Garden Bounty ~ 6/2/13

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.

Texas Granex onions drying

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.

Fingerling potato harvest

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.

Harvest May 31, 2013

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.

Harvest June 2, 2013

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.

Kale harvest ~ in June!

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.