Harvest Monday: First Arugula

Last week we had two delicious harvests from the garden: asparagus and arugula. We also completed a lot of infrastructure work on the expanded garden.

After cutting a small handful of asparagus from the garden on Monday, I took a short walk to check on two stands of wild asparagus we'd observed in prior years and marked on our Google Maps. One had already started to fern out, but another provided 6 large stalks to round out our dinner. One of the benefits of country living - lots of farm field ditches to forage from.

After a week of much-needed rain (right after we drug a sprinkler into the garden to water, of course), the greens in my patio garden are really starting to pop.

On Saturday I harvested arugula (clipping about every other plant for a row and a half to also serve as thinning out), which we mixed into a quinoa salad. My husband said, "Why don't people eat more arugula? This is delicious!" The arugula was direct seeded on April 10, so it was 42 days to the first harvest.

I have the rest of the month off of work to focus on garden prep (and other relaxing, less physical activities). On Thursday and Friday I finished moving a yard of wood chips from the back of my pickup truck to the garden paths, hilled some potatoes, did some weeding, and planted a few flowers and herbs.

Over the weekend my husband was available in the mornings to help, so we got much more done. We created 11 more 30" in-ground raised beds, bringing the total to 18 so far. We have two more left to do, probably Memorial Day weekend, but a portable greenhouse is currently in the way. Over the next week I'll be hauling more wood chips to mulch the paths, and getting these rows planted, trellis structures put up, etc. I'm hopeful this garden layout can serve us for many years, so spring prep will be a bit less intensive.

This post joins others celebrating Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Happy Acres.

Harvest Monday: First Asparagus

Our first outdoor harvest of the year was 8 spears of asparagus from my neglected asparagus bed.

The bed was neglected because I didn't clear off the fronds from last year, it hasn't been weeded in at least 10 months, and its only water has been our occasional rain. Yet, it still produced. I'd love to expand the bed at some point once we finalize some more of the garden structures on the property; right now the area it could expand into is covered with garden supplies (and has some pretty intense weed pressure, so I'd love to solarize it).

The garden is on schedule, while Mother Nature is running a bit ahead. Our last frost is normally May 13, but I think it already occurred on April 24. I still won't be putting any tender plants out until May 15, although my peppers and tomatoes are already mostly hardened off and will be moved into a greenhouse as soon as I can get our tent put up.

Development of the great garden expansion of 2021 continues. We had an exciting addition last week: electricity and water run to the garden. This kicked off my serious research of a drip irrigation system. Parts were ordered on Saturday and should arrive this week so it can be installed well before Memorial Day.

I've slowly been constructing beds in the garden. Upon further reflection I decided to completely change my garden plan to conform to standard rows. This will facilitate easier watering, path creation/mulching, and increase the production of the garden (an unintentional side effect). I haven't finished placing all the plants because of the unexpected new room available, but don't be surprised if I fill it with tomatoes.

(click for larger version)

I started creating beds and planting closest to the house (the south end of the garden) and I've planted all the way up to the potatoes. Now I have the entire month of May to finish the rest (and get the paths mulched). I have May 20 - 31 off from work, so that shouldn't be a problem and I can do it at a leisurely pace.

To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting today, check out Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Happy Acres.

2020's First Frost

This was a week of last harvests in the garden.

On Tuesday I picked one more basket of ripe tomatoes.

Most were roasted, blended, and then slow cooked into about 3 cups of tomato paste. The large yellow tomato in the upper left of the photo was saved for our last tomato sandwich of the year, which we eat today. It was a BAT - bacon, arugula, tomato.

Thursday (October 1) was a forced harvest, as we were expecting our first frost. I picked one more basket of tomatoes at varying stages of ripeness, including many green tomatoes. The biggest harvest was peppers; I had loads of sweet peppers on plants at a variety of stage of maturity, but most were still green. I also picked plenty of jalapenos, a few ripe Fatali and Scotch Bonnets, and plenty of immature hot peppers. The pepper harvest filled the bottom of a large plastic tote.

There are about 3 gallon bags of whole peppers in the fridge, and the rest have been chopped and are freezing on trays. I expect there are at least 2 gallons of chopped frozen peppers. Chili base for the winter shouldn't be a problem. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with the hot peppers. I think I'll make one jar of candied jalapenos. We've never had them and I'm wondering if they'd be a good canning project next year. I'd also like to make another hot sauce, but may need to chop and freeze some for winter soups and stews.

