Final Garden Harvest

Today after my jog, I stopped off at the garden, looked it over, and decided the collards and kale really aren't growing anymore, so it's time to harvest what's left and pull the plants.  We had a couple of hard freezes the last few weeks, and that is supposed to sweeten them up.  It appears to be the case as confirmed by my nibbles during harvest.    Here's a picture of the collards after one frosty night last week:

Today I cut off all the rest of the leaves, de-stemmed them, stuffed them into freezer bags, and put them in the downstairs freezer.  Here's a picture of the freezer:  

This is collards, broccoli leaves, cauliflower leaves, and brussels sprouts leaves (they all look like collards); brussels sprouts are in the door (not shown).  This is pretty easy to do.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, it will be even easier to cook them up, because if you crinkle them with your hands, immediately after taking them out of the freezer, they crumble into small pieces--that is, no chopping!   How easy is that?

These are so economical!  If I use one bag a week in soup, I think I've got several months worth of greens in the freezer!  Dang, we only paid about $10 for all these plants and they give us greens for at least 6 months of the year.

The kale is good enough to eat raw on salads, so I don't usually freeze it.  I harvested two big bags of it and hope to be able to eat it over the next week.  I will be traveling with a  nutritarian friend so maybe we can share it.

Easier than Pesto

I've got two giant basil plants in the garden and winter is coming, so it's time to start harvesting them.  I used to make pesto but that was work.  Today I just brought in half of one plant, shown here,

pulled the leaves out, stuffed them into a plastic bag,

and put them in the freezer.  If it's like spinach and other greens, you can crumble them while they are frozen and it even saves time chopping.   So hopefully I'll have fresh-frozen basil throughout the winter.

Tilling the garden!

This is my main job besides harvesting, so I have it pretty easy.  But it was very hard work for my weak arms, after breaking my elbow 4 months ago!  Wowsa.  But the arm came through and I got the garden and flower beds ready for planting!   Marilyn planted yesterday and today.  I can't wait to see it.  I'm out of town.

final garden harvest

Today I decided to harvest the rest of the produce from the garden. Here it is!

That's two garbage bags and a big bowl of collard greens, kale, swiss chard, brussel sprouts and their greens, parsley and dill. Here are the brussels sprouts uncovered:

I washed everything, chopped (not finely, just enough to pack), and stuffed into ziplock freezer bags. I wonder how long they will last. They will definitely get eaten before they get too old. Then I'll finally have to resort to buying collards and kale at the grocery store--not nearly as good. No surprise that dinner tonight was steamed brussels sprouts and greens.

The garden is in!

Here's our 24' x 14' garden, all planted:

Marilyn planted collard greens, kale, swiss chard, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, asparagus, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, dill, lettuce, chives, basil, parsley, and green beans. I just tilled, and will start harvesting in about a month. We'll have a second planting of spinach, kale, lettuce, cilantro later in the summer, for the cooler Fall weather.

Getting the garden ready

We got a lot of early spring crops in our garden that just grew back with the weeds: spinach, dill, mustard greens, kale, chives and mint. But it's time to plant, so I harvested a bunch of them, then Marilyn weeded the garden, and I tilled it:

Now we are ready for planting, yea!

Lest I give the impression I do a lot of yard work, I will admit this is one of the few tasks I do in the yard. I also turn over the compost and spread it in the garden twice a year (did that yesterday). And I harvest the produce. This tiller is a great piece of equipment, even though it uses gasoline and pollutes. It makes life so much easier and does a much better job than we can do with a pitchfork. Our garden has grown to 24' x 14'. It's great!