This harvest includes the first tomato of the season!  For northern gardeners who don’t have greenhouses, this is a great milestone!  Also the first red hot pepper of the season.  Pretty cool stuff.  Both of these warmer weather crops were harvested at the community garden, rather than the home garden though.  It gets so much more sunshine.  All the tomatoes and peppers at the home garden are still very green, though growing well.

Outside…

Things are growing better than they usually do at the home garden.  I think the organic fertilizers are working better than just using the shredded leaves and compost from the organic dairy.  I can’t believe how much babying this garden in the forest requires.  The snap and snow peas are pretty much finished.  Honestly, my kids and I are pretty much done with eating them fresh.  Last night I shelled a bunch and made creamed peas with potatoes.  It was nice to use them in a new way.  This week I will blanch the rest of the snow peas and freeze them to use in stir fry recipes this winter.

We pulled all of the pea vines out of the community garden and half of them out of the home garden.  Later this week I will probably pull the rest out and focus on the other plants.  I hate to pull out a plant that is still alive, but last year I made the commitment that once a plant had stopped producing it had to go.  The vines are starting to die and the pods on the peas we got were getting tough instead of being crisp and juicy.  So off they go.

In the last post, the deer had found my flowers.  This post also includes a forest creature.  A rabbit.  He made short work of the radish tops.  Which fortunately, since the radishes never bulbed up, I didn’t want anyway.  But it was good they were there because I was able to spray some liquid fence around the perimeter of the garden.  Hopefully that will deter the bunny.

This week…

Inside the garden fence (safe from browsing deer), the lavender is thriving and peeking out from under the overgrown oregano plant that is also flowering.

Additionally, the hollyhock that I planted last year is finally blooming!

And with all the flowers blooming, we have a fair share of busy, busy pollinators.  I tried to get a close up of this fat lady, bumbling along on the oregano blooms.  Notice the yellow pollen baskets on her legs stuffed full of the yellow wonderfulness.

 

Harvest…

In addition to harvesting food these last couple of weeks, we had some peas that just got too big to eat.  I have shelled and dried those and am planning to see if they grow great peas for next year.  I am a little concerned about what we will get as the snow peas and snap peas were planted right next to each other and I am sure they cross-pollinated.  That cross-pollination did not effect the produce we ate this year, but will probably affect the plants that grow from the seeds I saved.  We may get the newest greatest pea next year…the snow snap.  Who knows.  It will be interesting to see what they produce.  We ended up with 8 5/8 oz. seeds from the snaps and 1 3/4 oz. seeds from the snows in addition to the food tally below!

Total Home Garden so far this year: 

           ~ 1 oz. cilantro

           3 T. onion tops

           1 3/8 oz. chives

           ~ 5/8 oz. chocolate mint (for tea)

           1 T. Rosemary

           1/8 oz. parsley

           1/8 oz. sage

           2 lbs. and 14 1/8 oz. mixed sugar and snap peas

 

Total Community Garden Beds this year:

          2 lb. 1 3/4 ounces mixed Russian Red Kale and Giant Spinach

          1 lb. 7 5/8 oz. mixed radishes – Champion, French Breakfast, and Sparkler Tip

          1 1/8 oz. tatsoi

          7 oz. baby bok choy

          1 oz. tomato

          1/8 oz. artledge hot pepper

          1 lb. 3 oz. cucumbers

          3 lb. 2 1/8 oz. peas (mixed snow and sugar snap)

Total Foraged Food this year:

          5 5/8 oz huckleberries!!!

 

Total Pounds Harvested: 11 lb. 14 and 6/8 oz. total (plus a few T. herbs, a bunch of peas we ate before weighing, half gallon bag of spinach to a friend, and a giant bunch of kale to another friend)

Costs:

            No new costs this week (although I did use some liquid fence I had on hand around the garden perimeter.)

*I have an extensive collection of seeds from prior years, seeds I saved from my own garden, and seeds that I am able to obtain for free every year at events hosted in our community and our community seed library, so my seed costs are pretty low.

Total:  $128.83 for the year.  About $11.20 per pound of produce, figuring 11 1/2 lbs. as a rounded figure.  Still some expensive organic produce there.  It’s getting a bit better every week though.  The zucchinis will help get this figure lower in a few more weeks.  And the pumpkins.  All of the squash is baby size right now.

Enjoy your harvest and feel free to leave a comment and let me know how you are doing!  I love walking and picking huckleberries so maybe we will see some more of that as well.  I foresee sticky, sweet jam in my future.  Are there any wild harvested foods that you enjoy?  Go forth and grow!