I thought I had four ripe banana melons to bring in, but three of them had suffered significant damage from insects or other critters. That left me with one—just the second banana melon I've gotten all year. This one was much more ripe and flavorful than the first; my husband and I ate the entire thing before dinner. I definitely want to grow melons again next year, but I'm not sure what variety.

I also brought a large bunch of celery in before the frost, just in case the other plants didn't make it, and I snipped the last stems of basil. A walk through the garden this morning confirmed that cold-hardy veggies like celery, Swiss chard, carrots, and rutabaga are looking great, while the frost claimed everything else. Sunday night is bringing another frost. In fact, as I write this it's already 31.5 degrees in the garden.

Dave at Happy Acres hosts Harvest Monday for gardeners around the world to share their bounty.

September Notes

A post with no pictures. Imagine that.

September has been a heavy month in my mind. Wisconsin's COVID-19 cases keep rising (daily case are nearly 10x what they were when we had the stay at home order), the politics surrounding the presidential election are ugly, I see systemic racism around every corner, yet I still have a job to do, a household to contribute to, and a garden to care for. I haven't felt like taking the time to blog about harvests, though. Here's a summary of the month's happenings, for posterity.

As September nears its ends, my tomatoes are still producing (mostly Juliets, although there are a few straggler Celebrities), peppers are doing wonderful, and I finally got my first ripe banana melon. I'll consider growing the banana melon again; it's the perfect size to use a melon baller, making the serving easy. Mine tasted like a mild, floral cantaloupe. I suspect the flavor would be more concentrated if I watered it more regularly. I've harvested carrots and the first rutabaga for roasting—the carrots are gorgeous, and I'll wait for the first frost or two to kiss the rest of the rutabaga. Some celery was harvested for pork stock I made.

I roasted the first few red kuri squash, which have been curing for about a month. I didn't realize the skin of this winter squash would be both edible and delicious. It's a nice, easy roaster. Also harvested my one and only butternut squash, which has now been curing for a week. Usually I have them in abundance; either my seed was too old or the area I planted it in was too shady.

Cooking and preserving has been in high gear. I canned 7 quarts of beets from the garden, continued to make and freeze or eat tomato sauce (some of which joined some Swiss Chard in a delicious vegan lasagna I made for a dinner with friends), froze nearly a gallon bag of chopped sweet peppers, and cooked my dried beans for the first time in a soup along with Swiss Chard ribs, carrots, and blended roasted veg (red kuri, carrots, rutabaga).

Then came the apples. I get 5 pounds of apples per week in the fall in a CSA share from a local farm. I dehydrated a half gallon jar of apple slices, and then decided to go big and order some #2 apples - 100 pounds of them. Mom came for another visit and we canned 26 quarts of applesauce, 10-ish 4oz jars of apple syrup (failed jelly), and 8.5 pints of apple butter. Just today I made the last remaining apples into applesauce that I stored in the fridge; probably about another 3 quarts.

The cover crop I planted is looking fantastic. Since a frost still isn't in the 10-day forecast, I think we'll end up having to mow it at least once this fall. As it germinated, it was clear I seeded some areas better than others, so I ordered some more seed and resowed some areas of the new garden yesterday. By mid October I should have most of the existing garden cleaned up and planted with cover crop for fall as well.

My seed garlic arrived about two weeks ago. I ordered from The Garlic Underground, which is just 35 miles from my house. I'm hoping that means their garlic will be well-suited for my garden's micro-climate. Planting will commence a week or two after our first frost.

I've also done a bit of garden-related reading. I ordered a stack of 10 books during Chelsea Green Publishing's Labor Day sale, and so far I've made it through Growing Great Garlic and Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land. While written nearly 30 years apart, both had good lessons for me.

Lastly, we purchased a weather station for the garden! I'm hoping it will better help me understand my microclimate, and will also provide some electronic record keeping of our temperature and rainfall. You can take a peek at my local weather conditions.

That's the highlights of the garden for the last three weeks. 

Harvest Monday: September 7

I passed peak tomato without even noticing it.

After picking another 30 pounds on Thursday evening, I realized there wasn't an overwhelming amount of fruit hanging on the vines. Sunday morning, I harvested just a handful. We'll have tomatoes here and there for another 1-3 weeks but I believe the days of 30-pound harvests are long gone.

Looking back, the first tomatoes ripened around July 26, came in at a steady but manageable pace for the next 3 weeks, and then kicked into high gear for 30+ pound weeks for the next 2-3 weeks, and now we're back to the steady trickle. It's interesting to look back at the calendar because it feels like I've been harvesting and processing tomatoes forever.

