Today was a busy day in the Demonstration Garden, and especially in the Family of 4 Garden. We decided that it was time for the remaining 2 red cabbage plants to go. The tomatoes are beginning to take over, and although the cabbage heads are still a bit small, the weather and the competition won’t help the heads get bigger. Besides, if we left them there too much longer, we’d probably have to damage the tomato plants to get them out!

The cabbage heads weighed a total of 3 lbs.

We also decided to pull the onions, since the tops were flopped over and starting to die. We probably could have left them another week or two, but they weren’t going to get much bigger either. We ended up with 35 Red Candy onions and 21 Texas 1015Y onions. We apparently lost 1 red onion (or else I can’t count) and 15 yellow onions during the growing season. We had several yellow onions die/rot, probably due to being too wet. Still, 56 onions isn’t too shabby for a 8 square foot area! We are letting the onions dry for a week or two, and then we’ll weigh them for our records.

We also harvested 1 bunch of Swiss Chard, and thinned the plants out. I’m hoping that giving them a little more space to breathe will help them be a little healthier.

Finally, we harvested the first of the Chioggia (Candy Stripe) and Touchstone Gold Beets. We only pulled the largest ones to leave room for the others to keep growing, and we ended up with about 2 pounds of beets (tops removed).

After all the harvesting, we put some more straw mulch down around the peppers, squash, and Brussels Sprouts. If I have time this week, I’ll round up the equivalent prices for all this produce and update you on the total yield for the Family of 4 Garden in dollars.