which were also sitting in water. I finally drained that bucket, too, and placed all the remaining roots into the smaller container - a foot and a half deep, and over a foot wide.

Every night I'd grab a handful of the orange roots and add them to the dog's dinner, and sometimes in the morning a carrot or two would end up in my omelet. But the bucket's contents were not noticeably shrinking.

Until the day I grabbed a carrot that had fuzzy white stuff growing on its top. MOLD! If I didn't get my act together, I could kiss all these carrots goodbye!

So, Sunday afternoon found me sitting on the living room floor with a peeler, two bowls and my bucket of carrots. All but the smallest (and the ones that went squish) were peeled, then washed, chopped, blanched and frozen. How is it possible for all those carrots to shrink down to only eight quarts in the freezer? Must be fuzzy math.

Now I have to do the pumpkins...

A Blast from the Past

I picked up a roll of film (remember film?) Monday and discovered it had photos from last fall's harvest! Very colorful - a must for this blog. So, I took photos of the photos so I could have digital renditions to post here.

The gleanings from Fall Harvest 2008.

I took a stab at growing dried beans.

It's not worth it - you don't get a lot of bang from your buck.

Still, they are lovely; I especially like the black and white

ones in the middle.

Runner Beans - I thought I'd try saving them to plant in 2009 -

we'll see if any sprout this spring!

Toby, exhausted from a day of harvesting.

And this is the reason for growing sunflowers!
By now the remaining heads are well picked over - not a seed left.

More Firsts

Plucked my first tomato of the season yesterday! It's not 100% ripe yet, but it came off the vine very easily and will be perfect in a day or two.

I also found, quite by accident, my first beans yesterday. I was picking peas and suddenly found a "pea" that didn't look right. It was too flat. Lo! and behold, it was a bean. Either very short pole beans or very tall bush beans. Regardless, a lot of them were ready for picking and so I did. There weren't enough to make a meal for me, so Toby got them with his stew beef last night.

I think the cauliflower is a lost cause. It started to produce heads last week, and I had high hopes, but they are looking very brown now and don't seem to be growing. The best of the bunch is covered with frass from the LGWs (little green worms), so that right there is a real turn off.

Harvested two more broccoli heads, though, and gave them a thorough soak in salt water last night. Maybe I'll blanch them tonight.

It also looks like the peas are starting to dwindle. Harvested enough for two more containers to freeze, and there are still plenty of pods on the vines, but unless we get some sunshine, I don't think I will be getting too many more harvests - the pods are not filling out.

And just when I was thinking the corn would never produce even tassels before our first frost, I found that one of the varieties (I think it is the Tom Thumb) is starting to get tassels - it is barely knee high. The garden never ceases to amaze.

The Harvest Exapnds & Other Observations

First it was lettuce (I've actually stopped picking lettuce for a while - one can have too much of a good thing), and now it is peas. I've been filling bowls with peas from the vines every day for over a week now (even in the rain). While the pods fill the bowl to overflowing, the actual peas, once shelled, are fewer, but it has still been enough to put ten containers in the freezer so far! Another three or so may go in tonight after I get home and go over the vines again.

Yesterday also yielded the first real broccoli harvest. I picked one head about three weeks ago, but last night I harvested four. The variety I planted doesn't get massive heads, but it was enough to fill two bags for the freezer.

And let's just discuss for a moment here the whole "soak your broccoli in cold salt water for 30 minutes to remove the little green worms" strategy. It doesn't work. I filled the kettle with cold water, dumped in a fair quantity of salt, and added the broccoli. About an hour later I found about three LGWs floating in the water. I plucked out a head and started to look it over...LGWs were still clinging to it. I can't vouch for the amount of life they had left in them, but I don't think they were all deceased. So, I cut apart each head and looked over each floret carefully (removing LGWs) before putting it in a bowl for blanching afterwards. Make you wonder how the "big companies" remove the LGWs from their broccoli. HM.

The squash, pumpkins and cukes are growing well, thanks to all the rain. They are all starting to put out blossoms!

The runner beans are also blooming. I have found them disappointing. For some reason in my mind the flowers were much larger. Still, the colors are nice, and if the hummers can find them, they should be happy.

