The Mysterious Fava and The Big Haul

If you have ever watched the show "Most Dangerous Catch" about crabbing in Alaska, you know how exciting it is to pull up the crab pot that is overflowing with snow crabs. Today was the biggest one day haul of the the year.  We harvested:
Cucumbers
Acorn Squash
Radish
Fava beans
Beets
Swiss Chard

The total weight today was 3.57 Kilograms which would be enough calories to support one person for a whole week. It was amazing to pull up the beets and see the root bulb under the leaves. We ate six different vegetables at lunch, including beet greens.

While I was away the harvest continued with a total of 3.6 Kilograms over the last several days.

All total for the year we have now harvested

29.2 Kilograms or 65lbs





FAVA BEANS
Fava Beans are very mysterious and although I would not say that they have been the most prolific thing to grow, they are one of the most interesting.

The plant is tall with pods that stick off of the stem and remind me of the the way coco pods grow on the trees that chocolate comes from.

The pods are thick and the bean inside looks like a normal bean but if you bite it you will find that it is bitter and hard. Then if you boil these for just a minute to blanch you can open each bean and get the bright green bean inside. So these beans have to be shelled twice and you loose a lot of mass of the food to the double shelling as opposed to the Sugar Snaps where you get to eat the whole thing.

Produce is COMING IN and compost

This is still May and we have entered into a very productive period.

Tonight we had cucumbers, radishes, snow peas, lettuce and yellow squash.

Last night we had green beans (Italian Flat), new potatos, fava beans, spinach. Every day we are able to pick almost a kilogram of food. Some things are going to be coming to an end soon. Snow peas will be coming out soon, the fava beans and most of the lettuce is starting to bolt. So when all of that comes out I will have room for more plants to go in. The other farmer is helping out with weeding, picking, cooking and of course, eating.

May 21-24
3.5 Kg

1.2 KG of that total was sugar snap peas.

I have planted some more shell beans, corn, sun flowers, and some other types of flowers. I also have transplanted the other Farmer's large Rosemary into the garden.

On the other side of the process I was able to harvest some compost. I have been putting all my cuttings, and plant waste in my compost pile and that has matured as well and I can complete the cycle and enrich my soil with the waste product turned into black gold.

Here are our future raspberries. I showed them when in bloom earlier.

Critters and Visitors

So you can have invited and uninvited guest in our garden.

When every I am walking through the garden I cannot resist picking a few sugar snaps, beans or other tasty tidbit to crunch on while I am walking by. We have  had visitors of late and I know that a radish, cucumber or other morsels are likely to go missing before they get in for a chance to be weighed.

However some, visitors are not so welcome. I was alerted to the "pretty bunny" by some lookouts in the house and I have seen and even given chase to the "lapin agile" more than once. Clearly h /she is not intimidated. Since I saw paw prints this morning around some severely nibbled-on soy bean sprouts, I think I will try some cayenne pepper dissolved in water and vinegar to spray on them. The sharp taste is supposed to deter. I guess it is like dunking the baby's  pacifier in some bitter liquid to help wean them off.

On the other hand lapin could provide some needed protein from the garden!!

Snatched from the Jaws of the Yellow Cabbage Month Caterpillar

Snatched from the teeth of defeat; I do have some cabbage for more effort. On last report I said that the cabbage seemed to have been destroyed by the cabbage fly. Certainly there was significant damage but as I pulled them up and pealed off the damaged leaves there was a core that had escaped and I have some tiny cabbages that are great for a one or two person meal. Take a look. 

Leeks and Leaks

Well, the leeks that I have planted do not photograph well at this size. The process to grow leeks is really quite involved which is probably why they are expensive. The seeds are tiny, like small grains of sand but very black. I started them in side under the grow light and after a few weeks they where about 3 or 4 inches tall. I then put them in the cold frame and that is where they have been ever since.

