October update on the harvest

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I just calculated the harvest totals to the end of September. I’m up to 163 pounds of produce for the first nine months of the year. Not a whopping total, but not bad given the size of my “farm.”

The first watermelon I've ever grown! It's a Moon and Stars heirloom variety.

This one could have been a little riper. I waited longer for the others, and am very pleased with the color and taste, really sweet and delicious.

Like most of the produce from my new community garden plot, my watermelons are substandard in size, but fine on flavor. I’ve been busy “putting by” what produce I am getting.

The tomato harvest is pretty much over. Production of tomatoes was low this summer, but I managed to get several quarts of spaghetti sauce frozen for winter.

Bread and Butter pickles

The strawberry harvest was pathetically small, not enough to make jam, just enough to put into a bowl of cereal.

I also made and canned dilly beans and watermelon rind pickles. The mint grew well this year, so I dried a quart of mint for tea during the winter. All in all, I’m not unhappy with this year’s garden.

So far in October I’ve harvested another 30 lbs of produce, so I’m up to about 190 lbs to present. For heavy crops, I have a few watermelons and a couple of winter squash still growing, plus beets, carrots, yams, and navel oranges. Fortunately, I managed to beat the rats this year to most of my apple crop, which is now safely in the refrigerator. I have enough for some pies and a batch of apple butter. I don’t think the year’s total harvest will be too bad. If I can harvest another 30 lbs in November and December, I will be able to at least equal last year’s crop. Not sure that my cabbages and broccoli will be ready to harvest before the end of the year, but that should help. I’m still working on putting in my fall garden.

All three hens in the enclosed chicken coop.

There has been progress in the chicken yard. After a couple of weeks of moving hens between the old enclosed coop and the new fenced enclosure, they are getting along. I had been keeping the new hen, who we have dubbed Miss Hillary after the hurricane that came up from Mexico right after we got her, in a new fenced enclosure. However, she flew out of it one night when a possum frightened her. She just wasn’t safe outside of the enclosed coop. Fortunately, the hens have adjusted to one another and are now getting along fairly well.

So am I rolling in eggs? Not at all. Henrietta, our Black Australorp, has been molting for a couple of months now and is not laying. Miss Hillary laid two eggs right after we got her and then stopped. She is now molting as well. The burden of egg production has fallen on the shoulders, er, wings, of Chicken Little. But she’s an older girl now, and winter is coming on, so we’re getting only about four eggs a week at present. Ah, the joys of chicken keeping.

Bottom line, egg production is down and fruit/vegetable production has not been stupendous this year. I’ll be doing good to equal last year’s production of 224 lbs of produce, despite the fact that I added a new community garden plot to my available “farmland.” Well, there’s always next year.

 

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Posted on September 21, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Raising urban chickens isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This is not turning out to be the idyllic food source that I had hoped for.  My flock is small (3 hens) and when Henny Penny up and died of unknown causes back in April, my flock was reduced to two hens.

Henrietta and Chicken Little live in a small enclosed coop and run. Here they're eating alfalfa hay and scratch, which I give them to supplement their laying pellets.

Chicken Little, a black sex-linked hen, laid eggs all through the winter while Henrietta, a black Australorp, took a break. Then Henrietta resumed laying about the time Chicken Little stopped to molt. One laying hen wasn’t supplying us with all the eggs we wanted, so I took steps to enlarge our flock.

I visited Centennial Farm at the OC Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, and they sold me one of their 9-month-old laying hens.

But the new barred rock hen from Centennial Farm didn’t get along with my existing two hens. Um, actually, it was the other way around. Chicken Little, who is half Rhode Island red and aggressive, took an instant dislike to the new girl and pecked her neck bloody.

This is our new girl, a beautiful barred rock hen.

I couldn’t stand to see the sweet new hen get beat up, so I built her a separate enclosure. It isn’t roofed and is make of rabbit fence instead of hardware cloth, so it is exposed to the elements and the night critters. Not ideal.

 

The advantage is that the chickens can see each other. They don’t like being alone. I’m hoping that in time they will adjust to each other so I can keep them all in the secure enclosure.

Meanwhile, I put the older hens into the new enclosure for a few hours at a time so they can work out their dominance issues. When I do that, the new hen sits up on a perch, out of the reach of aggressive Chicken Little.

Here are all three hens in the new enclosure, with the new barred rock on the perch, Chicken Little at the bottom right, and Henrietta nearly out of sight back by the pet carrier.

