We're at 351 Pounds!
It's was really nice to get away for a week and to celebrate our cousin laurel's wedding (in Hawaii where she lives). While we were there we had a great time going to farmers markets and trying local fruits and vegetables. We tried several fruits we had never encountered before like chico and soursop. We also really fell in love with fresh passion fruit!
While we were gone the garden exploded with the warm summer heat and ample rain. Our neighbors helped keep everything in check but we were still greeted with an abundant harvest when we returned. Over the last two weeks our little urban plot produced 73 lbs of food. The chickens laid 47 eggs weighing in at 5.7 lbs. The remaining 67.3 lb was all produce with the top three producers being:
19.4 lbs of tomatoes
17.5 lbs of cucumbers
15.0 lbs of summer squash
Only 1649 Pounds To Go
7 comments:
A trip to Hawaii! Nice. Wow, you are producing a lot of food!
Hi Kate & Daniel,
I've been enjoying and also learning from your site. Seeing that you harvested your garlic this soon, saved me some grief. I had been really worried about mine, it was turning yellow and drying up, and I couldn't believe that it was ready yet. It seems at least 3 weeks earlier than last year, but it is ready.
Anyways, I dropped in on you once about a month ago and introduced myself. I'm Lee Olson and also from the West Side. I'm writing now to formally invite you to a group that has been meeting at Cherokee Park, every Wednesday night at 7:00 for a couple of months. We are about 20 people (although only about 6-8 show up a week) and we have no set agenda except we are talking about transitioning from our high energy dependent lifestyle to one of local resilience (Transition Towns). It sure seems that we talk a lot about food and gardening and would love it if you could join us. We're at the pavilion and it's very informal and every Wednesday. We had talked about going over to Coffee Amore if it rains, and don't know what we will do when the weather turns.
Anyways, please contact me if you have any questions: lolson4@macalester.edu or 227-1130. I have told the others what you are doing and your expertise/experiences would be highly valued. Everyone seems to have some expertise. Some of us have chickens too, so that would be fun.
You can google Transition Towns to see kind of what were attempting.
Best,
Lee
Hi Dan and Kate,
I love keeping up with your blog from time to time. It was great to see the real thing this week...but next time I demand a tour!
So, Tim and I have a tiny garden with tomatoes and zucchini. Both plants have yellowing leaves on them. The zucchini has been flowering, but doesn't seem to do much after that. Do you have any thoughts on easy, organic fertilizer.
Perhaps I should have asked, do you give out plant advice?
;-)Mary
Just curious...I'm pretty sure you aren't *eating* all 50+ pounds of produce each week, so are you preserving the surplus or giving it to neighbors?? I can barely keep up with my zukes and cukes and I don't have nearly as much as you do! :-)
Erica
Lee,
This group sounds great! We checked out Transition Towns online and are really interested in the goals / concepts. We will definitely come out and join you one of these upcoming Wednesdays!
Looking forward to it and meeting more people from the community!
Yours,
-Kate n Daniel
Hey Mary,
We will definetly give you a full tour next time. We'll have to have you and Tim over for a garden dinner soon!
We are happy to give advice. Yellow leaves is indicative that something is not right, but is a common symptom of many things. Send us photos and we'll figure out what's going on!
As to organic fertilizer, we use Compost and Compost and Compost! Before planting adding it to the soil and side dressing if necessary during the growing season.
You can also make up a compost Tea and apply it as a foliar spray for fast nutrient uptake.
Erica,
We can, freeze, and dehydrate excess produce for winter consumption.
That said we have been doing a pretty good job eating much of it fresh so far. Today for example we had 12oz tomatoes and 4 ounces chard with 3 eggs for breakfast. For lunch we had 18 oz tomatoes, and 8 oz cucumbers with a few other ingredients in pitas. We had a dinner party tonight and made Tomato Cucumber salad using 7 lbs tomatoes and 2 lbs cucumbers. There is not much left. Granted the dinner party used up a bit more than normal but we eat a LOT of veggies!
Hopefully soon we'll have enough tomatoes to make sauce. We're working on a big batch of pickles as we speak too!
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