Turnips, Peas and Strawberry Shortcake

It is officially summer vacation for me.  Actually I've been on vacation for a week.  I made detailed lists of stuff I planned to do with all my extra time, but that first week I was utterly lethargic.  Hopefully this week will be more productive.  At least the garden has been productive even when I'm not!

I had my first turnip harvest of the year this week.  Those aphids that covered my peas several weeks ago have now moved on to the turnips.  Hopefully since they are mostly mature, the aphids won't have a big impact.  These turnips went on to get cooked (in my Instant Pot, which was way faster than boiling them on the stove top) and then mashed with some butter and salt.

I've also been harvesting plenty of greens.  Salads are being eaten at multiple meals a day here.  I need to get some summer lettuce started soon, since I have a feeling the spring lettuce is going to begin bolting.

I've also been picking and eating kale and Swiss chard.  I made a quiche with some greens and also some greens and cheese hand pies.  They end up in my breakfast every morning with eggs.

Peas have been abundant this week.  I only took a picture of some of the snowpeas, but there were lots of shelling peas as well.  We eat these raw out of the shell.  I keep thinking I'll have enough to freeze, but every day we end up eating all of the tasty, fat peas.

As for the snowpeas, they ended up in a tofu stir fry. Yum!

The strawberries seem to be on the end of their spring production.  This will probably be the last big harvest for the year.  It was delicious while it lasted and I'm pretty sure I made up my investment in building a bed and buying strawberry plants in the first year.

For the strawberries last hurrah, I made strawberry shortcakes.  They were delicious and also quite photogenic!

It has been raining almost all day and the week is looking very wet.  I need to take advantage of all the rain to do lots and lots of weeding and also get peanuts planted.

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

More Strawberries!

This week has been filled with spring goodies.  The harvest basket below sums up what's been going on in the garden this week: 

I love the color combinations of red and green with a little pop of purple!  On the bottom of the basket is a pile of oregano.  My oregano has been growing and growing, so I trimmed it back before it started to flower.  I dried the oregano for using later.

I have never tried eating chive flowers, so that was a new culinary adventure this week.  I tried them in my breakfast with greens and eggs.  They definitely add a nice kick tasting somewhere between garlic and onions.  They also make my breakfast much prettier.  If you start the day eating flowers, it's going to be a good day!

The peas are producing a bit more now.  I do think the aphid population has decreased, so I'm going to claim victory for me, the ladybugs and dragonflies!  The peas that were covered with aphids are looking sickly, but the rest of the pea patch seems to be doing well.  We love to snack on raw peas, so I haven't made any dishes with them.

Of course the star harvest continues to be the strawberries.  This week brought in 6 1/2 lbs of strawberries!  Besides just popping them in our mouths while picking them, my snack of the week has been yogurt with strawberries.

I also dipped them in chocolate.  Delicious and very easy!

We've also been eating plenty of strawberries in smoothies.  I froze some of this week's strawberries to be used later in smoothies.  I've thought about making some strawberry jam, but it hasn't happened yet. Freezing strawberries it so much easier than breaking out the canning stuff!

Besides all the strawberries, I've had a bit of greens from the garden this week.  The spinach is beginning to bolt, so I harvested most of them.  I also thinned my Swiss chard seedlings.  This year I'm growing Perpetual Swiss Chard for the first time, so I'm hoping it does well.  Swiss Chard is usually my reliable year round green.  The mesclun mix salad has been cut this week, so we are eating salads daily.  We had a decent amount of rain and cooler temperatures this week, which has made the spring crops happy.  Unfortunately it has also made the weeds happy too!

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

Strawberries, Peas and Greens

I had my first big strawberry harvest this week with 2 lbs, 12 oz of delicious berries!  We had a lot of rain last week, 3 1/2 inches over two days, so I was worried about my strawberries rotting, but most of them were fine.  The slugs and snails have definitely been snacking as well, but so far the damage hasn't been excessive.

With all the strawberries, I had to make a delicious spring desert: angel food cake with strawberry sauce and homemade whipped cream.  Yum!

If you can pry your eyes away from the strawberry shortcake, the rest of the garden is growing rapidly.  The peas are flowering profusely and look lovely.

But if you look closer you'll see lots of tiny problems, they are covered with aphids.

The good news is that I have some helpers.  I spotted some ladybugs having an aphid buffet.  I'm not confident that there are enough ladybugs to battle the amount of aphids.

I also spotted a dragonfly next to the peas.  Perhaps he is joining the aphid feast with the ladybugs.  I hope combined they can keep the aphid population under control.

I did harvest some fat pea pods, so at least I got some peas in case the aphids destroy them.  Unfortunately we ate them before they were photographed or weighed.

The rest of this week's harvests were forms of green: cabbage, Chinese cabbage, spinach, lettuce and Swiss chard.  I've religiously weighed everything for the past three years and as much as I love having all the data, it has become too tedious.  My goal was to grow 1,000 lbs of veggies and I reached that goal last year, so the motivation to weigh harvests has faded.  The harvests that I dislike weighing the most are greens.  2017 is the year of sporadic weighing.  I'm weighing things that strike my fancy, like strawberries.

