At the end of a brutally dry and hot summer, late planted potatoes manage to come through, tasty though overall quite tiny. Intended for personal use, a little winter stash that won’t last long!
Harvest
Curing garlic
The invasion of the leek moths a few weeks back left the garlic somewhat ravaged but unbeaten. The moth larvae seem to have been stopped up top, snipped and pinched and dug out before they had a chance to tunnel their way down through the stems, reaching the bulbs, and eating into them as well. Instead of that, the harvest has turned out just fine. The bulbs overall are a bit on the smaller side, but the cloves are nicely filled out, so…all’s well. A few weeks of air drying till everything’s woody and brown, then done!
Early mini-harvest
A small harvest of spinach and bok choi for dinner! It’s always a pleasant little shock to taste the first of the season’s garden-fresh veggies. After the winter months when the only fresh produce is grown in faraway lands, it’s a treat. In recent years, I used to buy a limited amount of veggies in winter. Onions if I ran out of my own. Green onions. Sometimes cauliflower and broccoli. Salad mix. Nowadays, I freeze spinach, kale and cauliflower. That, along with stored beets, carrots, and winter squash, covers most of the winter. So, for food satisfaction, the first new harvests every year are a big deal! :)
Bonus onions!
Leftovers from the previous season can turn into a delicious spring surprise! These onions grew from ones that were overlooked during fall harvest, and in a spot that hasn’t yet been tilled. There’s an official name for this: volunteering. Strictly speaking, I think a volunteer plant means it comes from seed dropped by a previous crop, or carried in by wind, birds or otherwise. These onions are new growth this year, from mature onions left in the ground over winter, kind of like leaves coming back on a tree. In any case, I think of them as volunteers, but mostly as a tasty treat.
October harvest
Great weather into the first week of October, with no hard frost so far. The veggie harvest list: beets, carrots, peppers, garlic, onion, green onion, zucchini, spinach, kale, lettuce, cabbage, butternut squash, radicchio, broccoli, eggplant. Nice!
Mid-September harvest
The weather’s been fine, no big frost worries, and the harvest is nice. For the sake of a list, in no particular order, we have: spinach, onion, garlic, carrots, bok choi, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, kale, hot and sweet peppers, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, green beans, beets, and…eggplant! I think I got ’em all. The set-up on a strip of canvas is for a newsletter photo–the lighting is an overcast sun, the studio is the field!
Early summer harvest
Bigger harvest, still mostly green. Beets, snap peas, spinach, garlic scapes, zucchini, kale, green onions, arugula, bok choi.