Today's Harvest

It's been a busy summer.  The garden has been neglected slightly more than usual, but it seems to be holding it's own.  I have lots on the agenda for the garden in the coming weeks.

The tomatoes were late to the party, but seem to be rolling in well now.  We had a big rain storm last week, so many of them split a bit.  Overall, they managed quite nicely.  It's that time of year when every day there are many pounds of tomatoes.  The canner has been getting a workout and the shelves are quickly filling with lots of yummy things for the winter.

Tomatillos are really coming in now as well.  I did one batch of tomatillo salsa last week and will be doing another this week.  It's indispensable in a lot of my recipes.  The plants produce like mad and as a result, it seems that I don't really need to plant them every year.  A good year of harvests can often last for 2 years.

Cucumbers are also doing well.  One that isn't pictured, is a monster that I found hanging behind the fence.  It was the enormous.  Hubby had to try it and was rewarded with a mouthful of very bitter cuke.  The chickens thought it was gourmet.

It's been a good year for watermelons.  I grew Sugar Babies this year.  After last year's disappointing harvest, I was ready to throw in the towel.  The kids begged and we gave it another try.  We were rewarded with several good sized melons and more to come.

It's also been a huge year for pumpkins and squash.  Zucchinis have thankfully, stopped coming in, but it was one of my biggest years for them.  The pumpkins did well and there is plenty more winter squash still in the garden.  I harvested several acorn squash a week or so ago.  And then there is the Hubbard squash.  I planted them in a 4x10 bed.  There were 2 hills and I planted another hill of another variety that I have since forgotten.  It's forgotten because it got over run by hubbards.  The vines were threatening world domination.  The squash pictured is larger than my food scale can handle, I'll have to get the bathroom scale out.  The problem is that there are 4 more (that I've found) out there and this one is far from being the largest.  I'm told that the taste is incredible, so we'll be having lots of fun with squash this year.  Since there are over 100 lbs of winter squashes yet to be harvested, I don't think we'll be needing to plant many next year.  There will be lots in the freezer for a while.

This post will be part of Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions.  Check out all the amazing produce being harvested around the country and even the world. 

I'm still here

A friend just reminded me that I have completely neglected my blog.  Since becoming the market manager at my town's Farmer's Market, I've become very involved with that.  It's getting to the point that the market doesn't require me to think about it constantly, so I think that an update is in order. 

The garden is going well.  After a cool, wet spring, we're having a hot summer.  This week we're due for a nice break from the heat though.  It's forecast for upper 70s all week.  After a summer of 90s it's quite welcome. 

I overplanted winter squash this year.  This is my hubbards plotting world domination.  The picture is from several weeks ago and they are growing everywhere.  It's made mowing the lawn interesting.  Since they sit right next to the shed, even getting the mower out is a chore.  In addition to the hubbards, I'm innundated with acorn squash, butternuts, sugar pie pumpkins and of course the zucchini.  We'll be living large this winter with the orange veggies. 

My tomatoes are on the late side this year, with nothing ripe yet.  They were small going in and I got them in the ground about 2 weeks later than I usually do. 

I promise to get some updated photos soon and give a better overview of what is going on.  Canning season is about to go into full swing, so there will be lots to see and do. 

Progress finally

After getting some snow on Friday, we're finally warming up a bit.  It's still far from normal temps, but better nonetheless.  I was able to go out and prep about half of the beds and got the peas planted.

It still looks so barren and depressing, but it won't be long.  Most of that fence will hopefully be coming down in the next week or so.  I'll be cutting it up and using it as portable trellising for peas and the like.  It's hard to see from here, but in the main garden the first 2 beds have peas now planted on the Western edge of the beds. 

The brassicas and greens got to spend a few hours sunning themselves today.  It's been pretty windy, so they didn't make it very long.  If the weather continues to warm up, they'll be planted out next week.  Since they're getting a bit leggy, it will be very good for them. 

Compared to last year, it seems like we're incredibly behind.  In reality, last year was much warmer than normal, so this year's colder than normal feels that much worse.  I'd say we're about 2 weeks behind schedule overall, but it will hopefully catch up to where we should be soon.  It isn't all that unusual for New England to kind of skip over Spring and go directly from Winter to Summer.  If that's the case we'll be all set in a few weeks. 

Save your back and a few seeds along the way

It's been a busy few weeks here.  Plans for the Farmer's Market are coming along quite nicely and I'm feeling like it's going to be pretty great.

In between phone calls and helping Hubby with his computer business and being a mom and.... , I've been making seed tapes.  You can find tutorials for how to do them everywhere these days.  What it comes down to is some kind of flimsy, easily broken down paper, glue of some kind and seeds.  I prefer tp, elmers and just about any tiny seed.

