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Harvest Monday and Some Hopeful Signs

Posted on May 29, 2011 at 5:45 PM

Harvest Monday

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what people are producing from gardens in so many different regions.   Check it out and join in!                            

       

We have an abundance of harvestable crops at the moment to choose from including spinach, lettuce, pac choi, chinese cabbage, kale, swiss chard, celery, green onions, radishes, and rhubarb.   This week, I harvested spinach, lettuce, pac choi, swiss chard, celery, green onions and radishes.   The celery, green onions, and radishes were just small bits and did not make it into the harvest tally as a result.           

    

    

  

     

 

    

  

     

 

Harvest totals for the week of May 23rd through May 29th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

  • Lettuce 0.50 lbs
  • Pac Choi 4.75 lbs
  • Spinach 0.50 lbs
  • Swiss Chard 1.50 lbs

Total For Week 7.25 lbs

Total Year To Date 32.50 lbs                

               

Eggs collected this week – 33                                    

       

Hopeful Signs

We saw the sun on Saturday and in the morning hours of Sunday.   Unfortunately it did not stay with us very long but it was much enjoyed while present.   More importantly, the sunshine seems to have heralded the arrival of the bees.   They have been noticeably absent or reduced in the past two years but Sunday morning I observed a goodly amount of them working the flowering rhododendrons and our evergreen huckleberry bushes.   I am very happy to see them and hope they continue to thrive and work my garden.   Another hopeful sign I observed on Sunday morning was that all of our evergreen huckleberry bushes are flowering profusely – giving indication that we may have a good huckleberry harvest later this year.   These bushes are in our front landscaping area of the property.   They prefer to grow in a partially shaded area and work very well planted at the edges of our property as a transition into the heavily forested areas that surround our homestead.   We have quite a few of these bushes ranging from small young plants to very large specimens.   Here’s one that is right next to our front entry drive.  

 

    

  

The bushes are exploding with blossoms and the bees are working them with enthusiasm.                                    

  

   

 

Evergreen huckleberries have smaller berries than regular huckleberries or blueberries and they tend to be a bit seedy.   They can be prolific though and if you harvest a large enough amount of them they are easily run through a berry screen on a roma strainer to produce a pulpy juice that is the foundation for some really yummy huckleberry jelly or syrup.                

       

The spring continues to be cooler than normal but I am seeing some hopeful signs that it may be a decent harvest year after all, despite the weather so far.  

 

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Categories: Harvesting, Berries

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19 Comments

Reply Sandy
09:27 PM on May 29, 2011 
I noticed hopeful signs in my garden today too. I am hopeful that I'll have really good strawberry and blueberry crops this year, as long as the weather cooperates a little bit.

Oh, great timing on comments about huckleberries. I bought three huckleberry plants yesterday and will be planting them tomorrow. :-)
Reply Robin
09:49 PM on May 29, 2011 
It definitely looks like you are going to have good harvests this year! I have spinach envy :) I didn't get a thing from my spring crop. It's one veggie that I always have problems with.
Reply Annie's Granny
12:25 AM on May 30, 2011 
I've been happy to see a lot of bees working my raspberries this spring. More than usual, I think. I also finally abandoned my pruning of the overgrown rhodies today, due to the big bumblebee not wanting to be bothered any more!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
12:44 AM on May 30, 2011 
Sandy - My strawberries were off to a good start too until the rabbit found them and mowed them down to the ground. They are covered now but are set back tremendously as a result. The blueberries on the other hand are just about ready to bloom and they have a heavy flower set on them this year - so like you - I am optimistic that this may be a good blueberry year too. The evergreen huckleberries are a great edible landscaping addition.

Robin - Spinach is a crop that grows very well in our climate - but this year I had a hard time gettting it going for some reason. They emerged but then seemed to just stall out for an unusually long period of time. Luckily, the patch woke up about a week ago and has really gotten alot of growth on it since.

Annie's Granny - Our place is surrounded by rhodies and it is a constant battle to keep them pruned back. I choose not to argue with bumble bees either though!
Reply Mike
09:02 AM on May 30, 2011 
You got me so excited about these evergreen huckleberries that I rushed over to the Raintree nursery site to see if they had any for sale...sure enough they did but alas they are only hardy to zone 7 which is no doubt why I have never seen one.:(