The chickens like the larger enclosure so much that I may eventually make a door so that they can all three use it in the daytime. I could then close the door between the un-roofed enclosure and the secure one after they “go to bed” in the coop. But they still don’t get along well enough for me to leave them all in the same enclosure all day and all night. Let’s just say that this is a work in progress.

Meanwhile, Henrietta is molting and not laying. Chicken Little is over two years old and is laying only 4-5 eggs a week. And the new girl, who is still nameless, is so stressed out by the move that she stopped laying two days after we got her. VBS. Keeping urban chickens ain’t easy.

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Harvest Monday, August 15 2011

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

We just returned from a birding trip to Mammoth Lakes California. My husband Vic Leipzig led a group of birders in search of white-tailed ptarmigan, black-backed woodpeckers, and other mountain specialties. And found them!

So my harvest this week was for only four days. The poundage wasn’t spectacular, but the variety was good. I’ve been lagging in photographing my harvest, so here are some catch-up photos of some of my late season harvests as well as this week’s.

My community garden plot provided some really nice onions this year. Here are Texas Sweets and Southern Belles. Both are incredibly sweet and mild, really nice onions.

I grew a nice variety of winter squash and pie pumpkins too. Here are some of them: New England pie pumpkin, Amish pie pumpkin, mini blue hubbard, and mini red kuri.

These Cherokee Trail of Tears pods will provide dried black beans for soup later in the fall.

My tomato harvest at both my home garden and the community garden is really falling off. Harvest of tomatoes should be extending well into October and even November, but my plants at the community garden are nearly dead already. I'm trying to revive them with additional fertilizer and compost and some pH adjustment of the soil, which is too alkaline. They're responding, so I have some hope of getting a few more tomatoes later on in the season.

I didn't get too many peaches from the neighbor's tree this year. The rats got most of them.

The peaches went into a pie along with a Granny Smith apple that an opossum knocked off the tree and the last little drab of blueberries. Here the fruit is in a bowl. I was going to photograph each stage, but forgot. And when the crumb-topped pie came out of the oven, it smelled so heavenly that we gobbled it up. Sorry, no photos of the pie. Trust me, it was beautiful.

The mesclun went into a salad with hot bacon grease-basalmic vinegar dressing with a boiled egg. Delicious! Can't believe I'm harvesting mesclun in August.

Carrots, onions and lacinato kale went into a chicken broth. Then I added egg noodles. If you haven't grown Lacinato kale before, give it a try. It has a much milder taste than Scotch blue curled and a finer texture. I'm hooked on it, but will continue to grow the Scotch blue curled as well.

 

This is essentially an Italian stir-fry. Onions, garlic, eggplant, bell peppers, summer squash, and chard, all stir-fried in olive oil. Then I added some marinara sauce and some cooked pasta. Didn't get a photo of the finished product. Ate it too fast. Delicious!

Here is my harvest for the week ending August 14, 2011.

FRUIT

6.5 oz Apple, Granny Smith (one fell off the tree a bit early so I put it into a peach pie)

0.5 oz Blueberries

1 lb 10 oz Oranges, Navel

Subtotal FRUIT 2 lbs 1 oz

VEGETABLES

8 oz Bell Pepper

6 oz Bok Choy

6 oz Carrots, Kyoto Red (so sweet)

1 oz Chard

11 oz Corn

11 oz Cucumber

3.5 oz Eggplant, Japanese

2 oz Kale, Lacinato

4 oz Mesclun

2 lbs 4 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal VEGETABLES 5 lbs 8.5 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE 7 lbs 9.5 oz plus 5 eggs

Everyone else has already posted their harvests on Monday at Daphne’s Dandelions. I’m late, as usual.  Happy gardening.

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Trip to Big Bear, California, Part II

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

The cabin walls were covered with huge log slabs, very rustic. Our room had a fireplace and a full kitchen, plus a private balcony/porch.

The kitchen in our cabin.

Our little granddaughters would love this children's playground with playhouse.

Our granddaughters would also love this pretty pool.

The hosts at Oak Knoll Lodge often build a campfire on weekends. I was too tired on Friday to take advantage of it, and they didn't build a fire on Saturday, so we missed out on toasting marshmallows.

The landscaping was a riot of color, a mix of wildflowers and old English garden favorites like hollyhocks, foxgloves, larkspurs, and coreopsis.

We had dinner on Saturday night at Peppercorn Grille in Big Bear Lake. The food there was incredible! Great Italian menu.

On our last morning there, we had brunch at the Mill Creek Manor Tea Room. Adorable place, but tea was $5.

