Keeping Track of the Harvest: July

July's harvest total was 49.1 kg, which converts to 108 lb and 3.9 oz. Considering how my summer has gone, getting this amount of food out of the yard is amazing.

The breakdown is in kilograms here:

July

Tomatoes, ripe 23.2
Melons 10.95
Cucumbers 1.95
Eggplants 1.6
Blueberries 1.3
Bush beans, green 0.6
Peppers 6.85
Popcorn 1.95
Apples 0.55 (Colonade-type in pots)
Southern peas 0.15

Not too surprisingly, this is the biggest harvest-month of the year to this point. I have no idea how August will turn out, especially considering how the non-gardening part of my summer has gone, but I am not the only gardener who is having to work the gardening into the rare, spare spaces in her life.

And if I want next year to have a higher harvest total than this year (the total for 2012 so far is 268 pounds, 7.9 ounces), it's time to start working toward that goal.  Fall veggies will need to be planted very soon, and the planting begins with working more organic matter into the soil.

Right now, there is some buckwheat flowering where I plan to plant carrots. It has been holding nutrients for me, keeping them from washing out (from rain) or burning out (from heat). This coming weekend, the buckwheat will be turned under to add organic matter to the space, and carrots will be planted a week or two later. The melons also are just about done, and I'll be pulling those vines out, then adding compost to their area to get the soil in shape for the cool-weather veggies that will be planted in those spaces next.

It may seem strange to be getting the cool-weather veggies planted while it is still so stunningly hot outside, but gardening often requires actions that only make sense after a lot of thought and research. Many of the fall crops will require 70-80 days (two and a half months!) to fully mature in a sunny yard. My yard is a little less than fully sunny, which means I need to add another week or two to the days-to-maturity. If the first frost comes around 31 Oct., and I want some of the fall crops to be mature a week or so before then, I need to have seeds in the ground very soon.