Tracking the Harvest: October and November, 2013

The big surprise is that, in spite of the monsoon-like quality of much of the year and the ravenous appetites of the local chipmunks, my yard has managed to provide more than 400 pounds of food in 2013 to this point. Harvests in the next few months will be pretty lean, but that's why we put away surpluses of crops like tomatoes, peppers, and beans when we have them in summer.

I've also been enjoying the butternut squash, which, like the sweet potatoes, keep just fine on their own without any work in "putting up" the harvest. They just sit around in baskets until I'm ready to use them. A lot of the butternut squash has been baked until squishy, then whirled in the blender (without seeds and skins) with some almond milk, black pepper, and sauteed onion and garlic -- quick and easy butternut soup! It just requires the forethought to have put the squash into the oven.

Weights below for the past two months are in kilograms:

October
Tomatoes, ripe 2.4
radishes 1.3
okra 1
Peppers 6.15

November
Persimmons, Asian 0.65
Radish, winter 2.15
Peppers 0.55
Carrots 0.4
Bok Choy 0.75
Potatoes 0.5


October 10.85 kg = 23 pounds, 14 ounces
November 5 kg = 11 pounds

Running total January through November = 181.95 kg = 401 pounds, 1 ounces

Tracking the Harvest on World Food Day: September 2013

Today is World Food Day, part of the effort to end hunger around the world. My contribution to today's effort is the loan of my broadfork to the Plant-A-Row-For-the-Hungry project (for which I was a volunteer, before I got the new job) in Kennesaw; the group is going to use it in harvesting sweet potatoes that will be donated to The Center for Family Resources in Marietta.

Vegetables -- foods full of essential vitamins and minerals -- are especially important foods to provide to low-income families. When a food budget is tight, fresh veggies usually don't make it onto the family menu, but they can contribute a lot to good health.

In my own yard, this month's harvest has been a little skimpy. The saddest part is the sweet potato total, since the bed those were in was so totally chipmunked. If we were depending on my garden for all of our fresh produce, we would be in trouble, because we like to eat a lot of veggies every day.

The following harvest weights for September are in kilograms:

September

Tomatoes, ripe	4.7
Peppers	4.05
Okra	1.15
Bush beans, green	2.2
Eggplant	0.15
Potatoes, sweet	9.6

September 21.85 kg =  48 pounds, 2 ounces

Running total January through September = 166.1 kg =  366 pounds,  3 ounces

I don't know whether the total is going to make it above 400 pounds this year. It will be interesting to see how the fall vegetables do. Right now, many of them are being nibbled fairly persistently by chipmunks and/or rabbits. The carrots and radishes are doing well enough, but the beets and assorted greens seem to be losing the battle.

Wish me luck?

Tracking the Harvest: July and August, 2013

The rainy weather has definitely affected my garden crops, in some ways good and some bad. We had a great summer for cucumbers and zucchini, but the tomatoes have been miserable.

Usually, we get blueberries for two or three (sometimes four!) weeks before the birds find them and our picking is over for the summer. This year the blueberries were late but the birds were right on time, so we got very few of the blueberries. None made it into the freezer.

We've had some figs, but the bush is one of the several plants that were smashed when our neighbor's oak tree fell on our house last summer, so the bush is busier with getting new stems and leaves than with making fruit, and then, of course, there are the birds...

However, the numbers don't look too bad:
 

July 49.85 kg = 109 pounds, 14 ounces

August 34.65 kg = 76 pounds, 6 ounces

Running total January through August = 144.25 kg =  318 pounds,  3 ounces

The breakdown by crop, measured in kilograms, is pasted below.

July

Tomatoes	21.35
Shallots	3.75
0kra	0.4
Cucumbers	12.05
Eggplants	1.15
Berries, misc.	1.05
Bush beans, green	1.65
Peppers	5.5
zucchini	2.7
Swiss chard	0.25

August

Tomatoes	7.55
Peppers	7.15
Figs	1.4
Melon	2.45
Eggplants	1.7
Zucchini	2.1
Butternut squash, dwarf	3.5
Cucumbers	6.45
Okra	1.25
Bush beans, green	1.1

Hope everyone else's gardens are going well!

Tracking the Harvest: May and June 2013

Who knows what a normal gardening year looks like? I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever be possible again to predict with any accuracy when a crop will come in!