Here's the photo evidence from Thursday. In addition to the tomatoes, I got some nice peppers.

My mom and I processed 20 pounds of the ripest tomatoes on Friday, resulting in 5 quarts of crushed tomatoes and 3 quarts of tomato juice.

Saturday was a work day, prepping the garden expansion area for cover crop seeds, which I managed to sow just before sunset, followed by my husband raking them in with the lawn tractor. It was just in time, as the rains came overnight. This is the first year I'm planting a cover crop. I hope it goes well. I went with an all-purpose garden cover crop mix from True Leaf Market. 

While cleaning out a portion of the garden, I pulled my first few carrots (gorgeous, but long; I probably let them go too long) and the rest of the Jacob's Cattle bean plants. No photos though.

Sunday was dreary; perfect for more canning. First, I went to the garden during a break in the rain to pick the majority of my basil. I also ended up with a handful of tomatoes and some more gorgeous peppers.

Mom and I tackled the Ball roasted tomato soup recipe for the first time, doubling it. We ended up filling almost every square inch in my oven with trays of roasted tomatoes.

16 pounds of tomatoes and hours of work yielded the expected 6 quarts of roasted tomato soup + 1 quart of tomato juice. This better be darn good soup! While the tomatoes were processing, I put together a batch of pickled jalapeños that could be water bath canned. My husband eats pickled jalapeños on his pizzas frequently, and we've always purchased them at the grocery store. I hope he likes the home canned ones, because jalapeños are easy to grow and quick to pickle. When I put them in the canner, I had both burners running a canner, which I think was a first for me.

Sunday dinner was wood-fired pizza from a local farm, but I made a salad of tomato, basil, mozzarella, olive oil, and a balsamic reduction.

This post is part of Harvest Monday; visit Happy Acres to see what other gardeners are harvesting this week.

Harvest Monday: August 31

I made a new friend in the garden this week. Although she startled me when I first met her, now I like to look for her when I'm out there. I've learned she's a common Yellow Garden Spider, but this is the first time I've seen one. She's woven her web right among the Juliet tomato plants.

This week's harvests were still very tomato-centric; I brought in over 30 pounds, and so far I've canned 9 pints of salsa, 6 quarts of crushed tomatoes, and 7 half pints of tomato juice. I did another dehydrator full of Juliet tomatoes, adding another quart+ to the pantry, and I still have two large bowls of slightly underripe tomatoes on the counter. It seems like it will never end, but I'm not complaining. Our weather appears to be turning this week, with lows dipping down into the 50s and highs in the 70s most days. I think we'll have one or two more 80 degree days this year, but we're definitely on the path to fall. As long as this weather holds for the next 30 days or so, I'll be happy. Fall is my favorite season.

Although the seasons are starting to change, Juliet shows no signs of stopping. look at these lovely tomato clusters!

The Romas are just about done, and the Celebrities are chugging along but slowing down. My indeterminate tomatoes are still setting blossoms; they seem more optimistic about the season than I do.

I harvested some bell peppers and hot peppers, although something seems to be causing rot in the red bells, which is disappointing because they finally got enough color to pick this week. I picked my first Chocolate bell pepper though, and those plants appear healthy. This was one of a number of first harvests.

I hardly use celery in the summer—in my kitchen it shows up most in soups and stews, fall - spring. So when I grow it, it's almost entirely for the freezer. I took my first cutting this week; I should have picked it earlier to encourage more growth, but I'll still get plenty this year. This was a nice bouquet for an afternoon before it was chopped and frozen.

Another first harvest was a Minnesota Midget melon - a short season variety of cantaloupe that grows to be about softball size. This is my first year growing melons in the home garden, and I've been anxious to see if they will ripen (they were planted a bit late, direct-seeded, with very old seed). I'd read about "the slip" with melons—you know they're ripe when the fruit slips right off the vine without any resistance. I picked up a melon that had changed color to inspect it, and I gasped when it slipped! I think I should have let it go for a few more days, as it still had plenty of yellow on it and it was a bit bland tasting. I have one more of these that should ripen (along with lots of Banana Melons), so I'll try to let that one go longer.

Some of my Jacob's Cattle bean pods were dry, so I harvested and shelled those. I'm surprised I got any at all, as this entire row was eaten almost down to the dirt by something right after I planted it, but it was resilient. I'll be lucky if I fill this jar this year with the entire row, but I look forward to eating my first home-cooked dried beans.