We had a delicious garden stir fry with the cabbage, Chinese cabbage, carrots, and the first peas.  I've also been eating lots of spring salads and veggie wraps.  The garden is feeding me well right now.

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

Spring Harvests

Garden harvests have picked up this week as spring progresses.  It's wonderful to have more veggie variety.  I dug up the last of the overwintering carrots (5 lbs 10 oz) to make room for more summer crops.  Winter carrots are by far the sweetest and most delicious of the carrots!  I've been eating large quantities of carrot sticks with pumpkin hummus from my autumn harvest.

I've also been harvesting loads of lettuce (9.8 oz).  This was the last of the overwintering All Star mix.  They have begun to bolt and were standing in the way of pepper planting.  My spring lettuce is also ready for harvest, so I've been eating lots of salads.  My latest favorite dressing recipe is this Asian Ginger Dressing one.  I like that it uses rice vinegar, which I find much milder than other vinegars.

I also harvested the rest of the overwintering Swiss chard (2 lbs 6.6 oz).  I've been cooking it with eggs for breakfast and yesterday I made a pumpkin, chard, parmesan and quinoa dish.

I harvested my spring planted Cherry Belle radishes.  They also went into my salads and were eaten with hummus.  I took a vegetable tray to a coworker's retirement party last week and the carrots, radishes and pumpkin hummus made a public debut.  There was another veggie tray, so the party game became taste testing my carrots versus the store bought ones.  Mine won, but it may have been biased, since it was not a double blind study!

The show stopper this week is my first strawberry!  I planted them last year, so this is the first strawberry I've harvested since we've lived here, which has been three and a half years.  Needless to say it was a special strawberry and got its portrait taken before being carefully cut in half and savored.  I went on to harvest 10.5 ounces later on during the week and we devoured them before I could take a picture.

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

Harvest Monday 11/7/16

Our frost free days are numbered here.  The forecast shows below freezing temperatures for this coming weekend.  That means I'm going to be busy this week!

The summer veggies may be making their last appearance.  I harvested some of the remaining green beans.  I've had a good green bean year and have plenty in the freezer.

Blue Coco and Garden of Eden Beans

My giant okra plant that flopped over still produces.  I find it much easier to harvest when it is sideways, especially when I'm only five feet tall!  

Basket of okra from my sideways plant

The tomatoes slowly ripen although many of them have been damaged by an assortment of insects.  I've been harvesting them as soon as they are the tiniest bit red to get to them before the bugs do.  There's still quite a few green tomatoes out there. 

A mix of paste tomatoes

The summer veggie I always miss the most are sweet bell peppers.  I can't complain because this year has been a record pepper year for me, but I will still miss them.

How many peppers can I pile in a pail?

I'm also harvesting eggplants and more Seminole pumpkins.  I have quite a pumpkin pile growing on my kitchen counter.  This winter I will need to explore some new pumpkin recipes.

Seminole Pumpkins and Eggplants

I've also been working on shelling dried beans.  I've yet to weigh them, but the black beans have been the most productive.  I've also got pinto and kidney beans in there along with a few soybeans, which I'll be saving to replant next spring.  

A bowl of dried beans

On Sunday, two friends texted and asked what we were doing and I replied, digging up sweet potatoes.  Well, they showed up with a shovel and with four people it only took about 30 minutes to dig up all the sweet potatoes!  I've yet to weigh them, but there were some good sized potatoes.  There's definitely less than last year, but I did plant less because last year was 175 lbs and that was just ridiculous.  They need to cure for about two weeks at a warm temperature and high humidity. To attempt to get those conditions I put them on a heat mat and place a container of water inside while leaving the lid ajar. 

Sweet Potato Bounty

My harvested peanuts from last week should be dry by now.  I'm sure the squirrels ate some, but there seems to be plenty left.  I also had a suspiciously turned over wheelbarrow next to the fence where the peanuts were drying with some peanut shells scattered about.

Weekly Harvests (lbs):

Chard  0.81
Peppers  4.62
Okra   1.04
Green beans  0.88
Tomatoes   5.99
Eggplant 1.83
Winter squash 5.28
Sweet potato greens  0.42

Yearly Harvests: 954.6 lbs

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

Harvest Monday 10/31/16

Last weekend we camped in the mountains of North Carolina and explored the Blue Ridge Parkway to view autumn leaves.  I missed harvest Monday last week because of our trip, so today's report is a two week harvest.  I love autumn with all the beautiful leaves, blue skies, cool weather and garden harvests, especially pumpkins!

Autumn along the Blue Ridge Parkway

In honor of Halloween, I'm updating the status of my big pumpkin that fell off the vine before it ripened.  I'm happy to say it is much, much more orange than before, but it does have a soft spot on one side.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my big pumpkin continues to ripen and not rot.

My slowly ripening Dickinson Pumpkin

On the topic of pumpkins, I harvested another almost 2 lb Seminole pumpkin.

