Harvest Monday

Do you remember these spindly looking things from Harvest Monday last week?

We thought they were all this way. But Belle gave them a closer inspection and this is what she found!

More than 15 pounds of sweet potatoes!

And this is what we made for dinner!

That's some of the apple wine we brewed this year. We weren't supposed to open it until December, but it's already very tasty!

Grilling sweet potato slices for a salad dish.

Grilled Sweet Potato Salad for the main dish with romaine salad as a side.

Belle made Grilled Sweet Potato Salad with feta cheese, orange bell peppers, tomatoes and a bunch of other stuff. We thought we had eaten all our homegrown chicken, but we found one last piece that went great with this meal. We also had garden fresh romaine salad. And do you know what the best thing was about this meal? The kids liked it too!

Sorry, I'm not posting from home so I have no harvest totals this week. I would estimate we gathered around 25 pounds. We picked romaine lettuce, beans, sweet potatoes, jalapeno peppers,onions, carrots, tomatoes and a volunteer tube of potatoes that we didn't even know was in the garden!


Be sure to stop by Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday, where gardeners around the world are sharing their harvests.

Harvest Monday

You have to look closely, but a volunteer Vivian romaine plant is there between the kale and arugula.

The highlight of our Harvest Monday with Daphne's Dandelions is a single volunteer romaine plant. At the end of May we harvested what we thought was the last of the spring romaine. This little guy was a complete surprise! He'll make a nice salad for lunch today.

Last Tuesday we harvested more kale and radishes. On Wednesday it was our first carrot. On Thursday it was even more radishes and a bit of arugula. On Friday we gathered raspberries (we've been gathering raspberries all week). Then on Saturday we harvested our first peaches and a single zucchini. Finally, on Sunday we harvested green leaf lettuce. Sometime during the week we harvested a single jalapeno pepper.

Of the six trees we have, this one always ripens first. The fruit is very fragile and small. We usually get just a few peaches. Maybe it's a Georgia peach tree, not meant for Pennsylvania. Who knows? We inherited it. The rest of the trees won't ripen for several weeks.

Bel made an 8 foot bean trellis earlier this week. The vines are climbing quickly.

romaine 12 oz
green leaf lettuce 1 lb
arugula 4 oz
kale 3 lb 12 oz
Radishes 1 lb 14 oz
Raspberries 1 lb 4 oz
blackberries 6 oz
Carrots 1 lb
Zucchini 1 lb
peaches 1 lb 6 oz
1 jalapeno pepper

Our first Carrot... Ever!

It's only 3 or 4 inches long -but a true delight around here!

This is the first time we've ever tried carrots. Truth be told, we were a little worried. We haven't had much success with root crops in the past, boy were we surprised! My nephew asked us why it looks so funny. I said, this carrot doesn't look funny. The carrots in the grocery stores are the ones that look funny.

Bel and the boys went blueberry picking at a local u-pick farm. They harvested 20 pounds. She froze many of them, but she also dried some. They are tasty!

Dried Blueberries -a delightful winter snack.

We also bought 25 pounds of beets for 12 dollars from an Amish farm near us. It seemed like a good deal to us.  Bel will freeze most of them. She loves, loves, loves beets and will eat them all winter long. She'll make a batch of pickled beets. Sorry I don't know the recipe.

Bel is cutting and freezing beets for winter.

We got a really great salad dish idea with radishes from another blogger. Everything she used we had in our garden or pantry, so we made it. Unfortunately, we can't for the life of us remember who it was. Whoever you are, if you read this, thanks!

Homegrown green leaf lettuce, calamata olives, feta cheese, thinly sliced radishes, Greek dressing

Our very first blackberry. It was a bit tart, but who can resist?

There's Cauliflower and then there's Cauliflower

See the difference between the greenhouse cauliflower and the seeded plants we began indoors on February 24th. Who knows, maybe we'll get two separate harvest times. That would be nice.

The top plant we seeded, and the bottom one we purchased from the nursery. What a difference!

Tiny broccoli heads are appearing everywhere. They're about 3/4 of an inch around.

Last year's new raspberry plants are spreading like wildfire! Today Bel transplanted about 10 wandering shoots into a new row, while I worked in the vegetable garden. Between the berry plants we bought last month and the spreading plants of last year, we now have about 60 or 70 feet.  In the garden I added a new row of leeks interspersed with beet seeds. The tomatoes will have to wait until Monday. The onions that were unhappy as indoor seedlings are thriving in the garden, and the shallots and carrots that we direct seeded two weeks ago are beginning to appear now.  We're so happy to see them! We thought the storms had washed them away. 

Gardening Old School

Today we planted 75 onions, a row of carrots and a row of shallots.  We interspersed onions into the carrot row.  Apparently carrot flies find carrots by smelling them.  The onions confuse the flies and make the carrots hard to find.  Go figure. This is our first time planting carrots.  We hope it works.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this old video clip on gardening http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Gs7Vik75k&feature=player_embedded. Thank you Carpe Diem Acreage