Monday, April 30, 2012

Harvest Monday 4/30/12

Remember those nice, yummy strawberries I had last week?  Well it appears that the squirrels have decided they want some too.  Let me rephrase, the squirrels want every single strawberry including the ones that are not ripe!  I'm contemplating how I'm going to battle the squirrels, so if anyone has suggestions I'd love to know what works for you.  Anyway, despite the squirrels I harvested 6.6 oz of strawberries.



I ate quite a few salads from the garden this week with 4.5 oz of lettuce.  This is the first of my spring planted lettuce.  It is nice to have no salad scarcity between the winter and spring lettuce.  I'm hoping to keep the lettuce supply going as long as possible this year.  I'm planting every two weeks in the shadiest spot I have available, hopefully this will slow their summer bolting. 

I did lots of planting this weekend, which meant I had to finally clear my winter bed.  Most of this bed was filled with giant turnips and radishes with yellow and purple flowers along with some bolted lettuce.  However, there were some veggies to harvest.  They were hiding in the overgrown bed:


These are nantes carrots (1.4 lbs), which are suppose to be a sweet winter carrot.  I don't think our winter was cold enough for the carrots to convert the starches to sugar, but in comparison to my colorful carrot mix, these did taste sweeter.

I also harvested 1 lb of beets.  Many of these were puny, but it was time to make way for melons and beans.  I boiled the beets and have been adding them to my salads.  I never really liked beets before I grew them.  I had only tasted canned beets and discovered that fresh beets are so much better!



Also on the harvest list this week was 2.1 oz of Swiss chard that went into a recipe I will share on Thursday:


Finally, I pulled these two tiny radishes (0.6 oz) to put in my salad:



Weekly total: 3.3 lbs
Yearly total: 32.60 lbs worth $71.24

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week, to see what others are harvesting check out Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.

Happy Gardening!


11 comments:

  1. Squirrels: eat them. Either that or you have to build cages around everything. I've even hear of people enclosing their entire garden (including overhead) to protect from birds and squirrels.

    I just love fresh beets, so much better than canned ones! (of course everything is!)

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    1. Oh I've imagined enclosing my whole garden- it really wouldn't be that hard because there's a 10 ft fence in the back and trellises in the front that could be support... hmmm. Perhaps I should start with enclosing the strawberries before I go overboard. J has offered to get out his bb gun, but I'd feel bad hurting them.. pathetic I know.

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  2. Your carrots look perfect, I never manage to grow decent ones (I get too impatient and tend to pull them too early). I have rodents eating my tamarillos too - annoying isn't it?

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    1. Those carrots have been in the ground since October! They take way too long- although that was through our winter so the spring planted ones should be quicker. Now I'm having problems getting the carrots seeds to germinate because it has been so hot and dry here. And yes rodents make me very irate!

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  3. Oh my those are some beautiful carrots and beets!

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  4. Such a colorful harvest. I'm still waiting on my strawberries. The squirrels here like them too. I put bird netting over them which helps, but doesn't totally prevent the problems. I can see the strawberry bed from my computer. Whenever I see them there I go outside and scare them away. Not that I think that helps any, but it makes me feel better.

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    1. I'm done with school in two weeks, so my dog and I will be on full time squirrel patrol. I wish he wasn't such a spoiled dog and I would leave him outside all day to defend the garden. However, he also likes strawberries! Perhaps I should get netting.

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  5. The black bird netting really helped us actually get strawberries last year. We had to net our tomatoes as well. If we didn't they would have eaten everything. My strawberries just started turning red and we netted them this weekend! I have total beet envy :)

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  6. You have a delicious harvest! Those strawberries look scrumptious. My strawberries have not ripened yet...I look forward to it. I use the black netting as well on my raspberries and strawberries. It works very well.

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  7. Everything looks so delicious! The strawberries didn't do so well for us this year.

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