Monday, December 26, 2011

Harvest Monday - December 26, 2011

This is the last Harvest Monday of the year, which normally means posting my yearly totals. But this time I also have a harvest. I picked the rest of the Shanghai bok choy in the garden. All that is left of my Asian greens is some tatsoi. The tatsoi is pretty hardy, but the bok choy is much better quality if picked before too many deep freezes take place. The outer leaves slowly turn to slime in the cold weather. The inner ones hold for much longer. In addition I wanted to bring bok choy to the Christmas party, so it had to get picked and sorted beforehand.

The biggest of the choys was this pretty one. The outer leaves were a bit banged up but the inner ones were beautiful. It was over four inches in diameter and weighed 14 oz. I think it didn't know it was a baby bok choy and wanted to be a full sized one. All in all I harvested 4lbs and 3.3oz of bok choy. Not bad for the end of the year.

Now on to the year end round up. This was a decent year. I have about 560 sqft of raised beds and got about 590 lbs of vegetables from the space. I always hope for at least a pound per square foot. Also the solanums weren't weighed starting at the end of August. So I'm guessing I had at least 20 more pounds if not more.

Next year will be harder for me as I won't grow as many of the solanums. None if I still can't eat them by then. Right now I've eaten dips with hot peppers in them and not reacted. I'll very very slowly add more in over the winter and spring. I had a full three beds in solanums, so next year I'll need at least two beds in other things. I'm thinking more squash would be good. More corn and beans would be good. I might split up my three sisters and grow full beds of things. And I might do both. Have some mixed and some not to see what grows better.

In addition, I'm going to have to figure out a rotation for my brassicas. I my last garden I didn't have to rotate the beds during the year. So I would grow them in the spring and in the same place in the fall and then rotate them in other years. But in this garden there is more rot diseases and I lost my whole fall bed in less than a week. So the spring brassicas will have to be followed by something like carrots and the fall brassicas will have to follow the peas, favas, and carrots. This year the kale followed the onions and that worked out well. To help with the issue I'd like to get a row cover that lets the air flow better. They sell them in Australia, but sadly not here. Shipping is a b*tch. But I think it will be worth it.

Yearly totals for 2011:

  • Alliums 46.49
  • Beans 28.06
  • Broccoli 7.08
  • Carrots 42.31
  • Corn 11.66
  • Cucurbit 88.06
  • Eggplant 5.77
  • Greens 121.19
  • Herbs 7.45
  • Peas 18.82
  • Peppers 15.76
  • Potatoes 24.46
  • Radishes and Turnips 7.48
  • Tomatoes 168.30
  • Yearly total 592.99 lbs
  • Total spent $673.98
  • Veggies were worth $2008.98
  • Fruit 1.87 lbs $7.81
  • Net $1342.81

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

27 comments:

  1. Glad you had a good harvesting year. The bok choy looks great. Thankyou for hosting Harvest Monday's I'm really enjoying both reading and contributing to them.

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  2. Your Shanghai bok choy is beautiful. Remember you are going to plant sweet potatoes, they do need a lot of space.

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  3. You really had a good year Daphne. Especially when you consider the horrible weather we had.

    Hopefully next year will be even better!

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  4. Lovely harvest for the last Monday of the year!

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  5. Bok choy looks good, maybe next year. Happy Holidays.

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  6. Your harvest totals make impressive reading! Thanks for hosting Harvest Mondays so reliably.

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  7. What impressive totals, Daphne! I always love reading about what you grow and harvest. Thank you for hosting Harvest Mondays. Happy (almost) new year!!!

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  8. Good work on production from your garden this year. It was a challenging weather year so the production was particularly noteworthy. The bok choy looks beautiful I have some young dwarf pac choi hardening off right now to eventually go out into the greenhouse. Hopefully I can keep the slugs at bay and enjoy them later this coming spring.

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  9. What lovely bok choy! Great totals for the year, too. I'll be working out the square footage and totals next week for my place. You can buy the floating row covers from Peaceful Valley http://www.groworganic.com/ or from Johnny's http://www.johnnyseeds.com/default.aspx

    They come in different thicknessess offering different degrees of protection. I just got my order from Peaceful Valley as they are closest to me. A peice of the heaviest weight Agrobon, good for 12 degrees of frost, 83 inches x 50 feet was only about $30 and I had a coupon for free shipping. 83 inches is a good width if your beds are 4 feet wide.

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  10. Amazing that you are getting such a PRETTY harvest this late in the year. And your total harvest poundage amazes me. Kudos, kiddo! Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to host Harvest Monday. I love it. I'll post my year totals next week after I wring every last ounce from this year.

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  11. I'm so impressed by your discipline in recording and weighing everything. Congratulations on a great year and all best for 2012!

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  12. Daphne- What an amazing year's harvest. Take a bow! I also want to say "thanks" for the terrific blog that you publish. I always enjoy reading it so much and have learned a great deal too. Wishing you the happiest of Holidays and a bountiful 2012 garden!

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  13. The bok choy seems to be a winter standard. Am very interested in winter gardening, and plan to build some cold frames and hoop covers in the new season.
    We harvested some cabbage for galumpkes (stuffed cabbage) yesterday, and the last of the carrots today. I look forward to learning how to grow good eats in the winter. PEACE.

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  14. 2011 was a really good year for your garden, Daphne. You should be proud.

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  15. You did an incredible job with your greens! I don't know how you do it.

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  16. that bok choy looks great, I may have to give it a try next year

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  17. You really had a great year. Thank you so much for hosting these special Harvest Monday's...I just love them and really look forward to each post. I'm looking forward to the coming season. Oh, no harvest for me...on my way to North Carolina to welcome a new Christmas Grand Baby.

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  18. gardeners.com has row covers of various types.Would you post a link to the Australian one? I'd be interested to see what it's like. Thanks.

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  19. Karen Anne here is the link
    http://www.veggiecare.com
    Though the site is for US people obviously, the company is based in Australia. Agribon is annoying me as the light one rips so easily. I also love that you can see though this one better.

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  20. Thanks, Daphne, for hosting this gathering, I've learned so much from it!

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  21. Thanks for hosting the harvest reports each week. No harvest for me this week other than eggs. But I'm reporting my totals this week too. Your totals are great!! Almost 600 pounds from 600 square feet!! Wow!

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  22. Absolutely beautiful bok choi! Amazing that you can post garden harvest into December. Luckily, there are so many different vegetables to fill your garden beds if you find that you are still sensitive to solanums.

    I also want to thank you for hosting Harvest Mondays. It is always fun to see what everyone is harvesting.

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  23. Congratulations on your yearly total! :) How awesome!

    ~Lynn

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  24. Is there a specific type of bok choy you like best? And why? I'd like to try it this coming year. Also, I have this new tool that I'm going to use to make my own fancy seed packets (among other things) because I can design them, import them into the silhouette software, and then it will print and cut them for me - leaving plenty of time for gardening! My link tells more about the Cameo.

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  25. Beeks, no I love all the bok choys. The white stemmed ones tend to be milder and the green stemmed ones have more flavor but can get bitter in bad conditions (though winter isn't bad, heat is). The green stemmed ones tend not to bolt as quickly as the white stemmed ones.

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