The Blog Farm

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Harvest time!

Last weekend we finished harvesting the rest of the broccoli. I'm happy to say we had a very successful crop this year...I didn't find one worm in the entire crop and very few aphids which is unusual (I don't use pesticides) and the size of the heads were larger than usual. Needless to say, it was in huge demand at the farmer's market. We happily sold out each day after just a couple of hours. After the harvest was done, we got busy planting our fall crop. We didn't do this last year but I really want to start to experiment more with growing all year round. These particular raised beds are equipped with hoop covers just in case we get an early fall freeze. I decided to wait on harvesting the Romanesco....it doesn't appear to be ready and some of it sort of bolted. This is my first time growing it so I could be wrong...anyone out there know about this?


The tomatoes are also starting to ripen. Our cold and wet June weather kind of slowed things down for many crops but we have harvested 4 tomatoes so far and several are turning orange.


So far, the only peppers showing real progress are the Karma variety....I guess they bring good Karma to the garden lol! I have some bell peppers that may catch up to them if the weather stays nice and warm.


The mammoth dill is growing like crazy. I lost a bunch of dill plants last year due to an insect problem but so far so good this year. In fact, I have so many volunteer dill plants I am struggling to find space for all of them. We make a lot of pickles so it's a good problem to have I guess : )

The strawberries are also enjoying the sunny weather....we have both Everbearing and June bearing varieties growing in the raised bed. We have recently had some problems with sugar ants getting in to them and I would welcome any natural solutions to getting rid of them.

All in all, I can't complain....we have had a pretty good July harvest and we still have a couple months of summer to go : ) I can't wait for the corn harvest!

8 comments:

  1. That's great news about the broccoli! I bet the customers were thrilled with it...

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  2. Those are some good looking veggies. We're finally getting hot weather, so I'm looking forward to some things growing here.

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  3. Thanks Turling....let's all do a sun dance...I'm hoping it stays warm here too : )

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  4. It looks awesome . . . wish I was there to help you guys and learn from you.

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  5. You and Caitlyn can move on over to Idaho : )

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  6. The Romanesco looks like it is pretty much ready for harvest. I have seen huge ones but mine never grew very large. I picked mine just as the head started to soften a bit.

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  7. Dan, thanks for the advice....the pictures that I saw of these were huge....mine are no where near that.

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