What do you think? Is the decor over the top? I liked it, but it made Vic squirm.

They have a hat rack with hats that can be borrowed while you're having tea. I picked one and wore it while we ate.

Do I look like I'm enjoying myself? I was. I thought that the prices were a bit high, but I would definitely love to go back.

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Trip to Big Bear California, Part 1

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Vic led a birding trip to Big Bear Lake, California last weekend. We mostly drove around on dirt roads in the mountains, then walked a short distance to Bluff Lake. Wildflowers were spectacular. Here are some shots.

Santa Ana River at Middle Control Road near Angelus Oaks

Next to Santa Ana River

Santa Ana River

Santa Ana River by Middle Control Road, near Angelus Oaks

California wild rose

White Yarrow

No clue what these flowers are

Close-up of corn lily flowers

Corn Lilies

Did I mention that it was COLD? Yes, it was August, but there were ice crystals on the grass

Ice crystals on a sage leaf

A sunflower of some sort

If this were spring, I'd say that this saprophyte was snow plant. Others thought it was named pine drops.

Here is the group of birders that Vic was leading. I don't think he's in the picture. Oops, yes he is. Both he and our son Scott pointed out that he's in the red jacket in back. Hey, I'm working with a 2-inch photo, gimme a break.

Backlit Jeffrey pines. If you sniff the deep cracks in the bark, you can smell vanilla.

Western fence lizard

Purple asters. They may be called Showy Asters.

Vic (in red jacket on left) and his group of birders

Our first view of Bluff Lake

Bluff Lake

Bluff Lake

Northern Bluets (I think)

A bumblebee shows us his heinie, and the stuffed pollen sacs on his legs

Rangers Buttons

Paintbrush

columbine

Corn Lily at Bluff Lake

Saprophytes, maybe pine drops

female mallard

Bluff Lake

A saprophyte, maybe snow plant

Old log cabins by Bluff Lake

Can't remember this flower, maybe loosestrife

corn lilies

Scarlet bugler, I think

Lemon Lilies

California wild rose

Great trip. Part II will cover where we stayed.

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Running harvest totals–will I harvest 300 lbs this year?

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I’ve just added a sidebar with harvest poundage, divided into fruits and vegetables. I also put in the totals from 2010, which is when I began weighing my harvests. Learned that from the rest of you garden bloggers. But keeping up with the spreadsheet on Excel is tedious. I seem to run out of time and/or steam. At least for now, I’m up to date for this year.

Navel orange--I ate this one for breakfast this morning and it was incredibly sweet

We have dwarf fruit trees and small raised beds in a tiny southern California yard, plus a rabbit-infested community garden plot that is on a former gravel parking lot. My harvests can’t compare with the huge hauls that I see on other gardening blogs, but it’s enough for us.

My dwarf avocado tree has a good fruit set this year for the first time ever, about 21 avocados.

I harvested 224 lbs last year from my yard. I had hoped for 500 lbs this year with the addition of my new community garden plot. But that little plot hasn’t been as productive as I had hoped, and rats and possums ate almost all of the fruit harvest in our yard this year. As a result, I’ve downgraded my harvest goal to 300 lbs. At this point, I doubt that I’ll even reach that figure given that it’s already August and I have harvested only 130 lbs. Will I be harvesting another 170 lbs in the next five months? I seriously doubt it. Not with all of our night critters.

I trapped yet another possum last night, the fourth one in four weeks. We managed to kill one rat, but I suspect that’s just a drop in the proverbial bucket. I’m typing this at night and I can hear the dang rats running around on our neighbor’s peach trees. Hey, at least I don’t have to contend with deer.

Granny Smith apple

I’ve managed to make and freeze only two quarts of spaghetti sauce so far this summer. I don’t see a heck of a lot of new tomatoes coming along, so that may be it. But my larder is certainly not bare. I still have tomato soup and spaghetti sauce that I canned last year, plus a large assortment of jams and preserves. I made a gallon jar of dill pickles last year and we’re still working on that.

Amish pie pumpkin

Mostly what I grow in my garden is hope. I dream of future harvests. And that’s what these photos are of: future harvests. For example, the Amish pie pumpkins like the one above are supposed to grow up to 90 lbs. Well, I got several beautiful pumpkins this year, but they were mostly between 1 and 2 lbs. Each one will make one pie. And that’s fine. I don’t need a hundred pumpkin pies.

This is pretty much it for my blackberry harvest. I get a few each week, but don't even bother to weigh them. I just pop them right into my mouth.

And that’s how my garden grows.