Purple flowers are appearing on the pole beans, although I'm not sure if the bush beans are blooming yet.

As I came up through Warrensburg this afternoon I saw corn already with tassels. Hmmm...my corn is barely reaching knee high. I'm thinking I should've risked cool soil and planted it sooner. Too late now, of course, but something to consider for next year.

Also, note to self: don't mix up all the herb and beneficials seeds together and then plant with the buckwheat. Buckwheat grows faster and gets rather tall and dense - the other don't stand a chance. Might not want to plant the crimson clover with the buckwheat next year, either.

Sunflowers are doing great - some heads are already starting to form! I love it when they all burst into bloom! I was lucky last year and the bears were not a problem. The sunflowers are closer to the fence this year, though, so it should be interesting to see if the bears become a problem when the seedheads ripen.

The nasturtiums started blooming this last week. No cosmos yet, though, or marigolds. This is the difference between planting the seeds outside "after last frost" and staring the plants inside a month or more earlier. These flowers are planted as companions to the veggies, ostensibly as encouragement to pollinators, so I'm thinking next year we start them inside again; I should have plenty of room since I am giving up on starting onions and leeks from seeds.

Had the first monarch caterpillar of the season just before this last week of rain - it was munching on some butterflyweed (which does VERY well up here). It was pretty good-sized; I'd guess it was at least a week and a half old. It's the only one I've seen so far this year, though. Few monarchs overall this summer. And not a single red admiral butterfly! Hm. I wonder where they are.

Veg Harvest Increases by 50%

The first peas of the season were picked and eaten on Friday. I had upwards of 20 pods, and a yield of almost an eighth of a cup of peas. Because there weren't enough to actually do anything with, and I'm not one who likes them raw, I let Toby enjoy them with his dinner that night. I, instead, enjoyed still more lettuce.

The spinach has started to bolt.

Little round green balls are growing away on the Glacier tomatoes, still, while about a quarter of the other tomato plants are now starting to bloom. I raided the garden supply shops on Friday in Glens Falls and stocked up on short stakes for tomato plants. Probably should've gotten the longer stakes, but we'll see how these do. Friday evening found me staking and tying about 80 tomato plants. Several needed another trimming, too, to remove secondary shoots and extra leaves.

The runner beans are starting to climb above the potatoes and are now seeking out their trellis strings.

I've been squishing CPB eggs, larvae and adults daily now. Just when you think you've gotten them all, you find a whole new batch have emerged.

Gray aphids have struck now, too. Not in the veggies, but in one of the flower beds. I discovered a couple plants simply coated with the things. At first I just removed infested parts out of the garden, but soon discovered that to be successful, I'd have to remove the entire plants. So, I found a squirt bottle, filled it with soapy water, and gave them all a bath. We'll see if that works.

Little cabbage whites (those pale white butterflies) have been fluttering around the broccoli and cauliflower. Hm...I may have to start little green worm patrols soon.

Over-run with Lettuce

One day you are wondering if you planted enough lettuce, and the next you find yourself trying to give it away because there is more than you could possibly ever eat! And that's just the plants from the first planting!

The exciting news is that I now have pea pods! I suspect that by the end of the week I will be harvesting my first peas - huzzah!

A perusal of the garden last night also turned up potato beetle larvae! I've been squishing the eggs when I find them, but I've obviously missed some because there were the larvae - tiny little ones, larger blob-ish ones shedding their skins, and their frass all over the potato leaves. Those that I found are no more.

Meanwhile, leeks are not doing well at all. I thought that if I started them from sets that I would have better luck, but even these don't seem to be growing. Must be I just don't have the right conditions for leeks.

Things are Growin' in the Garden

I've picked my first (and second) lettuce - always a rush of excitement, this first harvest.

Three tomato plants now have blossoms. I'm pretty sure these are the Glaciers.

AND - my first peas now have blossoms as well!! I'd have to consult my map to be sure, but I believe these are the one's named Laxton's Progress #9.

Beans and potatoes are doing very well. Corn is up about 3" now. Squash and pumpkins are showing their first leaves, and the runner and pole beans will soon be climbing trellises.