Harvest Monday June 26th 2011

More wet weather more slightly damp harvests this week. Despite the rain I went out to the garden a few times to survey some things and do a little harvesting.

Here's what I got:

Garlic Scapes .75 oz

Lettuce: 1.75 oz

Onion .45 oz

Scallions .85 oz

Kale 3.75 oz

Mesclun Greens: 3.90 oz

Total for the week: 11.45 oz

Total for the season: 2.625 lbs (42 oz)

Hopefully the rain is going to subside for a while and we will get some warmer temperatures soon!

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Opening Day!

Yesterday was Opening Day!!! Not for my beloved Boston Red Sox, but for my plot at the Fenway Victory Gardens, just behind where the Red Sox play! I retrieved all of the gardening equipment that we stored over the winter and Gail and I headed to the garden, wondering if anything would be alive.We were greeted with a lot of mud, wet fall leaves, and straw that we had used to insulate some of overwintering projects. Beneath the straw and leaves the garlic, walking onions, and chives were all flourishing! Below is one of the walking onions that had climbed through the straw in search o

f sunlight. The chives and garlic were both alive and ready for sun when we delicately pulled the soggy leaves and straw off of them.

We also brought along a bunch of herb seedlings we started on our windowsills as well as kale seedlings I picked up at Allandale Farm on saturday.

Picture above are the kale seedlings after we got them in the ground and pots with chives, garlic chives, marjoram, sage, thyme, rosemary, basil, flat leaf parsley, and a volunteer curly parsley. We are going to try leaving most of the herbs in the pots (except the chives we over wintered) and using the space that was occupied by last years herb garden to grow:

Horseradish! I ordered the above horseradish roots from Johnny's in the winter. They ship when it is an appropriate time to plant them in your given growing zone. The roots arrived in the middle of last week, and were kept in the refrigerator wrapped in damp newspaper until we planted them yesterday afternoon. Hopefully after the first fall frost I will be digging up enough horseradish to grow more as well as for a few batches of the delicious condiment.

In the coming weeks Gail and I will finish cleaning and preparing the plot for the growing season as well as planting, planting, and more planting!

Spring is back and so is the garden!

What's growing for the fall?

As planting spaces open up throughout the plot we are slowly transitioning/planting fall crops. Here's what we have in the ground as of Sunday:
Kale - We were gifted 5 seedlings from fellow community gardener Marie (who provided our leeks at the start of the season). 4 of the 5 are doing really well!
Bush Beans - We planted a row of organic Fresh Pick bush beans. These are a Jade type green bean.
Butterhead lettuce - The Romaine was incredibly successful at the start of the season. Hopefully the Red Cross butterhead we planted will produce as well. Red Cross produces a mix of crimson and green heads.
Mesclun/Baby Greens - A mixed bed of Johnny's Selected Seeds Elegance Greens Mix, additional Ruby Streaks mustard greens, and Surrey (Arugula/Rocket with a 'wild arugula' look)
Onions- Egyptian/Walking Onions of course!
Beets - more Detroit Dark Red Beets! They were slow to mature and undersized in the spring because we planted late, hopefully this crop will yield larger end results.
Radish- A few interspersed plantings of Champion Radish
Spinach- A 2nd attempt at Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach. Our spring/early planting suffered from our lack of experience and weed identification skills. Trying again in the hopes of better results.

As more space opens up I'll fill it with more greens/fall type crops.
What's to come in your fall garden?

Walking Onions

No time to post lately as work and non-gardening life have gotten in the way this past week, but I did receive a lovely gift today:

Gail took a day trip to Maine today to visit some family. While there she stopped by Beach Plum Farm in Ogunquit, ME and visited the community gardens on the grounds. She ended up chatting with 2 gardeners who gave her a few bunches of Egyptian Onions, the biggest one is in the above photo.

Egyptian Onions, known as Walking Onions or Tree Onions are perennial onions which are hardy to zone 3. When a bulb is planted and grows new bulbs form on the step of the plant. Eventually the cluster of bulbs (pictured above) gets so top heavy that it bends the plant and touches the ground, taking root and growing into a new set of onions.

As they are left to grow they will spread or walk across your garden. You can pull each set of clusters off and divide the bulbs in order to plant them. The stalks of the plants can also be cut before the onion clusters form and used similar to chives.

Planting a cluster or 2 should yield enough for stalks, bulbs and to save some for planting next year. Like traditional onions bulbs also will form below the ground. If planted in the fall they can be dug up as spring onions.

I'll be prepping and planting fall seeds this weekend and will most certainly be planting some Egyptian/Walking Onions, so stay tuned for future Walking Onion updates!

Below is the full hall of the 3ish clusters of Walking Onions I was gifted:

(Walking Onions: Some for Eating, Some for Planting, Some for...?)