2015 Garden Harvest Total

Well I spend a good chunk of this week picking, washing, cutting, processing and freezing Collard Greens.
And I am so happy to say that I am finally DONE! lolz

This gardening thing is a lotta work but I gladly do it so we eat well, not to mention cheaply. ;-)

I weighed everything I grew this year and my Grand Total for this season was 23.88 pounds of food from my garden.
Most of that total was yellow squash and collards.  The green beans were mostly a bust this season and the deer liked my tomatoes a little too much unfortunately.  The Japanese Beetles liked my collards but they don't eat nearly as much as the deer. lolz

This year wasn't nearly what my garden produced in 2010.  That was my best year at just shy of 94 pounds of food grown.
But we had a few glitched this year....like chipmunks eating our seedlings(and planted seeds), the rabbits, the deer, not growing nearly as many foods as in years past, etc.

I am happy with how things turned anyway.
And now we just had to chop up the plants, turn the soil and cover with some mulched leaves and grass and wait for Mother Nature to do her thang over the Winter.

Did you grow a garden this season?
How did you do?

Sluggy

Winding Down the Gardening.....Still Picking Though!

Monday I finally picked the squash in the front garden bed.
Let me rephrase that....I picked the squash on the lawn in front of the front garden bed.
The squash that had been swallowed up by the TALL GRASS under the squash vines that stretched out onto the lawn in front of the front garden bed.
The tall grass that was so dense you couldn't see the squash.
The tall grass that grew so dense since we couldn't move the squash nor mow under it for the last 6 weeks or so.
I'm so glad I don't live next door to ANNIE JONES or I'd have gotten a notice from the city for my patches of grass forest dotting my front lawn. j/k  ;-)

Anyway, here's what I hacked off the vines before I ripped them up and let #2 son have at it with the front lawn....

Note the lone pepper too.
There is one more Butternut Squash to pick out in the barrel planter....well, the plant is in the barrel, the squash is in the back garden bed next to it.

Things are winding down in the garden quickly now.  Not much left to harvest.
Though I still have collards, more peppers and tomatoes to pick.  The jalapeno peppers keep on coming....

And there is this.....

A baby eggplant.....finally!
We put these plants in the beginning of June and they sat and did nothing.....and the baby bunny rabbit ravaged their leaves and we thought the sticks he left would die in July......and they didn't and grew new foliage later in July and continued to do no growing in Aug. and most of Sept.....and then they grew flowers and bloomed in late Sept. and one bloom grew a teeny tiny 1.5 inch eggplant.
So I have a mission now.
To construct a teeny tiny hoop house/transparent plastic covering to try and coax this plant to live long enough past the frost to get this eggplant to grow big enough to eat.
Stay tuned.......

This Harvest----
Peppers--2.9oz.
Squash--10 lbs. 5.4 oz.

TOTAL....10 lbs.  8.3oz.
Garden Harvest Weight Total to date....87 lbs.  11.02 oz.

Sluggy

The Lettuce Fairy is Loose & A Walk Through My Garden

Yesterday I got to play LETTUCE FAIRY! With the unusually cool summer weather we have continued to have, most of my garden is still not at the harvesting stage.

Except for the lettuce and other salad greens.
Those are out of control.
Seriously!
Here's a photo I took of the salad greens about a month ago.



And here is a photo I took today.....it was MUCH WORSE than this yesterday, before I took the scissors and radically trimmed/cut back the plants.



So I picked my HUGE Pasta Colander to overflowing with greens.



I divided the bounty into 6 piles. Wrapped in a paper towel and put into a brown paper lunchbag. I had promised my favorite Post Office clerks Marie & Pete a bag each, as well as my Dr. and his Receptionist Jan some greens when I was in for my appointment on Wednesday. I had a Dentist appt. yesterday, so I took a bag in for both my Dentist and his Assistant Lorraine. Everyone very much appreciated the goodies.
I still have so much left!
I should make up more bags tomorrow morning and set up #2 son down at the corner of the road with a sign and Salad Greens so he can make some money.

So I remembered to take some pictures when I was poking around in the garden beds this morning. Though everything is behind in maturing this summer, things are ripening.
Here is the 1st summer squash....



The green pepper plants are small this year but are starting to produce....



The tomato plants seem to be catching up but slow to fruit. Here is the 1st baby tomato....look closely, it's behind the metal support pole in the center of the photo.



I finally found a cucumber too! Actually, the joke's on me because after I snapped this photo I noticed another LARGER CUKE in the upper left side of the photo I took.lol The sun glare was awful this morning so I'm shocked I even took decent pictures.



I am a haphazard 'weeder'. I do weed the obvious grass intruders but sometimes if some 'weed' appears that looks interesting I let it grow, just to see what develops.
That was a good thing last year, when I let a couple 'weeds' grow and ended up with a huge Sunflower! I've never been able to grow one here on purpose but one stray seed dropped here by some bird gave me a beautiful surprise.
This year I had some interesting 'weeds' take hold in the same spot as my Sunflower last year. These 'weeds' have spread a little too much and I went to pull and cut them back this morning. I found a big lovely Swiss Chard underneath! It's in the center of the photo....


Here is another Swiss Chard(red stalks)that finally grew. I never though this plant would get big enough to produce. This is my 1st year growing Chard. The chipmunks that rule my yard LOVED these chard seeds. We replanted it many, MANY times!lol



And just to prove that I am NOT the world's best gardener, here are my purple bush beans. For some reason, beans have NOT been good this year! So my yard is not straight out of the play, OUR TOWN. (If you are familar with this piece of literature, & you got my play on the line from the play, you may groan now.lolol)
I planted both bush type and pole variety beans. These piddly little puny bush bean plants are all that came up. The pole beans are MIA.




So that's a walk around my yard for today. I'm off to go fix some lunch without a STOVE!gggrrrrr and then to go through leftovers from the Yard Sale of last weekend.

Sluggy