My last "harvest" was something I was threatening my husband with all week and had all but decided not to do. We have purslane everywhere in the garden, growing as a weed. Particularly in the area we've cleared to expand the garden for next year (I still need to write about those plans), we have a bumper "crop." The more I read about it, though, the more I wanted to try it. So I grabbed some and brought it in to add to a green smoothie, after snacking on it in the garden to see what it tasted like. I blended it with a tart apple, cucumber, almond milk, and a little light honey syrup left from canning peaches. It made a great smoothie! There's a chance it won't all end up in the compost pile next year.

Here's a photo of some purslane, held up over a field of purslane.

The field of purslane is no more, though. I made it out there with just enough time before sunset on Sunday and tilled the entire space. The plan is to have the layout for the new garden planned over the next week so I can cover some areas with cardboard mulch, mark out the space for the garlic beds, and seed the rest with a cover crop to enrich the soil before next spring's planting.

As for last harvests, I picked two 8-ball zucchinis that may end up on the compost pile (although still small, they were turning from green to yellow like a fall squash would) and then pulled the squash beetle ravaged plants. In a big of spitefulness, I tossed one of the squash beetles into the spider's web.

The rest of my weekend was filled with non-garden food projects, including rendering lard for the first time (somewhat successful) and taking delivery of bulk meat from a local farmer. I wrote about our process of buying a whole hog, if you're interested.

Harvest Monday is a time for gardeners around the world to share their harvest and other garden activities. It's hosted by Dave at Happy Acres; head on over to the Harvest Monday hub at the bottom of his posts to see what he and other gardeners are doing.

Harvest Monday: August 24

I neglected the garden during the week, saving all my harvests for the weekend. But Friday - Sunday I brought in over 30 pounds of tomatoes, four pounds of beets, a handful of hot and sweet peppers, a large bunch of basil and a lone 8-ball zucchini (the squash beetles are having a field day in the garden).

Here's what the harvest looked like. Well, most of it. In between harvesting and washing and preparing and doing the dishes and making the kitchen messy and cleaning it again I forgot to photograph a few things.

Friday was a mixture of Juliet, Roma, and cherry tomatoes with some fatali and scotch bonnet peppers and some green peppers This particular sweet pepper variety is meant to be picked green, and therefore was the first to mature in the garden. I also have some red peppers and chocolate peppers that have been growing well, but just started to show some color this week.

On Friday night I combined the freshly-harvested hot peppers with some I'd stored in the fridge and attempted to start my first lacto-fermented hot sauce. I'll report back in a few weeks how that went. Prior to putting them in the food processor, weren't these peppers gorgeous?

Saturday was all about the tomatoes. I brought in 25 pounds—6 pounds of Juliets and 19 pounds of Celebrity and Roma. The few green Celebrity tomatoes had fallen from the branches. They don't even have a hint of orange to them so I'll probably do some sort of green tomato preparation.

While picking the tomatoes I spied this very large beet and decided to pick it before it became woody. It's the first full-size harvest of my Lutz Winter Keeper variety.

On Sunday I pulled my golden beets, as they'd started to get heavily attacked by some sort of bug. Because of that, the greens were a loss and went into the compost pile. Once trimmed, they weighed in at 3 pounds, 10 ounces. I also harvested a large bunch of basil, which I forgot to photograph. 

I had to drag the sprinkler out to the garden to water on Sunday, since we haven't had rain for over a week. This is the first time I've had to water the garden in over a month.

In terms of using the harvest, it was tomato palooza on Saturday. I made a 1.5x batch of Annie's salsa (10 pints canned + 1 quart for the fridge), dehydrated 9 pounds of Juliets (yield: 1.5 quarts). 

I also roasted a large pan of tomatoes. The roasted tomatoes were blended into sauce, which I combined with a too-thick roasted sauce from the fridge I'd made earlier in the week that also included carrots, zucchini, and onions. The resulting mixture was still too thick, so I pulled one of my "failed" jars of crushed tomatoes from a few years back out of the pantry. I'd ended up canning mostly tomato water with a little pulp on the bottom. Opening the jar, it still smelled distinctly like tomato, so adding that to the sauce served thinned it without diluting the flavor. I ended up with just over a gallon of sauce, which is frozen flat in Ziploc bags in 2-cup servings. 

Last, but not least, I roasted up the beets. We'll eat plenty fresh this week, but if I have extra after a few days I'll dice and freeze for use in grain salads this winter.

