Harvest Monday 1.26.15

It's Harvest Monday again.

All my harvests this week were greens and broccoli that went to flower. Because it went to flowering I gave it to my feathered friends. They REALLY enjoyed it. Luckily for them there was enough for each of them to have a small head. Unfortunately for me it means I still haven't harvested any for the table.

So I will show you what is left of my sweet potato harvest. I gave a few away to a friend with diabetes, and a few to a neighbor for making slops of her own, ate a couple fresh and now I have set these out for 'curing' in the garage. Of course here the whole curing thing isn't very effective, but it helps me to keep out of the stash a few weeks so at least some of the sugars can be converted. ;-)

Turned out to be close to 20 pounds that are left. I'm happy with that. It's rather exceptional considering I'm robbing the plants throughout the summer as I need them.

Here are Baby and Swayze  after enjoying their treats from the garden... I'm really happy with the decision to keep this hen. She may be a golden but her coloring is fantastic and 50% of the female offspring will be silvers because the drake is a silver. It may be a couple years before we would be able to keep any of the babies, but I will probably let her raise a clutch in late summer if she decides to set. I will try to time it just right and order a few pullets to put under her when the ducklings hatch.

That's it. Sorry - I know my ducks aren't necessarily 'harvest' material, but I am getting an egg a day from this beauty, so I suppose it does count to a degree.

Enjoy your week. I'm counting on company soon so I'll be cleaning up the tall beds and trying to get them back in order.

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 1.28.13

GEEZ! It's the end of January already, I can't believe it.

I guess time really does fly when you are having fun. :-) This weeks harvests are strange for me. I'm still unsure of exactly what type of greens I had planted, but I did harvest them this week. 7 pounds of greens,  just shy of 2 pounds of tomatoes a zucchini and 2 pounds of sweet potatoes. 

Ah, the greens wilted a bit from the heat. I can't believe how warm it got on Sunday.

I only harvested the sweet potatoes because I was moving the location of the patch. This is what has grown from the slips since my Fall harvest. Half of the new planter box will be sweet 'taters. I think they got too much water in the box against the fence and while I don't mind where they were at, it will be easier to control their willy nilly growth this way. Besides it will be pretty to have the vines hanging over the sides. :-D We vegetable gardeners don't always have the advantage of appearances first.

The girls enjoyed helping out with the harvesting and took advantage of my being preoccupied. The greens were a little more roughed up by the time they were done. LOL. They didn't do much but peck at them, but it was still funny to tell the kids they were eating greens that had been henpecked. *snort* They are back to laying very well again. I can't help but to think of it as a kind of reward for them. They also got to pick through the compost that went into the new planter.

 

An update on the build of the first planter box coming soon. It didn't come out quite how I planned. LOL. It's all good, just not what I was envisioning. Apparently when you've been married for almost 20 years your husband thinks he gets to have his input. I let him because I don't want him hating the garden and the work I ask of him. Smart, right? It was hard to let him do stuff though. I wanted it done MY way. In the end it is still functional and satisfies us both. I guess that is what matters most.  ?  Right  ?

Linking into Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday. Thanks Daphne! You're a doll for always hosting~

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 1.14.13

Welcome back for another ugly edition of Harvest Monday! LOL. Linking into Daphne's Dandelions once again. Thanks Daphne for being such a great hostess!

I just don't have very much going on lately. I spent the weekend pruning like crazy and hopefully it will pay off in the next 2 months. Everything already thinks that it is Spring and the blooms are beginning early. Too early. Hopefully this will shock the systems of the larger trees into waiting just a little longer.

Anyway the harvest this week? Pecans, Zucchini and 2 tomatoes.

I'm pounding away at the pecans. Another 8 pounds have been put away. Vacuum sealed and stored away for another year. This years crop was a disappointment. I am not sure that it isn't our fault for waiting so long to gather them and then leaving them up in Alabama rather than bringing them home to Florida with us. But, it's all part of the learning process. It could just have been an off year. We definitely didn't get enough rain and that would have to do with only half of the pecans being filled out well. But the a lot of them are also damaged in other ways. Shame, too because this years color is one of the best. Ah, win some lose some.

In the past I always put the pecans into like sized bags, but this year I am varying the size bags I am making. Some bags will be larger for baking sets of pies and things and some smaller for fresh eating and the likes. Hopefully this will serve us better and keep me from needing to open a second bag for just a handful of nuts and then forgetting that I have an open bag. Not that they go to waste around our house. We are a nutty bunch. The kids and the hubby make sure that any unused portions get eaten in case I forget for too long. Funny though, we may eat an cashew here or there but 90% of our nut intake is pecans and peanuts that we grow here or that we get from the property up there. My goal this year is to try once again my hand at growing enough peanuts for our peanut butter consumption. We eat a lot of peanut butter. I'm also going to make a pecan butter as soon as I'm done picking these darn things. It's worth a try. I'm not sure I'll love it but the kids might.

See you soon!

Barbie~

Blogger issues

Turns out the picture problem has been going on since Friday. At least I know it isn't me. I'm trying to skirt the issue by uploading int he HTML format. Let's see if it works...

The first large bowl of pecans. These have now been dried and are awaiting vacuum sealing  
                             
Zucchini, tomato and oranges...
                            
My sweet girls gift of eggies. <3 I'm not sure which I like better. The chickens or the eggs. LOL.

So, if you have blogger and can't upload pics from your computer switch to HTML format and good luck!

See you soon!

Barbie~