Seminole Pumpkin

I have gotten creative with cooking pumpkin.  My latest concoction is pumpkin pizza.  Instead of tomato sauce I used pumpkin puree with onions, garlic and fresh thyme.  I topped it with sauteed sweet potato greens, onions, mozzarella and parmesan.  I thought it was delicious!  J refused to try it, so I don't have a second opinion to report.

Pumpkin, sweet potato leaves and onion pizza

The biggest harvest over the past two weeks are peppers at 7.4 lbs.  I chopped and froze a bunch of them.  The rest have been roasted or sauteed with eggs for breakfast.  Peppers broke my harvest record this year at 77 lbs while last year I had 68 lbs.

Peppers and more peppers

I finally picked a descent amount of tomatoes this week.  I haven't harvested many tomatoes since August.  It looks like we don't have a first frost in the ten day forecast, so maybe I'll get even more tomatoes.  Our average first frost date is usually the end of October, but this year it looks like we should make it to at least the middle of November.

Paste Tomatoes

Green beans and okra continue to produce a bit each week.  Roasting is still my preferred cooking method for okra.  On our camping trip we cooked green beans and potatoes over the fire one night and bell peppers and onions another night.  We also had pumpkin muffins along with the greens and cheese hand pies I had made previously and froze.  It's fun to take the garden harvests along on a camping trip!

Green beans and okra

The first of the fall peas ripened in the garden.  Germination was not very successful, so I doubt there will be very many peas this fall.  We devoured these as soon as I took the photo!

The first of the fall peas

I finally shelled the dried cowpeas that have been sitting in the garage for at least a month.  This year was a very good year for cowpeas.  These jars hold 8 cups and there's still some cowpeas in the garden.

Dried Cowpeas

This is the season of digging in the garden for me.  The peanut leaves began to yellow, which meant it was time to harvest.  I dug up the peanuts and now they are drying on the fence.  I'm hoping the squirrels don't steal them all!  They need to dry for at least a week.  For once I am happy to see no rain in the weekly forecast so that my peanuts can dry.

Peanuts drying on the fence

Peanuts hang all around the garden.  The peanut harvest appears to be abundant this year.  We will see how many I end up with after the drying period.

Peanut harvesting and drying

Two Week Harvests (lbs):
Peas 0.14
Peppers 7.40
Okra   1.36
Green beans  2.39
Tomatoes   4.14
Eggplant 6.38
Melon  3.93
Winter squash 1.94

Yearly Harvests: 933.8 lbs

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

Harvest Monday 10/17/16

We had perfect fall weather this past week and I spent some time cleaning up the garden.  What I really need to do is start digging up all the sweet potatoes.  The coming week is predicted to be warmer and the first frost is nowhere is sight for the next ten days, which means I will procrastinate digging up sweet potatoes!

Late fall garden with abundant sweet potato vines

With such nice weather, I spent time just being in the garden while procrastinating hard work like digging up sweet potatoes!  It won't be long until all the green will be gone, so it is time to savory the garden and all the critters that enjoy it as much as I do.

A bee enjoying marigolds

Some critters that enjoy my garden are not on the guest list, including this giant grasshopper.  I'm suspecting that he may be responsible for my disappearing fall seedlings!

Giant grasshopper on chard

As for harvests, the eggplants continue to produce well.  The plants have bent over with the weight of fruits.  I'm getting tired of eating eggplants, so these were passed on to a coworker.

Florida Market Eggplants

I spotted another giant grasshopper in the green beans.  Luckily the beans continue to provide harvests even though the leaves are looking munched and sad.  This week I roasted green beans with potatoes with a creamy tarragon dressing.  Delicious!  I have tarragon growing in the herb bed, but it is something I don't use often.  This dressing recipe may change that.

Garden of Eden and Blue Coco Beans

I harvested another little Seminole pumpkin at about 2 1/2 pounds.  I counted at least a dozen more little pumpkins growing on the same vine.  They may not all ripen before our first frost, but it has definitely been my best pumpkin year ever.

Seminole Pumpkin

The okra plant that toppled over from all the rain ended up toppling over in the opposite direction.  I attempted to right it again and broke a major part of the stem.  I decided to just leave it toppled over.  Despite all its troubles, I did harvest a bit of okra this week.  The tomatoes are slowly trying to make a comeback.  I will take all I can get!

A few tomatoes and okra

Peppers were the most abundant harvest this week at 3.9 lbs.  I have now harvested more peppers this year than last year.  I've been roasting and eating them with plans of freezing the extra.  However, for some reason I never seem to have extras.

Basket full of Peppers

Last week I harvested sweet potato leaves and this week I cooked them into these greens and cheese hand pies.  I really like these although I did change the recipe a bit to use whole wheat flour and coconut oil.  I froze a bunch of them before baking.  I hope they taste good after being frozen.  If so, I may be using a lot of sweet potato leaves to make hand pies to keep in the freezer.

Sweet Potato Greens and Cheese Hand Pies

Weekly Harvests (lbs):
Peppers 3.9
Okra 0.3
Green beans 1.6
Tomatoes 0.3
Eggplant 2.4
Winter squash 2.6

Yearly Harvests: 906.1 lbs

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.