I hope that you have had a wonderful Labor Day Weekend. As we have begun our new school year, I have had a distinct lack of time for gardening. My son, however, keeps hounding me to get to the garden. He has been growing one of our community garden beds and his produce is really starting to come in now. He planted lots of plants and every time we head out to the garden, he brings home a couple of amazingly unique gourds or a mini pumpkin from his plants to add to his display.
I am not 100 percent sure of the variety of gourd. To be fair I have never grown gourds before, but my son planted them at an event and brought them home and they have grown beautifully! They are very interesting looking.
These last couple of weeks, we have really started to get in the heavier produce. Our tally should be looking good. Here are the results.
Harvest…
Clearly the sunshine at the community garden has won out for increasing those harvest pounds, as you will see below. If you look to the left, you will see the first of the sweet corn. One ear wasn’t completely filled out, but the flavor was out of this world. And there should be more to come. This is the first year we have ever attempted to grow sweet corn in a raised bed. The gourd vines are climbing up the stalks.
Total Home Garden so far this year:
~ 1 oz. cilantro
3 T. onion tops
1 6/8 oz. chives
~ 5/8 oz. chocolate mint (for tea)
small bunch of basil
1 T. Rosemary
1/8 oz. parsley
1/8 oz. sage
2 lbs. and 14 1/8 oz. mixed sugar and snap peas
6 lb. 1/4 oz. mixed tomato
2 6/8 oz. hot artledge pepper
1 oz. sweet banana pepper
1 5/8 oz. purple beans
2 1/4 oz. green beans
Total Home: ~9lb. 9 5/8 oz. produce
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
3 lb. 13 oz. tomato
4 oz. tomatillo
2 3/4 oz. artledge hot pepper
6 lb. 4 1/8 oz. cucumbers
3 lb. 2 1/8 oz. peas (mixed snow and sugar snap)
9 1/2 oz. green beans
9 2/8 oz. yellow squash
14 lb. 1 oz. green zucchini squash
3 lb. 5 3/8 oz. gourds
3 lb. 8 1/8 oz. mini pumpkins
11 1/4 oz. sweet corn
Total Community Garden: ~44 lb. 1/4 oz. produce
Total Foraged Food this year:
5 5/8 oz huckleberries!!!
Total Pounds Harvested: 53 lb. 9 and 7/8 oz. total (plus a few T. herbs, a bunch of peas we ate before weighing, half gallon bag of spinach to a friend, the huckleberries and a giant bunch of kale to another friend)
Costs:
No new costs this week. But I was able to harvest from the community garden 5 oz. of cilantro seed and 1/2 oz. of giant spinach seeds which will help next year’s costs!!! FYI – the giant spinach makes excellent wraps for chicken salad for a fresh, delicious summer meal.
*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 $2.40 per pound of produce, figuring 53 1/2 lbs. as a rounded figure. That’s more like it!
Enjoy your harvest and feel free to leave a comment and let me know how you are doing! The difference between the community garden verses the home (forest garden) 44 lbs. vs. 9 lbs is widening. It is unbelievable how much of a difference a location can make. The one thing that is odd, is that the tomatoes at the community garden haven’t really ripened. There are many green ones there, but I would have thought that the extra sun would ripen them faster. Instead, the ones in the forest garden have been beautiful and red though the forest garden has primarily small or cherry variety and there are more large ones at the community garden. Go forth and grow!