In January every year I hit up the calendar section at Borders. I guess I will have to try for Barnes and Noble this year... I get a wall one, a desk one, and a purse one. They each have different purposes. The wall one and purse one both have birthdays, but the purse one always has more information on it. The desk one is strictly a garden journal. This year was my favorite one, "Under the Tuscan Sun," complete with beautiful photos from Italy, recipes, and of course italian vegetable photos. The 7 days on a page style is perfect for a garden journal, and I put recommended things to do on the top part of the day and things that I actually did, what was growing, what what ready for harvest, etc on the bottom part of the day. I recently viewed a friend's oh so organized spreadsheet of her own garden harvest. This is much more user friendly, neat and clean, but I find it easier to write down a quick tally. The only drawback is storing the journal once it's completed. But it's also my own personal almanac! I will share some photos from the year, most of which I haven't posted. The bottom is our tally. We are still hoping to do a small CSA next year between a few family members and friends. We love doing it, and will be expanding the garden anyway, so why not share our produce even more? We also hope to share some of the load, ha! Some folks can't or don't want their own garden but love it, so we would love to host an informal community garden. Even if we get people in the dirt a day or two that would be great! Almost all of our seeds were from Baker Creek Heirloom company. We also obtained some seedlings from Headstart Nursery, but didn't have as much success with those.
Our watermelons were so yummy! The only bummer was the crop wasn't very high. They were pretty good sized.
The spaghetti squash came early on, and I just ate the last one a week ago.
My prized cosmos didn't do as well this year. I planted cosmos and sunflowers at the end of each row. This was also the drier part of the dirt, and cosmos needed more water than they received.
Some wild parts to our garden this year!! The weeds got out of hand even with the plastic laid down over the crop rows. I also jumped the gun and planted potatoes before the plastic was down and so the potato patch was crazy with weeds.
The sunflowers were so much fun. We kept them up for a while because when the leaves are a little crunchy and the wind blows, it is such a nice natural wind chime.
Some of the black eyed pea harvest. The pod and the shelled peas. There was 2 harvests of these. We hadn't grown these before, and were a nice treat as well as very storable. We had 6 plants, and got a decent output.
Octopus squash!
Melons!
Goofy Chris holding our sizeable melons!
This crookneck was a mutant! The whole stalk of the plant was over 4 ft long and the entire plant was covered with squash just as shown above. I counted 21 squash on it at one time. It was a huge producer!
A quick beer and garden harvest one night.
Pretty heirlooms.
Granny smiths.
Here we go
Garden Tally 2011 (Spring-Summer-Fall)
Eggs- 3 per day until July... 540 eggs, 45 dozen eggs
Carrots-75/ ~9#
Broccoli- 2 small heads
Chard- 10 large bunches, did not count the all the chard we got over the winter!
Radish-30
Lettuce- 10 heads
Baby greens- Large salad per week for 2 months in spring and now.
Cilantro- 8 bunches
Parsley- 20 bunches recorded (still going strong, really the only thing down at the garden to harvest. Get 2 bunches/week!)
Russet Potatoes- 4#
Red La Soda Potatoes- 18#
Fingerling Potatoes 22#
Yukon Gold Potatoes- 6#
Kale- 15 bunches
Heirloom cucumbers- 68
Snowpeas- 25
Yellow squash- 86
Zucchini- 105
Blueberries- 6 ounces
Green beans- (first year, from 6 plants!) approx. 28#
Jalapenos- too many from 4 plants, lost count after 200...
Garlic- 6 large bulbs, after a few sacrificial heads were pulled too early
Purple green beans- 5#
Baskets of cherry tomatoes- mixed types-@ 2.5# each 72 baskets or 180# of cherry tomatoes
Tomatillos- baskets 2# each, 25 baskets, ~200 tomatillos
Lemon basil- 12 bunches
Basil- 19 bunches
Spaghetti squash-5
Black eyed peas- hulled peas- 3 pounds/ 9 cups of dried beans.
Soy beans- 10 ounces of in-shell beans
Corn-16 edible ears
Granny Smith Apples-15
Larger Heirloom tomatoes- 26
Sunflowers- 20, (still harvesting the seeds...very time consuming)
Cosmos- 10 bunches
Watermelons- 6 total, 2 @9#, 1 @ 11#, 3 @ 4#
Honeydew-3
Butternut squash- 3 @ 7"
Green Zebra Tomatoes- 24
Acorn Squash- 1 small where I planted jumbo pumpkins? no pumpkins either...
We had a great year! Every year is a true experiment! We love not going to the store. I didn't calculate the cost savings of all this produce this year because we give it away as well. But I can tell you were were really only going to the store for yogurt and fruit! We are hoping our mandarin trees take off, but that still won't help us in the summer. Luckily we are very close to many orchards where we have been enjoying pears, apples, mandarins, and walnuts. I even purchased strawberries in november. This is pretty crazy, even for California! I froze a ton of them so we can enjoy them through the winter.
Chris is in the process of increasing our garden's size to almost double. The layout will be a little different, as well as a permanent path. To those of you who have visited, you know the current path is quite rustic. I will be thankful for that, and so will the stroller. When we were pulling out the tomato cages and the plastic Chris and I had our first tomato fight. We decided it was going to be an annual tradition. In late october there were still so many tomatoes on the plants, even though most had rotted. It was pretty fun to run around dodging each other's tomato bullet. Owen sure got a kick out of it as well.
WHAT's in the dirt right now?
Up at the house, I have so much mesclun lettuce, a decent amount of Kale, basil (well protected from the frost). I have planted oodles of garlic, onions, and a decent amount of broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels. They are looking pretty healthy but I have never planted the latter 3 veggies with good success. Here's hoping!
We have been considering taking a 100 mile challenge. I recently read a book about 2 Canadian journalists who did just that- only ate food grown or made within 100 miles of their home. This would be much easier for us here in Cali. It is also very handy to have the deep freezer and canning abilities. Chris and I have a lot of fun planning, planting, and harvesting, who knew we would be country kids?
