Last week, I signed up for the 2013 Blogathon, an annual challenge for bloggers to post every day for the 30 days of June. I don’t normally post on weekends, so I decided I would take the challenge. That means I have to have a plan for my weekend postings. Mondays are always my Sanctuary Gardener Updates, and Tuesdays through Fridays are open for Sanctuary Spotlight on a particular fruit or vegetable, informational articles, recipes, or just what I’ve been doing on my homestead. But what about weekend postings?
Yesterday was Day 1 of the Blogathon, and I posted about the fight I’ve been having with garden pests; not a typical Sabbath post, but I’m hoping to have something more devotional on the upcoming Saturdays. With Sunday being the first day of the week, I felt it would be appropriate to share pictures of the bountiful harvest I was blessed with during the previous week.
In the beginning of the week, I harvested all my white Texas Granex onions and laid them to dry on my patio table and three chairs. The picture below is just a portion of the harvest.
Yesterday, I braided several of the onions to give to our pastors. (See title picture above.) I still have to clean and braid the rest of the onions and hang them with my garlic in the kitchen.
I grew purple potatoes and fingerlings in five-gallon buckets this year. The purple potatoes were ready for harvest a week ago, and they’ve already been eaten! I harvested the fingerlings, both a white type and a peach type, yesterday.
Last night, my beau baked a bunch of them, then squished them and fried them in olive oil and garlic. Yummy!
I harvested a lot of goodies this weekend. Friday I harvested all of my watermelon radishes, a huge cubanelle pepper (it was almost touching the ground!), four pepperoncini peppers (that look like bell peppers…cross-pollinated seed??), and a couple heads of Tom Thumb lettuce.
I also picked a quart sized bag of green beans and wax beans – first harvest – but I neglected to take a picture of them.
Today was a big harvest day. I picked my first zucchini and yellow squash with more coming, the first green bell peppers, plus more lettuce and a bunch of kale.
I planted the kale the first week of January. Instead of pulling it up before the spring planting, I decided to let it grow to see how long I could harvest it. I’m dealing with some “critters,” but even after throwing away affected leaves, I still get this large bowl full of kale every ten days or so.
Not only am I amazed that I’m still harvesting kale, but it’s incredible that I have lettuce growing here in the South in June! This was today’s lettuce harvest – Black Seeded Simpson lettuce on the bottom of the colander and Red Sails lettuce on the top. Growing them among the pepper plants seems to be working.
Now it’s time to go enjoy some of this garden bounty. Tell me what you’re harvesting from your garden this week.