This year's harvests are coming along, but fairly slowly. In other words -- it's all a bit late. I know I'm not the only gardener in the area with this problem, because I've been getting calls at the office from other gardeners who are waiting (and waiting ...) for some of their crops to reach maturity. The potatoes in my yard were a week or so late.

About two-thirds of this year's potato harvest.         PHOTO/Amy W.

The tomatoes, though, are driving us all nuts! Some people are getting decent ripening in their cherry tomatoes and some of the hybrid varieties, but most of the big heirlooms seem to be waiting for less rain and warmer temperatures.

Cherokee Purple tomatoes, just hanging out, not in any hurry to ripen in this cool, wet weather.  PHOTO/Amy W.

The native plants out in the wooded back yard seem unfazed by the weather, but the Rabbiteye blueberries in front are very late, and they aren't too many generations from "native".

Goldenseal making its beautiful red fruits in my back yard.        PHOTO/Amy W.

So, to update the harvest tally, this is what my yard has given us - measured in kilograms - in the past couple of months:

May

radishes	0.25
Lettuce	1.4
carrots	0.45
Onions, multipliers	0.65
strawberries	0.15
Peas, edible pod	0.35
Beets plus greens	0.35

June

Bush beans, green	3.25
Zucchini	10
Peppers	1.05
Cucumbers	0.7
Swiss chard	0.2
Eggplant	0.8
Berries, misc.	0.85
Onions, bulbing	2.85
Tomatoes, ripe	0.15
Potatoes	14.35
Onions, multipliers	0.8
Garlic	1.5

The total harvested weight for May was 3.6 kg, which converts to 7 pounds, 15 ounces; for June it was 36.5 kg, which converts to 80 pounds, 7 ounces.  

The running total for the year, January through June, is 59.75 kg, which converts to 131 pounds 11 ounces.

Last year's harvests from these months were very different, but last year was warm unusually early, so it isn't a good year for comparison. I am pretty sure, though, that the tomatoes should be stampeding into my kitchen by now.

Hope we get a few days break from the rain soon, and that all your gardens are doing well!

Tracking the Harvest: March & April 2013 Totals

Nearing the end of the carrots and spring radishes.   PHOTO/Amy Whitney

The peas are flowering, the lettuces are flourishing, and we might finally have enough warm weather that the summer crops start to really grow.

How can a gardener complain?

Our jars of dehydrated vegetables from last summer are slowly but surely being emptied, so I will be very glad when the harvests return to being more abundant. In March and April, harvests were definitely down.

The total so far for the year is less pathetic than I thought it would be -- the total is 19.65 kilograms, which converts to 43 pounds 5.1 ounces.

March and April harvests contributed to that total as follows:

March (in kilograms)
Radish, winter          0.2

radishes                   0.3

Carrots                 0.2

Spinach               0.55

Beets plus greens        0.9

Onions, green            0.4

April (in kilograms)

spinach                   0.25

radishes                    0.15

Green onions               0.45

Beets plus greens            2.5

For March, the total harvested added up to 2.55 kilograms, which converts to 5 pounds, 9.9 ounces.

For April, the total harvested added up to 3.35 kilograms, which converts to7 pounds 6.1 ounces.

Tracking the Harvest: Jan. & Feb. 2013

Winter radish - a crop that we love but that is almost done in our yard. 

Tracking the harvest totals last year taught me a lot about my garden, so I'm going to try it again this year. Something I had already figured out is that the next two or three months are going to be pretty slim, harvest-wise, but tracking the harvest really emphasizes the leanness of the coming weeks.

The next two or three months are why we put veggies in the freezer and in jars "for later." Not too surprisingly, "later" has finally arrived!

Here are the weights, in kilograms, for the veggies that I weighed after bringing them in from the yard.

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January Harvest

Asian persimmons	0.6
Lettuce	0.65
Broccoli	0.7
Radish, winter	0.55
Swiss chard	0.2
Beets plus greens	0.6
carrots	0.95
Bok Choy	1.5
Kale	0.1
Spinach	0.15
Cabbage	5.6

February Harvest

Radish, winter	0.55
Lettuce	0.1
Broccoli	0.25
Onions, green	0.25
Beets plus greens	0.3
Carrots	0.7

January's harvest total is 11.6 kg, which converts to 25 pounds, 9 ounces. February's harvest total is just 2.15 kg, which converts to 4 pounds, 12 ounces. Altogether, the 2013 harvest amounts to 30 pounds, 5 ounces of food from the yard.