Once they get about 10-12 inches tall you then dig individual holes and put the uprooted plant 6 inches down. As they grow you can hill dirt up because you want the underground part to be blanched (white) and that is the part you eat. Whoever thought to put there leeks 6 inches down in the ground? Anyway I have planted about 80 and it really want be the fall before they will be ready to harvest. I will post more pictures as they are bigger and photograph better.

Leaks are another problem. You may remember the rain barrel that I bought at an estate sell last winter. I installed it and it leak. I have spent more money on the barrel trying to fix the leak then I spent at the estate sell an it still does not work. There is a flimsy hose that comes off a nipple on the bottom age and you are supposed to just push the hose on. As soon as you try to use it pops off and the water begins to gush. Well yesterday it pop off on its own and I notice that there was water in the drive way. The leaks got a good soak with probably 200 liters of water on them and it was a swamp. Fortunately good drainage in this area so things look good today.

Cabbage                1.190 Kg
Chard                       280 grams
Squash (Yellow)       170 grams
Sugar snaps              590 gram   1.3 lb
Strawberries             275 grams   0.6 lb

Total as of May 18,    2.500 Kg

New Farmer brings some Sweet Potato Slips

What is this? FAVA!!

The new farmer has arrived in town and will be homesteading with us for a few weeks. The garden has been very productive over the last few days and I really need to post almost every day to keep up with what we are harvesting.
However, one of the new things in the ground is sweet potato slips. Slips is how you grow sweet potatoes. Last year I bought mine on-line and they come as pretty sorry looking stems with wilted leaves. You stick the slip in the ground and away they go. Last year with 6 hills I had nearly 75 pounds by the fall. This year I tried to grow my own slips and although I have two slips I wanted more, so I went ahead and ordered some online. The new farmer has a friend back in Florida and he has grown his own slips for many years and when he heard about my plight sent 45! slips up to me. Well that is way too many for my yard, so I will have some to give away plus the ones coming in the mail. The ones from Florida look very healthy and hearty. I will put a couple of store bought ones in for comparisons.

One of the the things great about growing your own food is that you can have old stand by like sweet potato and when you go outside to the car can pick up a great strawberry or a few sugar snaps to snack on. You can also try something new; like fava beans. I planted my seed in winter and the plants are beautiful with probably 50 blooms per plants but for some reason they are not setting fruit very well and the number of pods that I am getting is only 1 or 2 per plant. I don't know what is supposed to pollinate the flowers but they did not visit my pretty plants.

The last of the broccoli raab was harvested and the plants pulled up and sent to the compost.
Overall in the last 4 days 2.538 kilograms of produce and about 1 Kg of that was strawberries. Also the first yellow squash and as mentioned earlier the first fava beans.

Total of all produce in weight so far is 16.920 Kg  or 37.5 lbs

Lettuce wants to Bolt

The garden is starting to become very productive with greens, peas, strawberries and lettuce. The lettuce is starting to bolt. I brought in sugar snaps and romaine lettuce for some of my colleagues. It was then that I noticed that the stems were getting thicker and starting to elongate between the leaves. Instead of a compact head which starts the process that will go to seed. This is called bolting. It isn't much of a problem quite yet but it can be in just a few days. Once the lettuce head opens up and the flowers emerge the greens may become a little more sharp/bitter and even wilt as all the energy is going into the production of seed for the next generation. It is almost as if we should have some narration as in a nature show were they show the worn out and ragged looking salmon gasping after they spawn. So having flowers and making seed is not good for lettuce.

I think I will try a few lettuce seeds even though heat is not good for lettuce. If I use my floating covers for shade I may get small heads but enough to eat before they bolt and go to seed.

On the other hand flowers are often a good thing. The little yellow blossoms for the tomato plants will promise fruit in the next few weeks, since the cherry tomato ripens quickly once the fruit sets. Squash is flowering and a yellow squash will be ready for supper tomorrow. The green beans are also blossoming.

