Harvest Updates; May 9th 2012

Hi Everyone! It's been a good while, and I apologize for not posting sooner!

We went to visit my sister in Oahu to see our new nephew and to see our families both on my side and Tim's. Now, we're back! Here are some of the harvests from the past month. Please keep in mind, this is probably about 1/5 of our total harvest. We just can't keep up with everything that's coming in, plus I was gone, and my brother was helping me pick some strawberries that went straight to the freezer.  I'll snap some Garden Updates pictures soon!

Here we have some beets, snow peas and strawberries

 The upper left are "seri", lower left, carrots of course, and to the right, lettuce and baby amaranth.

 Lots of strawberries and peas, tree collard greens, shungiku (edible chrysanthemum) and loquats

 Our 1st Garlic harvest, along with baby carrots and potatoes!

Harvest Updates, Sept 3rd

This face looks like a Muppet! Can't wait for the Movie to come out! I hope they don't ruin Jim Henson's legacy... We are drowning in figs as you can see!

NZ Spinach. We have SOOOO much!

Kabocha pumpkins curing in the morning sun.

We're still harvesting Strawberries, TONS of figs, Cucumbers, Peppers, Beans, Eggplants, Apples and a bit of Okra

Shiso ready to be salted and "massaged" (Shiomomi 塩揉み).

More yummy peaches from our neighbor! :-D (We take them figs, they bring us peaches, sweet deal!)

We are inundated with FIGS!

More of the same...just another day...oh there's Kidney Beans in this one though..

Garlic Chives(にら) just cut from the garden, washed and ready to be cut, to put into the Cucumber Kimchee.

Strawberry delight

Dragon Whiskers on top, Figs, Cukes, Okra, Beans, and strawberries

yes, more New Zealand Spinach... Maybe I'll try to do a souffle...naaah, too much work...

Garden Updates, August 23rd

As you can see from our harvests, our little fig tree is an amazing producer


Here's a view of the little fig tree" that can" It's about 7' tall and about as wide. It's an unbelievably small tree for the amount of fruit it supports

Here's our Zucchini bush that keeps going. It grew out and is now resting on a path.

Here is a sweet potatoes and corn bed. Trying this companion planting to see if it works.  The concern is, corn is a very nitrogen hungry plant, yams are not. Yams supposedly don't produce well in their tubers if you supply too much nitrogen. All you get is leaves. So, currently we are only giving compost to the corn's "feet" and not the sweet potatoes.  Let's see how it turns out!

Cucumbers, which I train the vines almost daily

A view from one angle. There's Kabocha pumpkin in the bottom left, carrots and onion bed in the middle, okra on the left side mid area, 

Okra

Peppers

Lettuce hiding in the shade

Burdock and Amaranth

Onto the front garden: This is the divide between our neighbor and us. Asparagus was planted earlier. Now we have Corn, Bush Beans, Dill and Cosmos growing there.

These Fuji's are looking mighty fine!

Satsuma Mikan (mandarines)

"Alauria" the peach tree gifted from our neighbor is growing pretty well. We've had a few problems at first, peach tree borers which lay eggs on the branch tips and the larvae bore their way into the new branches. I just kept pruning off the infested parts and boiling them before throwing them in the compost. We'd also had white mildew but we stopped watering so much and the problem went away. Under the peach tree, I have a rare purple sweet potato growing.

This is the Haas Avocado. Under it I've planted some Royal Purple and Green Lake Bush Beans, Blue Basil, Purple Orach and some Cosmos. Two voluntary vines of sweet potato have also sprouted, since we had planted them there last year. We're not sure if we have enough time for the Sweet Potatoes to properly grow tubers, but we're just letting it grow.  Maybe there's a streak of purple in me. Most of these plants have purple tones!

Here's one of the Akane Apples, we just have a few this year. I think 7 was the total. Last year we had 3.