Well, I think my gardens have finally gotten over their soggy blahs. In the past 4 days I've harvested:
Downtown West -- 7+ pounds of green beans
Downtown East -- 14 squashes, 5-10 pounds of potatoes
Franklin -- 2+ pounds of carrots, 26 garlic, ~75 onions, 8 kohlrabi
Containers -- 2 eggplant, 1 bell pepper, handfuls of herbs
So, yesterday I was a good gardener and I preserved some of the excess.
My pretty purple green beans made 5 quarts, plus dinner and I still have a couple pounds to eat on for the next few days. I love how pretty the colors are when I pour the boiling water over the purple beans and they turn green.
Carrots made 3 quarts, plus an ice tray full of tasty baby food.
I'm hoping this weekend to make pickles and relish out of a bunch of the zucchini.
The potatoes, onions and garlic are all outside curing. This step is important so they'll dry out a bit and store better.
Of course, now I have huge sections of my gardens empty of veggies. I'm going to try and plant some root veggies for fall harvest. It's tough to get seeds started in the summer, but worth the effort I think. I'm going to try for carrots and beets and parsnips and some greens.
I'll leave you today with a picture of my Cthulhu carrot.
3 comments:
Ha! That is definitely an evil carrot.
Is your blog all about farming? I get you're an Iowa girl and all, and thats cool. So please stop by my site and comment there, I rather enjoy hearing others' opinions.
BEAUTIFUL harvest by the way.
Hi Chino,
No, it's not ALL about farming. Although this time of the year that's what takes up most of my time, so that's what I write about. I cover my experiences as I make my family more sustainable. Food is a huge part of the battle. But in the winter I talk about the ways we use less heating, I talk about the things I make by hand instead of spending money to buy a chinese made version of it. I write about the practical parts of trying to live out of a garden, such as preserving and storing and then actually eating the produce. You'd be surprised how many people have no idea what to do with a squash or a turnip.
I also do experiments with some of the "green" ideas that float around, just to see how they actually pan out.
And when I have nothing better to talk about I spout off about politics and current events. :-)
The overarching goal of my quest is to get my family down to 10% of the consumption of a normal American family. Check out this post from me: http://myfreedompath.blogspot.com/2009/01/some-more-riot-numbers.html
Or check out the Riot 4 Austerity link that's on the right hand nav bar of the blog.
Thanks for stopping by Chino.
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