Swiss Chard and Cucumbers

 

 The New Farmer and the Farmer's Wife, with the help of some rain, have done themselves proud  while I was gone. I think that one of the most stunning of the the garden plants is Swiss chard. The leaves are an iridescent green and the ribs can be amazing colors. In this case the the ribs are crimson. These greens are great with a blanch and the the ribs cut thinly cook up well for a crunchy counter point. We are likely to have chard from now on for most of the winter.

Oddly at the same time we are getting a second crop of cucumbers. They are growing, not as quickly, and continuing to bloom. With the onions, cucumbers and tomatoes I may be able to make a late season gazpacho.  I will certainly enjoy some fresh cucumbers with the pickles.

Here is the curly kale. The cooler weather seems to have limited the caterpillars.  This kale was just stubs eaten off to the grown and now I have great leaves and will be able to cook them in the next few weeks.
Finally the fennel is starting to look healthy with new shoots and the beginning a bulb at the bottom of the stalk, There is so much more to show that I will have to feature other plants tomorrow.


With all the produce that has been picked I have almost 5KG in weight to add.
Now the total is 185.991KG for the year

400 LBS

The New Farmer reports that she picked some okra and that puts us at 181.210 KG and that puts us just over the 400LB mark.
The Farmer is visiting farms out west for a few days and will have to post pictures from there.

Three New Crops

 

I have three new crops just harvested in the last few days to show off in this blog entry. The first are these nondescript leaves. They actually will taste "wow" delicious in the next few days since they are turnip greens. If you have turnip greens you are going to have turnips and under these leaves are some beautiful turnips that are good eating in their own right. The potato is an import from the New World and so was not in Europe and established until the 1600 or later. The turnip was the root vegetable that was the starch of many countries and was boiled and mashed and treated much as we would a potato today. I have seen some recipes of mixing them together and that might work since some will turn their nose up at a whole dish of plan turnips.
The next is Lima beans. I had planted these early own and they  bloomed like all blazes but most of the blooms dropped and did not set pods. I understand this is common with Lima beans but finally I have some pods and shelled them tonight and had more than enough of a serving for 2 people and some will be left over for tomorrow.
Finally, I could not wait longer for the collard greens. Normally, the old wives tale is that you wait until the first frost to sweeten them. However, global climate change seems to bring us 80's in October so I don't know when we will have a frost. So I cut 10 or 12 leaves and cooked them down and they were a delicious part of the dinner.
In the last week I have harvested 2.712 KG of a variety of produce and adding this to my totals I have

179.541KG.  So we are closing in on 180KG and a that is nearing the 400 LB mark.

Summer in October bring on the OKRA

Today I went out to the garden and almost overnight we have lots of okra pods. Now okra is supposed be a summer crop. The one thing that will grow when the temperature is above 90's. Okra also grows very quickly and in just 2 days you can go from a bud to pod that is over sized.
The tomatoes are stilling coming in and I am getting about half a kilogram of cherry tomatoes each day and lots of green larger heirloom type of which I have forgotten the name. I plan to grow a larger variety next year.
I also dug up some more sweet potatoes and in the upper garden and they are looking pretty good. The ones that I have under the dining room table seasoning are looking pretty good. Last year the ones I seasoned lasted all winter. I plan to take some of these out west at Thanksgiving to make some sweet potato pies.

This is October and the temperature should be highs in the mid 70's but for must of the month we have been hovering around 90's and no rain. 
With over 4.254KG of sweet potatoes I have 5.079 KG of produce to add to the
171.750 KG brings  us to 176.829 KG and that breaks the 175KG point. YEAH!!!!!!!!

Sun Flower Seed and Baba Ganoush

Baba Ganoush is a Mediterranean dip or spread made from roasted eggplant. I had some eggplant that were going a little soft so I roasted them in the oven while I was cooking some other food and then when cooled I  scoop out the flesh. It looks a lot like hummus and is fact very much like hummus but the base is eggplant instead of garbanzo beans. Look up a recipe on the internet, but the basic idea is that  you add the eggplant, lemon juice, garlic, salt to taste and taheni (sesame seed paste) and process smooth in the food processor. It has a somewhat unfortunate gray color. However, if you can eat hummus that look a lot like oily desert sand or guacamole which  also looks pre-digested you should try this as a spread.


I also have some beautiful lettuce, this is a head of butter leaf and is almost to beautiful to eat.


I decide to show you that since the next item is also not the most beautiful of photos.  I start to process some of the sunflower seeds that I had harvested and dried. Unfortunately about half of the stock that were in one bag had molded and had to be discarded.

The other half I tore apart, good for aggression relief and pop the kernels out into a bucket. It looks like a lot but only about 300grams for my effort. Nonetheless I have them soaking in a brine for the day and them will dry them in a low oven. This part is done with care since the first trial run was edible but probably a little over down so they must be watched carefully.

With assorted harvest I have 1750 grams to add bring the total to 171.750.

Which means I hope to have a celebratory 175 KG total celebration in the near future.

New Improved Potting and Staging Area

Well today turned a little chilled and I finished outside putting out some bulbs and some parsley the New Farmer had gotten for me. My attempts to start from seed where not successful but I will try again now.
 
The Farmers Wife helped today with the reorganization of the potting bench. I had made a mess with lots of empty boxes and the front window was blocked off so we moved to warmer corner for the winter. Other improvements included putting in a second set of lights on the bottom so I could have as many as 200 pots started if I need to.
Grow lettuce in side. Also I think that this coming year some plants like tomato, pepper and eggplant could be started and the placed in larger parts to get a more robust plant before I try to transplant. I think that particularly the peppers were just to small and did not make the transition as well as I would like.
There was a nice looking wicker basket and I was able to put a lot of my seed packs and other things I need like twine, labels and tomato supports in a tidy place. The Farmers Wife is going to put a curtain across the front to keep things warm and the light down.

I took up another hill of sweet potato because the vines had been damaged and that brougt
2.615 KG which pushes us up over
170KG

Sweat Success: Sweet Potatoes

The sweat equity is paying off. We harvested 2 of 7  sweet potato hills. The size of the tubers is not nearly as big as some of the ones we had last year but they look good and are a good size for eating and baking one potato with a meal.
Sweet potatoes are not related to true potato but are in fact related to the morning glory. The tubers make lots of vines that are pretty in their own right.
These are the potatoes and vines of 2 hills. Sometimes you will see light green vines that are used as ornementals. I don't understand why you would do this when you could have a real fruiting vine.
You have to cure the sweet potato for 3 weeks before storing. Last year we did this in the dining room on news paper and it worked so well that we will try that again.
The lettuce is coming in and I have enjoyed some great salads with cos romaine, arugula and butter head lettuce.
With all of the lettuce we still are producing lots of cherry tomatoes with over a KG of sweet cherries tomatoes and still blooms and lots of fruits. We are having to water so much because even with some cooler temps there is still so little rain.

I have a total of 4.450 KG of sweet potatoes but with all the other things we are harvesting total of 6.150 KG with tomatoes and lettuce

168.450KG total