Today's Harvest

 Here's a sample of what I harvested today, namely, strawberries, green onions, lettuce, and oregano.  It's not much, but it is nice to still be eating from the garden even in May.

 

First Strawberries of 2025!

 My first entry in the garden harvest log.  And so it begins....

 

Garden 2025 has begun!

Leek seeds were planted yesterday!  Don't worry, we didn't got out in freezing temps and five inches of snow.  They are on heating mats, soon to be under grow lights when they sprout.  :)

Bean Sticks

 This is the sort of thing you make when it's freezing cold outside, and you are longing for both the beach and the garden. 

I'm planning to stake my bush beans this year and see if I get more productivity.  The paint is to help preserve the wood. (Still need to seal them.)  And I figured if I'm going to paint them, I might as well have some fun with it.

2024 Strawberry Total

 The results are in!  This year we harvested 17.4 pounds of strawberries from our backyard!  At a conservative $1.99/lb for fresh organic strawberries, that is $34.62 worth of strawberries.  I have been freezing whatever doesn't get eaten right away, and hope to be adding garden-grown strawberries to my oatmeal for weeks.  :)

Last years harvest was 13 pounds.  This is all from 12 strawberry seedlings we bought in 2022 for $9.96.

Next up - planting runners in little yogurt dishes so that we can transplant them wherever we want.  I'm hoping to keep refreshing the beds this way and never have to buy new strawberry seedlings again.

I will say that strawberries are fairly labor-intensive.  During the peak of the season I've been known to spend two hours harvesting, coring, washing, weighing, blending, and freezing them.  But so worth it!

Soil Test Results

When we got the soil test back, it turned out that our basic nutrients – nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus – were literally off the charts.  It looked exactly like two idiots not following directions and fertilizing too much.  But we don't fertilize at all, except for an annual dose of Miracle Grow that my husband puts on the tomatoes despite my protests.  We certainly haven't been going nuts with it.

 Oh, and our soil consistency was clay.  I think we’re going to try cover crops to break up the clay soil.   A free consultation with an agronomist came with our soil test, and he suggested adding sand, but I'm leery of doing that in case we get concrete instead.

 The soil consistency is better than it was when we started in 2011 so that’s something….

2023 Garden Totals

 

Carrots: Your size may vary....

Very tall sunflowers....

 

We didn't weigh sunflower seeds, mostly because we were unable to get to them before the birds and squirrels did.  But sunflowers were about the only thing that did really well this year.  I guess beans did OK. But I planted a lot of them. Strawberries were impressive.  But some of our regulars were duds.  Glad I'm not depending on the garden to get us through the winter.....

Totals, in pounds:

Asparagus - .5
Purple Beans - 21.1
Potatoes - 2.5
Cherry Tomatoes - .1
Tomatoes - 99.7
Okra - 0  (First total fail on okra EVER!  Normally, you just toss the seed over your shoulder and walk away.  We replanted THREE times - no success.)
Garlic - 1.6
Squash - 15.2
Carrots - 1.5
zucchini - 15.8
Kholrabi - 8.1
Peppers - .9
Beets - 8.7
Radishes - .3
Armenian Cucumbers - 3.7
Strawberries - 13.2
Leeks - 1.4
Watermelon - 23.4

Total - 217.7 pounds

Expenses, including absurdly expensive watering cans and self-watering tubs that required potting soil to work (boo!), more PVC hoops, binder clips, a new leaf chopper and a soil test: $607.50.

Normally, the garden isn't nearly that expensive.  But anyway, the total was $2.79 a pound, which if you consider that all of that is organic and fresh, really isn't that bad.  But I'm hoping for much better the next time we garden.

My Christmas letter had lower totals because I had forgotten the leeks and the watermelon.

First Soil Test

 We probably should have done this a long time ago....

I'm pretty sure it's going to come with something like: This is clay.  You should make pottery and not try to grow stuff.

And so it begins....

 I have big plans this year!  We are starting a lot more under grow lights so we can do more mulching.  Currently under grow lights: leeks, lettuce, peas, kohlrabi, beets, and tomatoes.