You see, I'm not the most patient gardener in the world and I have a bad back.  Given the choice of carefully planting seeds or scattering them everywhere, I'll invariably choose the scatter method.  The problem is that it wastes a ridiculous number of seeds. Then they have to be thinned and I'm not a big fan of thinning either.  It makes me sad to pull out a perfectly good seedling, plus it means I have to get down and pull them.  Seed tapes solve all those problems.  You can buy them pre made, but I'm also cheap and I like to have a lot of variety.

I'm doing beets today.  There will be 3 different varieties this Spring.  Chiogga, Cylindra and Detroit Dark Red are my choices this year.  The carrots have already been done, there are 3 varieties of those as well.  You can't find that at the seed store.  Seed tapes are good for lettuce, parsnips and really any small seed that gets planted in quantity.  I thought about cabbage and broccoli, but that just seemed a bit much.

When they dry, just roll them up and store them away until planting time.

It's been unseasonably cold this March, so nothing much has been happening in the garden.  I'm really hoping that it warms up a bit soon, there are far too many seedlings in the basement.  The cabbage, broccoli, chard, kale and asian greens are all ready to go out.  Since I have no desire to pot them up, I'm hoping it will warm up instead.

Update

Some of you may remember that I had a few things up in the air.  Well one has become official.  I am now the manager of the Bridgewater Farmers Market.  I'm very excited and overwhelmed all at the same time.  There is a ton to get done between now and our opening on June 18th.  We'll be operating from 10-2 on Saturdays.  Since the market manager fell through last year, the market ended after only a few weeks.  We've changed a lot, including the day, time and location.  That means I'm really starting from scratch in many respects.  It's very exciting. 

If you want to find us on Facebook, we're listed as the Bridgewater Mass Farmers Market.  There is also a webpage, but it is in desperate need of a facelift, so I'll wait on giving out that one.  If you're local, come on by!

Fruit leathers

Hubby got me an Excalibur dehydrator a few years ago.  He's good like that.  I must admit though, that it has been grossly underused.  So, the other day I was going through my freezers and canned goods and realized I had a lot of strawberries in the freezer and peaches that I had canned.  Not wanting them to go to waste, I decided to make fruit leathers.

The kids love them.  Lets face it, they taste like candy.  They're also amazingly easy to make.  For the strawberry, I just defrosted them and pureed them in the food processor.  You could add more sugar if your strawberries aren't very sweet, or if you just like them that way, but ours were very sweet as is.  The peaches were dumped into a strainer and then pureed.

The dehydrator has special sheets for the leathers, but I'm sure you could get away with parchment paper if you had to.

Pour the mixture onto the trays and swirl around to a good thickness of about 1/8 to 1/4 inch.  Just set them at 135 degrees and walk away.  These took about 8 hours to finish.  Your times may vary, depending on humidity, fruit and thickness of the puree.

Then try not to do what I did.  I couldn't help myself.  It was so yummy.  If you can get through this without eating it all, just pull them off the mat and roll up.  I usually then cut them into serving sizes of 2-3 inch rolls.  The kids adore these and since they're pure fruit, I'm not so unhappy about serving them.

I've heard that you can also do this in your oven at the lowest setting, but I have no experience with that.  My oven doesn't go below 200 and that would just cook them.


This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday. 

Carrots!

We've had some amazingly warm weather over the weekend.  Both days reached to 60 or so.  By Sunday morning, so much had melted that all my beds were uncovered and even defrosted.  I was so excited to check the carrot beds.  They hadn't gotten covered properly and I was anxious to see how they did.

Some had gotten soft from all the freezing, but many of the carrots had made it through unscathed.  It was like digging for buried treasure.  Overall, about half of the carrots made it.  After our hard, cold, snowy winter, they were a welcome sight. 

I got them cleaned up and ended up with a good little crop.  The 2 on the left are huge.  There were quite a few that had forked.  That was surprising.  These beds are raised and have loam and compost in them.  There are really no rocks.  I'm not really sure why they forked. 

The strawberry plants were also starting to peak out.  I started to pull the shredded leaves away from them, but they were just too wet to get very much done.  It was nice to see that they had made it through quite nicely though.  What a mood booster to be able to spend a few hours outside and in the garden.  There is still a little bit of snow at the top of the driveway from the plow guy, but it should be gone very soon.  The weather is predicting highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s all week.  That's pretty typical March weather for us and its nice to see the progression in the temperatures.  Spring is almost here!

This post is part of Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.  I'm so excited to have a post finally!  Head on over and see what else is being harvested and what everyone is using from last year's harvests.