Every Monday gardeners around the world share their harvest. View all of this week's Harvest Monday posts, hosted over at Happy Acres.

Harvest Monday: August 17

This week was all about tomatoes. I brought in three harvests, on Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday, and they were mostly tomatoes with a few peppers and zucchini thrown in. There are some beets ready to harvest but I'm letting them sit for a bit.

Here's what I harvested from the garden this week.

With all of these beautiful tomatoes, they were the stars of our meals this week. We had BZT's on Monday (with no lettuce, we replaced it with a grilled zucchini slice and it was pretty good), panzanella salad on Tuesday, and more BLTs starting on Thursday when we got some more lettuce.

The panzanella salad is tossed with olive oil and then drizzled with a balsamic reduction. I used red tomatoes from the CSA and the yellow tomatoes are Mr. Stripey from the prior week's harvest.

Over the weekend I started to process the tomatoes. 5.5 pounds of Juliet tomatoes went into the dehydrator. This is the first time I dried them as halves rather than slices, per Dave's advice. They took a little longer than I expected (about 26 hours), but they were worth the wait. Not only are they absolutely delicious (my husband says they taste like tomato fruit rollups), but because I dried them skin side down, the dehydrator trays are still clean! Cleaning up trays after dehydrating sliced tomatoes can be a pain. You've converted me, Dave. Will do another batch later this week.

Another 7 pounds of Celebrity and Mr. Stripey went into some salsa for canning. I use a tested recipe from Annie, a contributor on the Houzz (formerly GardenWeb) Harvest forum. Annie's salsa is our favorite, and I'll try to make at least two more batches this summer. The Celebrity tomatoes were perfect for this recipe, with their fleshy consistency. They were also extremely easy to peel and deseed. I got seven pints for canning, and about 3/4 cup leftover that I used on a smothered burrito for brunch on Sunday.

If you'd like to see what other gardeners around the world are doing with their harvest, head on over to Happy Acres, where Dave hosts Harvest Monday every week.

Harvest Monday: August Is Here

I had four separate harvests from the garden this week, and plant diversity is increasing. That means August is here! I had the week off of work, so I was able to spend a lot of time in the garden, thinking about the garden, and planning for some big changes for next year's garden (more to come on that in a separate post).

Tuesday, when I posted my July garden journal, I picked a handful of tomatoes and peppers, but forgot to photograph them. I did remember to take photos of the garden though. The first photo has my winter squash on the left, 8-ball zucchini and fennel poking up behind them, and the mass of tomatoes in the back. The foreground is peppers and a row of Swiss chard.

It didn't feel like 80 degrees in the shade; it was a lovely morning. Here you'll see my sparse rows of beans (1) and carrots (4). Behind those are the rutabagas. They look wilted because I'd just thinned them. Behind those you can barely see the rows of beets. So far I've only had to water the garden two or three times because we've been getting regular rain. The squash plants were thirsty by Friday afternoon, but with rain in the forecast on Sunday I held off (right now watering is a production of connecting and running a 50-foot hose). The rain came in multiple downpours, so the squash should be happier now.

I remembered to photograph the remaining harvests. On Thursday I got more tomatoes (Juliets and some cherries), a green pepper, two 8-ball zucchinis, and some super chili ornamental peppers.

Saturday brought two harvests: the first ripe Celebrity tomato, and a mountain of beet thinnings (Lutz Winter Keeper and Golden) providing a glut of baby beets and beet greens, which I've yet to process.

A quick spin through the garden on Sunday before the rain came found more tomatoes, including the first few Romas, another pepper, more chiles, and some jalapenos (Mighty Nacho).

Although I sliced a few for a pizza, most of the Juliets have been roasted and eaten with eggs for breakfast. When I start getting them in larger quantities I'll dehydrate them. The cherry tomatoes and peppers are combined with CSA veggies for mason jar salads that Aaron has been taking to work. While trying to get feedback on what salads he liked best, I learned it doesn't matter what veggies are in it as long as there's some smoked pork. So he smoked another pork roast this weekend so he'd have salads for this week.

Some of the jalapenos I harvested Sunday went into a jalapeno corn bread that we had with the pulled pork and some CSA corn on the cob. It will make a good side for Aaron's Southwest salads this week, too.

That's all from Gross Farms this week. I hope you'll head over to Happy Acres to see what Dave and the other Harvest Monday participants are pulling out of their gardens and cooking.

Hopefully in a few days I can get a post together about the BIG garden plans for 2021.