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A month of Harvest Mondays and goodbye possums

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Ack, I haven’t done a Harvest Monday blog post since July 4.  It’s catch-up time.

My plot at the Huntington Beach Community Garden in mid-July

Because of all of the raiding of our garden and fruit trees this year, I’ve been more relentless recently in setting our live trap and removing the larger night critters from the home garden. I’ve trapped and released three opossums in as many weeks.

This female opossum is carrying young in her pouch. Note the bulge.

And off she runs, to happily raise her babies in the wilds of Huntington Central Park, not in my vegetable garden.

We also called Orange County Vector Control, and had them leave three bait traps for rats. I plan to set some snap traps soon as well. The rats are running rampant and eating whatever the possums don’t.

My home garden isn’t the only thing being depredated. The bunny continues to plague my community garden plot. It has now chewed 11 holes in the fence. It chews them faster than I patch them. Gotta put up a sturdier fence. Meanwhile, I don’t dare plant anything new at the community garden because the bunny loves new sprouts of anything.

But I can plant at home. And I did indeed plant something–yams. Out of the 18 yams that I planted (from yams that I grew last year that were too small to eat), 16 have sent up sprouts and are turning into thriving vines. I’m hoping that the first pot will be ready to harvest by Thanksgiving.

And where am I growing them? In my driveway! I use fabric Grow Pots, and keep using the potting soil over and over. I just add more EB Stone Sure Start fertilizer. So far I’ve harvested 2 and 3 crops of potatoes of various kinds (Blue, Gold, Russet, German Butterball and yams) out of the grow pots. I get about three pounds of organic potatoes per harvest per pot, nothing like the 50 lbs that the ads claim. Maybe I need more fertilizer?!?!?!?

My 3-year-old granddaughter Megan harvested the last batch of potatoes. She loved digging in the loose potting soil with her hands. She is quite the little gardener and loves picking and eating tomatoes, snow peas, sugar snap peas and even kale.

A mini Red Kuri winter squash from a seed mix from Cook's Garden

Here’s my harvest for the last three weeks of July.

Week ending July 10

FRUIT

0.5 oz Blueberries

0.5 oz Blackberries

5 oz Lemon, Meyer

4 oz Limes

12 oz  Orange, Navel

Subtotal Fruit 1 lb 6 oz

VEGETABLES

3 oz Bell Pepper

12 oz Cucumber

11 oz Green Beans, Blue Lake and Golden Wax

5 oz Green Onion

4 oz Herbs (mint and parsley)

3 oz Peas, Sugar Snap

8 oz Squash, Summer

3 lbs Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 7 lbs 14 oz

Week Ending July 17

FRUIT

Zip, Zero, Nada

VEGETABLES

15 lbs Beet (won 2nd prize at OC Fair for largest beet)

8 oz Bell Pepper

11 oz Cucumber

2 oz Green Onion

2 lbs 14 oz Onions, Red (won 3rd prize at OC Fair)

2 oz Peas, Sugar Snap

8 oz Squash, Summer

1 lb Squash, Winter

3 lb 1.5 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 8 lbs 14.5 oz

Week ending July 24

FRUIT

12 oz Lemon, Meyer

1 lb 12 oz Oranges, Navel

12 oz Peaches

Subtotal 3 lbs 4 oz

VEGETABLES

10 oz Chard

6 oz Eggplant, Japanese

1 lb 12 oz Pumpkin, Amish Pie

1 lb 4 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 4 lbs

Week Ending July 31

FRUIT

Big Fat Zero

VEGETABLES

10 oz Bell Pepper

3 lbs 10 oz Corn (first of harvest, dwarfed and riddled with corn borers– it took three little ears to make a single serving)

6 oz Cucumber

1 lb Eggplant, Japanese

2 oz Mizuna (took 2nd Place at OC Fair)

6 lbs 3 oz Onions

6 oz Radish, White Icicle (took 2nd Place at OC Fair)

4 lbs 12 oz Pumpkin, Amish Pie

2 lbs 11 oz Squash, Winter (Red Kuri)

2 lbs 8 oz Squash, Winter (mini Blue Hubbard)

2 lbs 12 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 25 WHOPPING lbs

TOTAL FRUIT, 3 weeks: 4 lbs 10 oz

TOTAL VEGETABLES, 3 weeks: 45 lbs 12 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE, 3 weeks: 50 lbs 6 oz plus eggs (I lost count of eggs in July, but only one hen is laying right now, so about a dozen and a half eggs)

A mini Blue Hubbard nearing harvest readiness. These were from a mix of winter squash seeds from Cook's Garden

Yippee, bring on August! Visit Daphne’s Dandelions if you have a harvest to report.