Since my last report

Lettuce (multiple harvest) 1200 grams
Strawberry 500 grams
Spinach 130 grams
Chard 240 grams
Sugar snaps 610 grams
Total 2.680 kilograms

Fruits of Labor come to the Table

I was away for almost a week for work and a lot can happen in that time. Tonight we had a dinner that included lettuce, radish, sugar snap peas, Swiss chard and sweet potato(saved from last year). Every thing was delicious with our dinner.

The strawberries are also coming into season and I have picked 975 grams today and there are a lot more berries on the bushes. So I think that we will have berries for about 2 weeks. The berries are smaller then the ones you get in the store but they are very intense in flavor and don't have that watery texture.

A lot of the things that we planted last week are starting to come up. A lot of weeds are coming up too. However, the garden is looking great overall.


Lettuce 280 grams
Sugar snap peas 110 grams
Swiss chard 280 grams
Radishes 50 grams
Strawberry 975 grams

Total 1.695 Kilogram

Produce Coming In/ Composting

If you are just now joining the blog, you may not remember that in the beginning I wrote a "manifesto" about trying to grow enough food in weight to feed one or more people. I estimated that about 225 KG (almost 500lbs) would at 4 calories per gram sustain one adult. I am not intending to only eat the food I grow and have already given some produce away to friends and even to strangers walking by our house.

Well up to now I have not been able to weigh the food I am producing. Not any more, check out the slick new food scale. Now I can weigh the food stuff that I produce.

Here you can see a head of lettuce that I plucked from my garden. To my surprise I found that it weights about 0.25 lbs (120 grams). Well, I discussed the situation with my family, shall I count the food the garden had produced up to now? We have eaten a lot of lettuce, radishes, broccoli raab and Swiss chard. I think that I would estimate 10 kilograms would be a very conservative estimation. I will start my count there, so now I have 10.2 kg for the year.


Our household has been composting for many years. Here you can see our compost bin that we use. We compost all of the vegtable food waste, much of the garden waste and shredded papers. My wife has checked out books about composting and we know that our compost bin is in too shady of an area. The amazing thing is that we will fill it up and then the material composts down and practically disappears. I have never gotten any compost out of my bin for my garden and we have been using it for more than 5 years! This seems to be a Holy (Holey) Mystery. I am glad all that stuff is not in the landfill. I have faith that some day I will have compost.

I also put all my leaves, clippings and anything other organic waste in my increasing small natural area to decompose naturally.


My motto is "It is my CARBON and I'm keeping it." When I drive around and see plastic bags with grass clippings from unnaturally green yards by the street waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck I want to open my window and say "It's your CARBON. Keep it." I hear that other parts of the country have more strict/progresive/environmentally sound policies about yard/garden 'waste', but here it goes all to the landfill. . .

Baby Vegetables/Delicous Cabbage

There are a number of baby vegetables and fruits which are now starting to come in.

Today I was able to have three strawberries from my bushes around the house and in the plantings. They are not as large(huge) as some of the berries that we can buy at the store. They are however very tasty and sweet; the store bought berries taste watery in comparison.


There are also some two inch long sugar snaps on the pea trellis. I think that the peas will be ready to pick in the next few days. One of the interesting thing about sugar snaps is that you have to plant them when it is winter, mid-February, the peas that I planted a month later are just not progressing like these amazing specimens. If you wait too late to plant you can miss out on the sugar snaps for a whole year.

Here is the first squash of the year which will be ready for the skillet in just a few more days.

I am not always successful. I mentioned the delicious cabbage. Delicious for the caterpillars of the white cabbage moth. Last year I lost all of my broccoli raab to these pesky creatures. They seem to have shown up early this year. I am trying floating covers for the cabbage in another garden patch to see if I can protect the plants. I will not use a pesticide so if the cabbage moth gets under the floating covers they will enjoy the fruit(vegetable) of my labors.