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Family of 4 Harvest Report
We harvested the remaining carrots and beets from the Family of 4 Garden today. Maybe it was the dry weather, but the carrots seem to have been growing deeper in the ground, without their shoulders showing above the soil level this year. Because of that, I kind of thought our carrots wouldn’t amount to munch. Wow! I was wrong! These carrots are really gorgeous!
We also had a couple of bell peppers that were ready to pick, and of course, some Swiss Chard.
Family of 4 Harvest Report
3 bunches of carrots @ $2.00/bunch = $6.00
1 bunch of beets @ $3.00/bunch = $3.00
2 bell peppers @ $1.25/each = $2.50
2 bunches Swiss chard @ $2.99/each = $5.98
Weekly Total = $17.48
Year to Date = $162.39
Carrots!
I was out watering the garden this afternoon, preparing to put on the row cover again. Everything is extremely dry, and with the row covers on, any rain we get tomorrow will not make a lot of difference in the extremely dry soil. When I checked on the carrots, I found that there were a few carrots that were a nice size for snacking.
The bigger, orangier carrots are ‘Napoli’ and the more pink/salmon colored carrots are ‘Atomic Red’. Yum!
Experimental Planting
If you remember back almost a month, I posted these plans for our fall garden. As I explained then, these are experimental plans that are pushing the envelope of what may be possible here in South Central Kansas.
On Tuesday, we did our first planting of spinach, lettuce, and other greens for the planting date trial. Yesterday, I transplanted the leek and onion seedlings into the other bed. I also planted carrots, beets, radishes, chard, lettuce, spinach, and other greens. As always, how things are on paper isn’t quite how they work out in real life. In this case, I just couldn’t bring myself to pull out the cantaloupe plants, so I planted around them.
Row after row of fall veggies. I’ll probably throw a few more seeds into the spot where the melons are when they are done.
Some of the leek and onion seedling look really good, while others look a little sad. I guess the worst case scenario is that they all die, and the other worst cast scenario is that we have some nice plants that can take off and grow in the spring.
Fall Garden Plans
As promised, here are the two Fall Gardens that I’m planning on right now.
Spinach & Greens
This garden is mostly a planting date test, as well as a test to see how much of the winter the spinach will still be harvestable. It will also be interesting to see which plantings of spinach will be harvestable first in the spring. Of course, the results are very dependent on what type of winter we have and how cold it gets how soon. I’m planning to use either 1 or 2 thicknesses of a lightweight row cover fabric throughout the winter, since spinach shouldn’t need much protection. Our general recommendation for planting fall spinach is to plant from mid-August to mid-September and harvest by early November. I know we can go a lot later than that, so I’m definitely pushing the envelope on planting dates here.
Root Vegetables & More
This garden will have a variety of root vegetables, including carrots, beets, fall radishes, leeks, and onions. I’ll probably also plant some bok choy or other Asian greens. Most of these vegetables are usually planted in early August for a fall garden, so waiting until early September may be pushing our luck. Or, we might go ahead and plant some of them a couple weeks early. The goal with these vegetables is to see how long into the winter they will retain enough quality to continue harvesting and also to see if any of them will overwinter for an early spring crop. We’ll be covering this garden with a 4 mil clear greenhouse plastic in late November or early December, whenever it starts getting consistently cold.
Harvest Report
Even though the garden is looking a little bit scorched, we still had a good haul of produce this morning. There was a big pile of cucumbers from the Asian Garden, over-sized long beans, several nice tomatoes, and a few gold zucchini from around the garden.
The Family of 4 Garden yielded quite a bounty, especially since we harvested the rest of the carrots and beets today. We’ll be replanting soon, so this will give the spot a short rest.
This Week’s Harvest:
2 bunches of beets @ $3.00/bunch = $6.00
2 bunches of carrots @ $2.00/bunch = $4.00
4 cucumbers @ $0.75/each = $3.00
5 oz. peppers @ $2.50/pound = $0.78
10 squash blossoms @ $0.50/each = $5.00
1 bunch Swiss Chard @ $2.99/bunch = $2.99
1 lb tomatoes @ $2.00/lb = $2.00
3/4 lb zucchini @ $1.50/lb = $1.13
Weekly Total = $24.90
Yearly Total = $163.86