Nice harvest this week!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
10:57 AM on May 30, 2011 
Mike - Yes, they are a native to this general area so I imagine they are not terribly cold tolerant. Traditional huckleberries should grow well in your area though. Not sure if they are tolerant of partial shade conditions like these are - but I know they grow in your area as we always picked huckleberries in eastern Washington and northern Idaho.
Reply Allison @ Novice Life
11:25 AM on May 30, 2011 
Interesting about the huckelberries!
Reply Lori
06:29 PM on May 30, 2011 
Nice harvest! So colorful and fresh. I'm not familiar with huckleberries. What zone do you live in? They sound pretty interesting, and I wonder if they could survive in a shaded area in our zone 9 climate? I will be checking them out. We have a very good nursery in the foothills not far from where we live and I'm sure they will have information on how they would do in our location. It's always nice to see the hopeful signs of what is to come!
~~Lori
Reply Ali
08:00 PM on May 30, 2011 
Things are looking good there. The coole springs do make for good greens -- or at least that's what I've been consoling myself with this year. Your huckleberries are lovely, I've never tasted them. Here in Maine of course we have native lowbush blueberries all over. I have highbush blueberries as well, and they are now beginning to bloom and the weather has warmed and cleared enough for the bees to be actively pollinating, hooray!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
12:40 AM on May 31, 2011 
Alison - They are definitely a wild cousin of cultivar blueberries and huckleberries - but for an edible landscape plant for the pacific northwest coast areas it is ideal.

Lori - Our area is designated as zone 8b. It is not very hot or cold here - very moderate most of the year round. It would be good to talk to the local nursery folks and see if they are familiar with how this would grow in your area specifically.

Ali - We also have blueberries that grow in our area both wild and cultivated, True huckleberries usually grow best in slightly higher (and drier) elevations than our area has. These evergreen huckleberries though are well adapted to our moderate and wet climate and have found a niche in the partial shade areas of the forests. Huckleberries look like and taste alot like a blueberry but with just a little more tartness and intensity.
Reply Daphne
10:02 AM on May 31, 2011 
wow over four pounds of pac choi. So how do you eat it all? Or do you preserve it in some way?
Reply RANDOMGARDENER
03:03 PM on May 31, 2011 
Great greens! Lovely pics of your harvest.
Reply foodgardenkitchen
07:30 PM on May 31, 2011 
Yay for the bees! I've only seen a handful of bees this year so we've been hand-pollinating our summer squash to ensure they are well-pollinated. The only years bees haven't been scarce for us was last year when a community garden less than a quarter mile away had a hive and the resident bees were happy to come and partake of our flowers :) Unfortunately, the bee hive didn't make it (probably due to lack of knowledge on the part of the "beekeepers") and the community garden kind of went bust when people realized that growing food was a lot more work than they had thought! Of course last year was one of our worst years for various flying pests and that was probably due to the poor pest management techniques being employed by the community gardeners. Although we have some cucumber beetles and stink bugs this year, it's nothing like last year and when I kill one it seems like 5 more don't appear the next day, as they did last year.

I keep thinking about becoming a beekeeper but, truth be told, I'm not that interested in doing it. There is a local start-up - a "save the bees" type of thing - from which you can lease a hive and they do the work in maintaining it but it's a $200 hive deposity plus $350 a year for a monthly maintenance visit (plus you get to keep any excess honey from your hive; the bees get first dibs on honey though). It's not an unreasonable amount to spend for a hive but it's more than I'm willing to part with at the current time...
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
10:51 PM on May 31, 2011 
Daphne - Typically I lose alot of the asian greens to slugs each year and so I did my usual overplanting to compensate for that fact... only I let my chickens run the garden all winter and my slug population is way down this spring as a result... suddenly I get almost no losses from slugs and I am swimming in pac choi and chinese cabbages! LOL! I had to harvest these because they were at their prime and would be soon bolting. I obviously did not need that many for our own use - at least immediately. We used 1/4 of that harvest right away. Another 1/4 was cleaned and put in the crisper in the fridge for later use, and the remaining half was given to my hens as a treat. They loved it.

RANDOMGARDENER - Thanks!

foodgardenkitchen - I am with you on beekeeping. I think it is very interesting but I am not ready to try and keep a hive on our place. The "rent a hive" concept you described is really interesting. It would be a good way to get started in bee keeping I would think.
Reply Diana
08:19 AM on June 01, 2011 
Your green harvest each time look so good. 33 eggs wow!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
08:30 AM on June 01, 2011 
Diana - Our cool wet spring has been good for the greens. Yes, it is alot of eggs although they are slowing down to a daily average of 4 to 5 rather than 5 to 6. I give away the surplus we cannot use - so they go to good use.
Reply Thomas
08:51 AM on June 03, 2011 
I still can't get over how good your bok choy looks. I think I need to grow beyond the mini-varieties.
Reply mac
11:34 AM on June 06, 2011 
I miss spinach already, yours look so good.
I've never eaten huckleberry before and don't know what it looks like, thanks for sharing the photo. I'm growing currant and gooseberry now, I don't think they will grow well in our arid weather, but I gotta try, it's one of those "wanna have" thingy ;)
Reply Emma
12:21 PM on June 26, 2011 
Laura, I'm so thankful for your blog. It inspires me to continue on. I just started this year and I have to say it is all joy to see my garden grow. It's no where near the size of yours. Our back yard is tiny but we are utilizing every little space we have. We even planted mammoth sunflowers and they are beautiful and about 10 feet tall. We've had some strange weather here in California so everything is getting started late. Next year we are adding two more planter boxes and I will be better organized. Thanks.