Harvest June 16

Today's harvest included salads, strawberries, arugula, garlic, swiss chard, kale and whole lot of rhubarb. With overload of rain storms in the past two weeks I was forced to pick a lot more garlic than I needed - but had no choice as the roots started to rot and stalks turned yellow.

Earlier in the week I also picked first fingerlings and the last of the cherries from our trees.

 Can't really say I like fingerlings, but my hubby likes them so I grow them for him. I personally look forward to more blue potatoes and Yukon Golds.

Cherries were so good that I'm looking forward to next year with anticipation of really good harvest.

Lost peas harvest to groundhog

Today we had a very rude awakening in the morning - my husband found a groundhog in the large garden. He must have been enjoying all-you-can-eat buffet for quite a while before we spotted him, because all strawberries that climbed outside the fence, cilantro plants that were growing outside among other herbs, all peas on the border were decimated. He literally pulled peas down and chomped all peapods leaving broken stalks.

 The few left over plants that were inside the garden that he didn't quite get gave me a tiny harvest - less than half of what I was hoping to pick this weekend. Very upset about it as it's my favorite snack food.

 Taking closer look around the house we found a brand new layer groundhog created - right in front of the garden entrance under the house. Sadly he's here to stay so my garden will suffer more losses.

First cherries and more strawberries

Another severe rain on the way with promise of high winds and way more water than my garden needs at this time. So just like last week I went to pick what I could before everything gets even more rotted. Large tray is from new garden area and a basket of small berries from old garden.

 

And we picked our own first batch of cherries! I wasn't expecting them really this year as the trees are still very young, but this was a very good start! There are few more on the tree, larger in size but just showing signs of pink on them so have to be patient. Hopefully birds won't eat them all.

Harvest June 9

Today was a very good to spend in the garden - sunny, breezy and not too hot. I picked kale, salads and strawberries. There were many with brown rot spots from too much water but still enough to pick for eating. I separated them into two groups on purpose - one is Tristar in the white container and then second is a lid from container with Cabot. This way the difference in size of two varieties is clearly visible.

Then there were some pickings earlier in a week - fresh garlic scapes and few bulbs, couple of spring onions and more salads.

Overall not a bad week so far. How does your garden grow?

Saving strawberries from storm

There is a large tropical storm on the way and it's already raining outside. It will rain all Friday and Saturday and so far meteorologists predict 3-4 inches of water. That much rain will effectively turn my strawberry patch into one muddy puddle full of molding berries. So the only thing I could do was to pick, pick and pick some more. I picked a large basket of them on Tuesday already and was really surprised by the size of my new variety - Cabot strawberries. They were much larger than my Tristar.

This time I also picked more semi-ripe as well as ripe, and they'll be all going into making jam. Some of the largest and ripest will be eaten for breakfast and snacks but the rest will be cooked.

Now we'll just have to wait and see how the garden makes it through the storm and hope for not too much damage. Thankfully I have everbearing variety as well as June bearing so even if I lose some of the current berries I will be expecting more in the fall.

Harvest June 3rd

This has been very hot week and I've picked more greens, plenty of strawberries to eat for breakfast and snacks, some young garlic, few snow peas for salad.

and one thing I couldn't wait to try and see if they're here yet - baby potatoes! this was one of the fingerling plants that I dug in. They were planted mid-April so will have to wait at least couple more weeks before picking any more of them. They are in bloom now so that's a good sign.

Around the garden June 1st

Here are some pretty flower pictures to enjoy - love garden in bloom!

And of course greens are doing pretty well and roots are forming nicely.

This is more of an interesting comparison - next two shots are red and green cabbage that refuse to grow in the new garden - soil is too poor for them. so they're just sitting there.

From the same set of seedlings these two were planted in the old small garden where soil has been amended with lots of manure and compost. You can see the difference.