Main Harvest Begins

September, 2017

Now that the landscape cloth and mulch are in the paths, there were some weeds still growing up at the edges where the cloth met the raised beds. This was only on the beds that were already there, as we had laid the new beds directly on top of the landscape cloth. To prevent the perennial grasses from growing up around the edges and having to maintain them, I purchased some wood strapping used it to nail down the excess weed mat to the raised beds on each side. Looks much neater now and so far, it seems to be working perfectly!

The pepper crop continues to be amazing this year.  I harvested Anaheim peppers in early September. Probably about a pound in total. I roasted, peeled and chopped them and they were added to a Fiesta Salsa I made that was absolutely delicious.







The bell peppers are doing well, many reaching 1/2 lb in size or more. They are ripening now and turning beautiful shades of orange and red. The yellow haven't started turning yet. One nice surprise this year was the Lipstick variety of red pepper I grew. The fruit are small, mini peppers, but prolific and they ripen quickly. They are also very sweet and tasty, so I think I'll be saving some seeds from these and growing next year as well.

The main season is pretty much over in a couple of weeks, though we'll still have the cold weather crops to harvest. Lettuce will go another month or two, carrots will be sweeter once they've gone through a frost so we'll leave those in the ground for now. Cabbages, kale, broccoli will all be fine in the cooler weather. That still leaves a lot to harvest in the next two weeks so it will be busy.

Tomato beds before pruning.

Tomatoes are coming along, after being planted quite late, they are finally fruiting and little blight this year since it's been so dry. I trimmed off about 80% of the leaves and topped them this week so they would stop growing and concentrate on ripening the fruit.

Tomato beds after pruning.

I'm leaving the sweet potatoes right until we get a frost, may even cover them to keep them in the ground another week or two. I've grown them for 3-4 years now, and the foliage has never been this gorgeous or lush, so I'm hoping the lush green growth will equal some decent tubers to harvest. We'll see soon!

Squash didn't really take off this year, due to the in-ground garden succumbing to weeds in some areas. I did get several zucchini and a couple of squash. I have one Delicata and a couple of butternut squashes. The acorn squash are starting to fruit now but won't mature in time for harvest before the frost. Next year I plan to plant squash and melons from starts, and on time on June 1. I'm sure that will make for a much more productive squash harvest.




Cucumbers were a struggle at first, but I've been harvesting 1-2 a day for the last three weeks. I grew them from seedlings purchased at a local shop and I've decided that this is the way to go with cucumbers. When I plant from seed the cucumber beetles kill the seedlings too quickly. Already established plants have a much higher rate of success in surviving the beetles so I think I'll try purchasing seedlings again next year. I really like growing everything from seed myself, but until I have a greenhouse, I think this will work better.

Four of the five potato beds have been harvested.  We planted four different varieties this year and I'm very happy with at least two of them. First were the Carlton, an early potato developed in Canada in the 80s. These were the biggest producer, yield totaled 28.85 lbs and the potatoes were enormous. No signs of disease, very nice potato and very starchy.





Sangre is a mid-season variety that we grew last year and loved, so we ordered more this year. Sangre is a red skinned, white flesh potato with an excellent flavor. Our yield for this variety was 20.4 lbs. Some potatoes did have a bit of potato scab on them, but was easily scrubbed off and is only a cosmetic disease, not harming the quality or flavor of the potato itself.

Eramosa was the other early variety we grew. The potatoes were much smaller than the Carlton and the yield was only 15.5 lbs. One thing I did notice about this variety is that they turn green very easily if they get any sunlight at all.

The final variety we grew was Arizona, another mid-season variety that yielded numerous small and medium potatoes, totaling 19.4 lbs.

Grand total of all four beds of all four varieties equaled 84.15 lbs. I do still have one bed left to harvest, a mixed bed with 8 plants of each variety and also two 5 gallon pots I planted a few in. I suspect by the end we'll have over 100 lbs for the winter. Probably not enough to get us through the whole winter, but a good portion of it.

The flowers are all in grand display, making up for their late start in spades.