2022 Garden Total....

We harvested 292 pounds this year! Not bad, but last year's was 365. However, we bought a new scale this summer, so we're not sure how much is the scale and how much is just less of a harvest, and how much of it is me confusing the "fluid ounces" and the "grams" on said scale..... More details coming soon!

A Wonderful Gardening Day!

 Not only did my husband harvest and eat the very first crop of 2022 (asparagus) today, I discovered that tiny shoots of green are appearing in our cold frame, despite the below-freezing nights we've had since I planted them April 9, a week ago!  Thrilled seems like an inadequate word -- I am dancing with delight!

And I added another tray to our worm farm.  (I'm going to call this "leveling up," an inside joke for all you D&D fans.)

 

 We started the worm farm December 1.  Per the instructions, we should have needed that second tray sooner than we did.  Or maybe I was late in getting it in there.  It sinks down quite a bit into the first tray, so the first tray probably didn't need to be that full in order for the worms to get from one to the other. 

Worms LOVE cucumbers, by the way...

  

What do I think of worm farming? Well, they're quiet and low maintenance!  They don't smell unless my husband has added too much food, and then I just leave the lid off for a few hours.  (Smelling is a sign of anaerobic decomposition -- not enough air, usually caused by more food than the worms and microbes can keep up with.) I wouldn't say it is "fun for the whole family," mostly because as pets worms are BORING.  They don't interact. They don't like light and they don't like to be touched. If they are happy, they move down into the soil, so you can't see them.

Also, it's really hard to tell how you are doing as a worm guardian.  I told my Mom that this must be like being a new parent:  You urgently want to know that everything is ok, and communication is vague and hard to decipher.  At least a baby will cry when she is unhappy.  But worms?  You get nothing.  If they are unhappy, they either try to escape (hasn't happen so far) or they die.  (Not sure on that.)  So you lean over the tray and whisper to creatures who may or may not have ears: "Are you too hot?  Too cold?  Too moist?  Too wet?  Are you hungry?  Am I overfeeding you?"  Worms can die from overfeeding, so the last is not an idle question.

They do consume food waste, maybe a quarter of what we produce in terms of apple cores and banana peels.  (Keep in mind we produce more peels, rinds, cores, and other remnants of food prep than most people do because 90% of what we eat is homemade.)  I'm OK with 25% - for one thing, I want to continue to have some to add to our big compost heap, and for another, that amount should increase as the number of worms increases.

I wish I knew if we had more worms than when we started. If you do everything perfectly, their numbers are supposed to double every 90 days, eventually topping out as they adjust their breeding based on their food supply.

So far, we haven't harvested any worm castings, which was the whole point of the exercise. I'm going to wait until we have the third tray going, so it will be a while.  In theory when the whole system is up and running, you can get as much as a tray a month.

If you are considering getting worms, I wouldn't necessarily let this discourage you.  Just know that it takes a loooong time before there is a return on your investment, if it is castings you are after.  The initial expense also makes me think that it is going to be years before we break even in terms of increased garden productivity.  I'm not sure if I'm glad I did it yet.  Ask me next summer!  :)

Garden Totals for 2020

 We weren't going to do a garden this year.  We were going to rest the beds instead.

Then the pandemic hit, and I decided that I might as well do a garden.  I figured (correctly!) that even if civilization didn't collapse, I'd have lots of time on my hands.

By the time I decided this, it was too late to order seeds.  Ergo, the most productive garden we've ever had was planted entirely with left-over seeds from our stash.  

This is one day's harvest

 Here are the numbers in pounds, all processed weights, i.e. peeled, tops cut off carrots, etc.  (Drum roll, please.....)

strawberries - 2.7
purple beans - 14.6
potatoes - 2.6
cherry tomatoes - 10.8
tomatoes - 240.8  (And that is processed weight, which is probably, conservatively, half of harvested weight.)
okra - 17.5
garlic - 3.7
broccoli - .6
squash - 9.4
carrots - 17.5
zucchini - 41.5
kohlrabi - 2.3
bell peppers - 1.5
blueberries - .000001 (we harvested two berries....)

