Best Harvest Ever!
I’m a lover of onions and can never seem to grow enough of them. Over the past couple years, I’ve been augmenting my bulb onions with other alliums (read my post about alternative alliums here). Even so, I always run out of onions and other alliums and end up buying a few at the farmers market. This year might be the first year I don’t have to.
The main crop of storage onions was harvested last week, here’s a look at what I have to squirrel away in the larder. They’re drying in the upstairs of our garage where it’s nice & warm. It’s quite impressive I must say, I’ve never had enough space to grow this many onions. If you can believe it, this is only 3/4 of my crop, there are some still growing in the garden to be harvested in a few weeks.
The main varieties I grew were: Copra, Australian Brown, Sedona, Cortland, and Redwing. I had seeds for Ailsa Craig, but somehow they didn’t get started, I guess the seed packet got lost in the shuffle. I also started seed for a red torpedo onion, which never germinated.
I already have a long row of leeks in the garden for next spring and three different kinds of bunching onions as well. The perennial leek bulbs will be planted soon, along with the potato onions and shallots as well. Little by little, I’m achieving allium independence – which is a beautiful thing if you consume as many alliums as we do. This large crop of onions will save me a good deal on groceries, looks like I can buy more of my favorite chocolate (which happens to be Taza).
Do you grow alliums in your garden? How many different kinds do you grow?
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Friday Favorite: Blueberries
It’s wild blueberry season here in Maine and we’ve been enjoying them. I ordered 40lbs for the freezer and picked up 10lbs at the farmers market last week.
We’ve been enjoying them in our kefir daily, which is a great way to use them and maximize their healthfulness. Last week I made wild blueberry bread pudding and I’m trying to decide what to make with the remainder of the fresh ones I have.
Do you have any great blueberry recipe to recommend?
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Waiting Patiently
This year I got my tomato seeds started late and I planted in the garden later than I normally do. So now I’m stuck waiting patiently for them to ripen.
There’s not even a hint of blush on any of the tomatoes, not a single one. I guess it looks like I’ll be waiting for a while.
Are you patiently waiting for any vegetable or fruit to ripen?
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5X5 for Fall
Now that you’ve got your green thumb with your 5×5 Challenge Garden this summer, it’s time to start thinking about fall. No doubt your zucchini and bean plants will be exhausting themselves soon, maybe you’ve already harvested things and have empty spots in your garden. Think about planting things like: spinach, chard, lettuce, kale, and radishes. Their short growing season will let you get in at least one more harvest this year.
I find spinach to be one of my best fall crops, especially a winter hardy variety. Though I must admit, swiss chard is taking over that role, this is my first year growing it and I really like it so far!
What is your favorite quick growing fall vegetable?
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Will Mow For Food
One of the things that’s great about having chickens, pigs and ducks, is that it turns ordinary garden chores into money saving tasks. Weeding and mowing are actually food producing tasks.
Yesterday I mowed enough to get four bagfuls of clippings. One went to the pigs, one to the main chicken flock, another to the guinea keets, and the last one to the broiler chickens. Everyone LOVED the fresh clippings.
Grass clippings are always a valuable commodity around here, they are also saved and used as mulch and to smother grass and weeds around shrub and the woodland edge. In fact there are never quite enough grass clippings to go around.
I’ve been trying to mow a smaller section of the lawn more frequently just so I can feed clippings to all the animals. If I mow four bagfuls every day, that should about get me around the entire lawn. It’s nice knowing that I’m saving myself some money and providing them with healthy food as well.
What are some things you use grass clippings for?