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Gargantua the giant beet

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I won second place in the giant beet category last year at the Orange County Fair. That was so much fun, that I attempted to grow more giant beets for this year. It’s pretty easy. Just leave them in the ground to overwinter and they get huge and gnarly the second summer. Well, sometimes they do. I had one this year that was a contender, and I harvested it for opening week of the fair. There is a new produce competition every week.

Gargantua, the giant beet, in June

There was no telling how big it was underground, but it measured 24 inches in circumference above ground. This had to be a winner.

Vic holding the root of Gargantua, a Chioggia beet

Gargantua stretched over 8 ft from root tip to stalk top, and weighed 15 lbs

We had trouble fitting this monster into my SUV. We tried several arrangements before we finally got it all in. Once at the fair, I carried it over my shoulder like a load of lumber. I could hardly wait to see how it did at the judging.

The next day, Friday July 15, was opening day at the fair. I went with my friends to see how my beet fared.

Gargantua, the beet to the left of the wooden box, is dwarfed by the giant beet next to it, a sugar beet grown by Pat Wolff of Huntington Beach.

So I won second place again this year. No way a Chioggia beet is ever going to get as big as a sugar beet. I guess that’s what you have to grow if you want to win first place in the giant beet competition.

I also entered some of my Texas sweet red onions.

My red onions took third prize at the county fair.

Two other baskets of onions were clearly superior to mine, and I took third place in the onion category.

I searched my garden for anything that might be worthy of the fair this week, as there is a new contest each week for the month that the fair goes on. I only have two cucumbers, and neither Stumpy nor Curly the cucumbers are fair quality.  The rats ate my green beans and the wax beans are finished. However, I had a perfect pie pumpkin growing in my home garden. I grew it on a trellis so it would have a perfect shape. It had turned orange in time, so I harvested it and entered it along with three Meyer lemons and some medium-sized chard leaves.

I checked the competition before leaving the fairgrounds on Tuesday. There were 22 entries in lemons, so mine don’t have a chance. There were 8 pumpkins entered and mine was the smallest one there. Mine was perfectly shaped and as beautiful a pie pumpkin as you could ask for. However, I’m sure that the magnificent Queensland Blue pumpkin will win, and probably two Connecticut field pumpkins that are double the size of my pie pumpkin. Size matters in pumpkins, even if it isn’t a giant category. Again, I don’t have a chance.

But I was the only person who entered chard, so I should get a blue ribbon.  I guess the strategy is to find a category that is lightly entered if you want to win. Hey, it’s all fun. Check out my Natural Perspectives column in this week’s Huntington Beach Independent to read more about the fair.

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Harvest Monday on the 4th of July

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I managed to harvest 224 lbs of fruits and vegetables last year with just the home garden (with 3 small raised beds, a couple of tiny patches in front, several grow bags in the driveway and my fruit trees). My fruit trees are reaching maturity and I have the new 14 ft x 20 community garden plot to provide more food.  I had hoped to grow 500 lbs of produce this year. I decided to make a mid-year assessment now that the community garden is finally beginning to provide some produce. I wanted to see how this year was stacking up compared to last year. The picture isn’t pretty.

This is the entire peach crop from my August Pride peach tree. Four peaches.

When I compared total harvest poundage for the first six months of this year versus last year, I found that I’m actually behind my harvest of last year by many pounds.  Sadly, the night critters have eaten almost all of my peaches and nectarines and every last one of my plums and apricots. I’m at least 20 lbs lighter in the fruit harvest this year compared to last year.

They weren't even big peaches. The entire peach crop went into one bowl of cereal along with a handful of blueberries.

By the end of June last year, I had harvested 1378 ounces (that’s 86 lbs and a few ounces) of fruits and vegetables combined. With my new community garden finally producing, I was hoping to have exceeded that this year. Not even close. The combined harvest by end of June this year was a mere 1105 ounces, or 69 lbs. Bummer.

A black bell pepper and a green onion, plus four eggs, makes breakfast, all homegrown.

Well, the bulk of my harvest last year was in July, August, Sept, and Oct, so here’s hoping I can catch up and even exceed last year’s harvest. But I’ve adjusted my goal for the year way down to a mere 300 lbs. I’m growing mostly heavy things in the community garden, things like corn, watermelon, winter squash, tomatoes and pumpkins. But the dingdang rabbits are eating everything. Edison made us take down our wire fences, which were rabbit-proof. The replacement plastic fences provide no protection from the bunnies. They chew right through the flimsy plastic mesh.