How does that compare to previous years?  (Keep in mind that there were some years when I opted for a small garden, which basically just means I prefer to avoid eating store-bought tomatoes.)

2014 ~ 138 pounds
2015 ~ 143 pounds
2016 ~ 140 pounds
2017 ~ 260 pounds
2019 ~ 177 pounds
2020 ~ 365 pounds

This year I'm planning to rest the beds and spend a lot of time incorporating compost (including chicken manure) directly into the beds, plus working on our compost pile.

A Morning Harvest

Tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, squash, cherry tomatoes, okra, and purple beans. All harvested this morning before work.

My husband has decided that next year we only need one zucchini plant, not four!

 

PS

We did not steal the shopping basket.  We bought two when Shopko went out of business for $5 each.  Very handy!

Gardening to save money?

I spent an hour gathering these beans this morning. I'll probably spend another half an hour processing them. I could buy the same amount for about $5, which makes my hourly rate pretty dismal.

Now granted, these are tastier then what I get in the store, and probably healthier as well since these will be more fresh when they are eaten. (Most of them will be frozen and eaten this winter, but even then, I am guessing freezing them right away preserves more nutrition then what probably happens to commercially processed ones.)  They were not harvested by children or people being exploited. And it is quite satisfying to eat food you have grown yourself.

But if you are in it for the money, I'd just get a part-time job

Tomatoes planted!

Now to wait, and hope we don't get any storms with hail....

I'm really glad this is my hobby and not my sole source of food....

Garden Spaghetti Sause

Tomatoes, garlic and oregano from our garden--the flavor was amazing!

The last of the green tomatoes from the garden have ripened on the counter and are getting processed, hopefully, tonight. I should have garden poundage totals soon! :)

Potato Harvest

Doesn't this one look like a mouse?

The final counts on how many pounds we harvested should be coming soon.  I know we had more than 100 lbs of tomatoes....

Last Rose of Summer

Last week after we finished up in the garden for the year (well, mostly!), my darling husband picked this for me.

Garden Visit from Ann S.

My lovely friend Ann is thinking about starting a garden next year, so she came over to tour mine.  It was a delightful visit!  What gardener doesn't want to prattle on endlessly about her planting and plans? 

Ann helped us harvest.  This photo is from earlier, but it includes some of what we are harvesting these days.... tomatoes, purple beans, basil, chives, thyme, okra, chamomile, and oregano.

I need to let Ann know two more things that I forgot to tell her (despite talking at her for almost two hours!).  One is to get the garden fenced and the beds dug and enclosed this fall.  The other is to save these, since she wants to grow tomatoes:

The one on the right is for planting seedlings (with holes punched in the bottom for drainage).  It is smaller so that the seeds get the heat from a heating pad placed underneath.  The one on the left is for tomatoes after they have enough leaves and no longer need the heating pad. The milk carton is where they will grow until they are transplanted.  Next year's garden is going to be MUCH bigger now that we have a freezer. :)

Hope everyone is having a bountiful harvest!  We've topped 100 pounds of tomatoes already this year, but keep in mind that that is from 12 plants.

Saturday in the garden

Lilacs are blooming!  Here's a bud.  (Some of the tomato seedlings pictured last month are in the background.)

Accomplished Saturday: weeding, spreading compost, setting up the rain barrels, fixing the wheelbarrow tire, picking up bricks from a coworker, watering strawberries, raking and shredding leaves... and feeling rather sore and tired at the end of the day.

We are putting out rain barrels even though we are not past the last frost date here in Nebraska because temps during the day are high enough that Belovedest thinks it won't get cold enough to freeze an entire barrel of water, which will retain some heat from the daylight sun.  A partially-filled barrel can afford to freeze, as the ice has room to expand without splitting the barrel.  We'll keep you posted....

Here's the long, long tap root of a small and innocuous-looking dandelion:

Hope all of your spring adventures are going well!