The Harvest Before the Hurricane

With Hurrican Irene bearing down on the East Coast this weekend, we chose Friday to haul in some of the veggies that were ready to be harvested. We had a good start to some carrots and now know that we can let them stay in a little longer barring any other natural disasters.

Scarlet Nantes Carrots

I left a few more in the ground and we can see how they turn out in another couple of weeks. We also pulled all of the onions.

Mustang Hybrid 1 Onions

Not tremendously huge, but we’ll take ’em. I definitely need to read up on how to better support and encourage these for next year. Next up were the green beans and as you can see in the veggie carrier, we had a few.

Kentucky Wonder Beans

I also picked two more eggplants. But, can someone please tell our plant that it should only yield 3-4 per year and not be starting on its 12th and 13th of the season?

The potatoes were the piece de resistance. We unearthed all of the ones that were in the ground since we thought their drainage would not be as good as the ones in the boxes. We’ll have to see how that theory pans out. So, out of the ground came 8 plants worth. We seem to have gotten 3 or 4 potatoes per plant and these could have definitely kept going as we found the beginnings of others on the roots. I also need to get on the weeding in this area a lot better next year. We are definitely enjoying our learning curve!

Katahdin Potatoes

Those pictured above were the “market ready” type potatoes. We also have about half of another cookie tray of ones about which we were uncertain. So, I took a couple with me to our farmer’s market to ask Barry of Savoie Farms. Turns out they are fine. They have some grooves in them from all of the water that we have had, but they are edible. Yay! I can’t wait to see how many we get out of the boxes. It should be interesting to see.

Finally, in other parts of the garden, the sunflowers have really come into their own.

Jerusalem Gold Sunflowers

I love the contrast against the brick. I have to read up on how to save the seeds for some free bird seed this winter. I’ll be moving them against the fence next year and putting hollyhocks in here to attract some bees and to alternate what is in the soil. The stalks have really withstood a beating in the rain and the unfortunate tumble of another neighbor’s tree into our yard. Thankfully, no one was hurt and the garden sustained minimal damage.

Finally, the pumpkins, butternut squash and watermelons are continuing to grow. At last count we had 15 pumpkins, 5 squash and 3 watermelons. But, as you can see from our “no spray” approach, there could be more lurking in there.

So, how did your gardens do with all of this crazy weather?