Don't let the watermelon leaves fool you. This is a pumpkin that is growing in my watermelon patch. Vines wander, what can I say? I'm pinning my harvest weight hopes on big things like this that don't seem to be attractive to the bunnies.

One little bunny actually lives in my garden. It only hops out when I’m there watering. The rest of the time it helps itself to my wax beans, nibbling the bottoms off each one. It eats the leaves off the bottom of the eggplants and the tops of the chard plants. Either the bunny or an itinerant possum is eating the tomatoes as soon as they become pink. It’s really frustrating, especially since I spent nearly $1500 on lumber, fencing, soil amendments, a bench, spray nozzle, etc.

I have a half dozen mini blue hubbard and red kuri squash, but they're miniature. Each one will provide a scant two servings, assuming that they survive until harvest time.

I harvested a hatful of mesclun, lovely little lettuce leaves that the rabbit doesn't seem interested in. Go figure. But lettuce doesn't weigh much.

My community garden plot looks fine, but still isn't producing much. I get wax beans, at least those that the rabbit doesn't get, and radishes. That's about it so far. The summer squash seem to have stopped producing almost as soon as they started. The tomatoes are stunted because the soil is so impossibly compacted just a few inches down. This used to be a gravel parking lot and despite all the expensive soil amendments and fertilizer that I added, it still isn't growing all that well.

Aw, isn't the baby bunny cute? I wish I could KILL it. Or at least fence it out. Edison (the landowner) now wants us to remove all fencing, so the gardens may be doomed. They also want us to remove all trellises, the portapotty, the dumpster, etc. It's almost like they're asking us to leave. Maybe that will be the next edict from them. We are not happy gardeners.

This is HALF my nectarine harvest this year. Two lousy Snow Queen nectarines and NO Panamint nectarines. Can't believe how much the night critters got this year.

So far the bunny has ignored the bell peppers and I've been able to harvest two of them.

The bunny also ignores my Texas Sweet and Southern Belle onions. I've harvested a number of them so far, with about 28 still growing. The garlic crop appears safe as well.

OK, I'll quit belly-aching. I'm getting some produce.

I have a Sweet 100 that is producing more cherry tomatoes than I need or want. I don't know why I planted it, because I don't like cherry tomatoes. But it gave me tomatoes weeks before any other plant did. Those are a few Early Girls in with the cherry tomatoes.

Some of these photos are from last week’s harvest. I haven’t been very good about keeping up with blog posts, but I have been logging in the harvests in my garden diary. Here’s what I got last week.

FRUIT

8 oz Avocado (last of last year’s crop)

1.5 oz Blueberries

5 oz. Limes

8 oz Nectarines Snow Queen (entire crop)

8 oz. Peaches, August Pride (entire crop)

9 oz Orange, Navel

Subtotal Fruit 39.5 ounces

VEGETABLES

16 oz Beans, Wax

8.5 oz Bell Pepper, Black

6 oz Mesclun

2 oz Onion, Green

23 oz Onion, Red

16 oz Radish, White Icicle

26 oz  Squash, Summer

32 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 129.5 oz

TOTAL 169.5 oz or 10.5 lbs

 

Oh. Well that wasn’t as bad a harvest week as I thought. Maybe there is still some hope for the season.

Visit Daphne’s Dandelions to see what others are harvesting.

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Progress in my community garden plot

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Things are looking good in the Garden of Weedin’ in the new Huntington Beach Community Garden.

This is the view looking SE toward the Pacific Ocean, which is less than two miles away. My first crops are nearing harvest. Edison made us all remove our metal fencing and replace it with this ugly plastic netting with wooden stakes. So far the bunnies have stayed out of my plot, although they are capable of chewing through the plastic netting.

This is the view looking SW. You can see my winter squash in the foreground. The garden is bordered by marigolds and allysum, and I have a nice bench to sit on in back.

This is my favorite view, looking through my friend Judi's garden at my garden beyond. It makes my garden look twice as big. Her plants are twice as big too.

That is going to do it for now. I’ve been lost in my new garden (which I absolutely love–it sit and stare at it, marveling at its beauty and promise. I  just love watching the new plants grow),  and in working on genealogy, which has left me no time for blog posts.  And then there is the home garden and chickens to take care of, and I’m still working my two part-time jobs. There is really only so much time in the day. If you figure out how to get more, let me know.

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