Growing a Thousand Pounds of Veggies

2015 was the year I finally broke the 1,000 pound mark on my harvests.  I still can't believe that I grew that much!  What I’ve learned about growing excessive amounts of produce is that it is a lot of work to grow, harvest, cook and preserve a thousand pounds.  In the end I’ve learned that gardening is not all about the number of pounds, but before divulging into lessons learned, I'd like explain how I got to such large harvests.

Here’s how I grow lots of veggies:

1.  Utilize as many seasons as possible.  I plant overwintering crops such as spinach, kale, onions and carrots.  Then I plant early spring crops that are fast growing such as lettuce and radish followed by summer crops.  In late summer I plant beans, carrots, turnips, peas and other fall crops.
2. Succession planting keeps the harvest coming.  I have plenty of pests in my garden, so I am constantly planting.  I start summer squash seeds inside every three weeks.  That way I have seedlings ready to transplant in case I lose plants to vine borers or squash bugs. 
3.  Maximize space with close plantings.  I use square foot spacing for most crops, which helps to reduce weeds and increase the number of plants you can squeeze into a bed.
4. Harvest often.  When you harvest crops such as beans and squash, they keep producing. 
5. Invest time and money into your soil.  Gardening always starts with quality soil with plenty of organic matter and nutrients.  I add compost and mulch every year. 

My garden has about 1,700 square feet of planting beds.  I don’t think that this is the maximum amount I can grow in that space.  I devote some of the space to growing flowers for pollinators and just because they are pretty. I also plant annual herbs such as basil, cilantro, dill and parsley among the vegetables.

Reaching a thousand pounds was a goal of mine, but as with any goal the lessons you learn in the process are more important than getting to check it off the list.  If it was just about the weight of harvests, I could plant my entire garden in sweet potatoes and blow my record out of the park. 

But there are only so many sweet potato pies a person can eat!

Here’s a breakdown of my harvests:

	lbs
Broccoli	8.68
Turnip	1.31
Lettuce	6.14
Carrot	15.68
Kale	2.90
Spinach	1.62
Chard	15.91
Amaranth	2.83
Peas	5.97
Onions	3.21
Summer squash	35.97
Green beans	54.49
Cucumbers	105.34
Soybeans	9.06
Tomatoes	202.66
Eggplant	32.59
Peppers	68.76
Corn	26.95
Winter squash	50.96
Melon	259.39
Beets	3.29
Cowpeas	4.45
Cabbage	4.81
Sweet potatoes	172.51
Radish	0.23
Total	1095.69

Too Much of a Good Thing

I’ve learned that I don’t want or need 105 lbs of cucumbers.  I have forty jars of pickles in my pantry.  Everyone I know has received Christmas pickles.  I also don’t need so many melons.  I do love melons and can easily eat an entire cantaloupe in one sitting on a summer afternoon.  However, it can get old after a few weeks.  Another lesson I learned is not to eat half a watermelon before going to the airport and getting on a three hour flight sitting in a window seat. 

The Right Amount

I, however, do not think that 200 lbs of tomatoes is too many.  I love roasted tomato sauce and made batch after batch during the growing season.  I will find out if my supply will make it until the first tomatoes of 2016.  I was overwhelmed with the amount of green beans during the summer, but I’m content with the amount I have frozen.  I have enough to eat them weekly until next summer.

Not Enough

Despite having a thousand pounds of harvests, there were some crops I would like more.  I want to grow enough leafy greens to eat them daily.  Swiss chard was the most productive green, but I would like more diversity of greens.  I did not have much luck with onions last year and would definitely like to grow more.  All those batches of tomato sauce require onions.  I love broccoli and sweet bell peppers and it seems I never have enough of them.  Also on the more list is carrots and peas- enough to freeze would be great.  I didn’t get to plant potatoes or garlic last year, so they are in the not enough category as well.

New Goals

I will continue to weigh my harvests.  I like knowing how much I grow and how much I use.  I never would imagine that I harvested a thousand pounds last year if I hadn't weighed everything.  Instead of aiming for an overall weight goal, I want to focus on growing a better balance of vegetables.  Less cucumbers and melons with more greens, onions, garlic, broccoli, peppers, carrots, peas and potatoes.  The best strategy is to grow what you eat.

Solanaceae Woes

I just realized I did something not too smart.  Last year my bell pepper bed did not do well.  The plants wilted and produced very few, pathetic peppers.  I figured it was a bacterial wilt.  Fast forward to this spring.  I rotated my crops and planted the peppers in the bed that had previously grown root crops and some lettuce.

Then for the fatal mistake- I planted the previous pepper bed with potatoes!  I'm not sure what I was thinking.  I am aware that potatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes are all Solanaceae.  Now my potatoes are wilting and dying.

I need a giant sign on this bed to remind me no Solanaceae!  After reading about the different wilts, I think I have fusarium or verticillium wilt.  Both of these are caused by a fungus and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to save the potatoes at this point. 

They recommend no Solanaceae in the infected area for 4 - 6 years!  I sure hope I can remember. Also, planting mustard as a cover crop is suppose to help.  Mustard has anti-fungal properties and can help kill the fungal culprits.

Hopefully I'll get a few potatoes this year.  I've never tried a fall crop, but this may be the year to try.

Lesson learned!

Sunflower Sadness

Sunflowers make me happy.  Who couldn't love a sunflower?  They reach to the sky, towering over me, to greet the morning sun.  This was my first time growing sunflowers.  I was excited to watch them grow and grow and grow.  They were a wonderful backdrop to my garden.  The cucumbers escaped their bed and used the thick stalks as a trellis.  Then the drooping began.  I read-up about when to harvest the heads and patiently waited for the calyx to dry out.  One afternoon I discovered that a couple of sunflower heads that had bent to the ground were completely empty of seeds.  I'm guessing a rodent of some sort had a very nice lunch!

I decided to harvest the heads and let them finish drying in the safety of the garage. I'm sure the little rodent was disappointed in the loss of their lunch spot, but they'll find plenty of other things to eat in the garden.  I was very excited and proud of my first sunflower harvest.  Not all the heads lived up to the 'Mammoth' ideal, but I did get a few giant heads filled with plump seeds. 

Next was waiting for the heads to dry while I planned how I was going to roast and season the seeds.  A week went by and I checked on the stack of sunflowers in the garage and they were covered with mold!!  It had been raining all week and the heat had not subsided.

I was not ready to give up hope on my sunflower seed harvest yet!  I researched how to dehull the seeds, thinking that the mold was only on the outside of the shell, so that if I could get the kernels out of them they'd still be edible.  The plan: put seeds a handful at a time in the food processor, process until shells are cracked open, and then dump into water.  The kernels will sink and the shells will float.  Brilliant!  Executing the plan was not so successful.  Processing the seeds long enough to crack the shells and not pulverize the kernels was impossible.  Sadly my first sunflower harvest is not going to be successful, but the wildlife are going to enjoy them!  Lesson learned: dry sunflowers in a dry place!