That's not bad for a start to the year in a small garden, but we are about to slow waaay down. Right now in the yard we have a little patch of radishes, spinach, a little kale, some green onions, a few stragglers in the carrot patch, and some beets, cilantro, and parsley -- all of which will be ready to eat within the next several weeks if not sooner. This won't get us very far, but it will all be good!

There are also onions and garlic planted that won't be ready until about June, and some peas that just went in the ground today. I had planned to plant potatoes this weekend, but I finally decided that it was a little too cold and that it could wait a few more days.

I also sorted the remaining sweet potatoes, pulling out a few for starting this year's slips. The rest went into the oven, since I had it turned on for sourdough bread, anyway. The mashed sweets will go into freezer bags, to be eaten over the next couple of months, after they've cooled.

Hope everyone else's gardens are off to a good start!
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Tracking the Harvest: December 2012

In spite of the shortened days and colder weather of early winter, the garden continues to do just fine. My yard's December havest total was13.25 kg, which converts to 29 pounds, 3.4 oz.
The grand total harvested weight (for what I remembered to weigh) of food from the yard for 2012 was 199.4 kg., which converts to 439 pounds, 9 oz.

Here is the breakdown, in kilograms, for what was harvested in the final month of the year:

Dec.

Cauliflower	4.35
Carrots	2.45
Bok Choy	0.4
Cabbage	0.9
Lettuce	1.75
Radish, winter	0.6
Persimmons, Asian	1.35
Broccoli	0.45
spinach	0.4
beets plus greens	0.4
Kale	0.2

I'm always a little conflicted about using weight as a benchmark for gardening success, since there is so much more to celebrate about good food than how much it weighs. Some crops that don't add much to the weight total at all, considering the large space they occupy, are totally worth growing because of their amazing flavor. Raspberries are among the low-yielding, highly-treasured space-hogs in my yard.

Popcorn is another crop that produces relatively little in terms of pounds per square foot of crop, but I think it's totally worth growing in my garden. If all my crops had that same characteristic of low yield in terms of final, harvested weight, I'd still think my garden was a big success.

Also, if I met a local gardener who'd managed to bring in a great crop of celery, regardless of what else was grown or how much it all weighed, I would count that as a huge success!

My current variety of Bok Choy produces plenty per square foot. The plant (harvested yesterday) in the photo at the top of this post weighed 1.5 kg., which is almost too much for us to eat before it wilts. Some of this plant ended up in the freezer, but bok choy freezes less-well than some other greens.

Next year, I'm thinking about changing to a variety that stays more consistently smaller. That could bring the total harvested weight down, but the amount of food harvested at one time would be more appropriate for my family's use. 

I think that my point (if there is one) is that determining what-constitutes-success for an individual gardener can be a little complex. As we start a New Gardening Year, I hope that all of us gardeners are as successful as we hope to be, in the multiple ways that we measure success!

Tracking the Harvest: Nov. 2012

I'm pretty sure I've picked a lot more lettuce than is recorded here. I bring some in several days each week for the bunnies, but by the time it hits the kitchen it's mixed with chickweed, violet leaves, dandelions and chicory, bits of dill and fennel that are still green, parsley, and other bunny-friendly weeds and herbs.

The harvest total is suffering a little as a result, but the bunnies are doing great!

As always, the recorded weights are in kilograms:

Nov.

Persimmons, Asian	0.8
Radish, winter	0.3
Lettuce	0.45
spinach	0.3
Broccoli	1.85
Cabbage	1.75
Carrots	0.45
Bok Choy	0.85
Potatoes, sweet	0.35
Onions, green	0.15
Potatoes	0.65

I found a couple more good sweet potatoes when I was digging over the space for multiplying onions. They were an unexpected treat! I am sure I'm not the only gardener to uncover more spuds - of any kind - weeks after the initial harvest.

Overall, the November harvest was not especially large, but it was varied. November's harvest total is 7.85 kg, which equals 17 pounds, 4.9 oz.

The running total for 2012, Jan. through Nov., is 189.2 kg, or about 417 pounds. 

I can't complain, but I also think I can do better. Maybe in 2013 I'll be 100% consistent about recording the weights of absolutely everything that I bring in from the yard, including the bunny salad, and maybe I'll do better at planning (and implementing the plan) to not let any space go empty.

The future is hard to predict, so I won't make any guarantees, but I am hoping to do better next year!