Harvest Monday

As the season wears on I am slowly harvesting the remaining unprotected fall crops. Day by day I am getting aware that a hard frost is possible any time now, the kind that freezes the top layer of soil. Judging by the 14 day trending forecast a hard frost may be coming during the last few days of the month. Today I harvested the roots crops and started on bringing in a few other crops that you will see below. Things that are remaining unprotected in the garden now are lettuce, chard, fennel and radishes. Things that didn't make it to maturity are parsnips, brussels sprouts & leeks. They will be left in the ground and I will see what happens to them. Once all the fall crops growing in the open are harvested I will start working on eating up the crops growing in the tunnel & frame.

Saturday's harvest:

Red celery & broccoli, both went into........:

Chicken pot pie topped with buttermilk biscuits.....

and chicken stock. For stocks I just wash everything and through it in skin and all. The pot pie was made with left over roast chicken and the stock was made with the leftover cooked chicken carcass, waste not want not!

Today's Harvest:

I harvested all the fall beets today, these are 'detriot dark red'. I seeded these mid June and they matured nicely, seems like a good planting date. I found the spring planted beets were devoured by leaf miner but the later sown ones were not bothered much at all.

Here is the biggest beet harvested, weighing in at 13 oz. Not the biggest one I have seen but pretty good for a home gardener.

I also pulled the last of the carrots. These are 'atomic red' carrots that have been in the ground since the beginning of May. Pretty disappointing variety, they should be monsters by now. Not growing them again and they are not even red!

The broccoli are still putting out side shoots, I nipped out all that were a good size today. There are quite a few left that are very tiny so weather permitting they may produce another flush of florets.

Lastly I brought in all the tatsoi that the slugs left me. These grow very well as a fall green so they will now be a staple in the early spring & fall garden. Some will be used for an asia inspired noodle soup tonight and the rest will be kept in the crisper for another day. A stir fry sure sounds good some time this week.... The seed for the tatsoi was shared by Daphne who also hosts Harvest Monday.