This year has been pretty tough for our vegetable garden, what with the 7 inch snow on March 21st and then the last week of 100 degree heat. However, we have managed to harvest a few things along the way. The fava beans were probably the first thing we pulled up. We got about 4 pounds of unshelled favas which seemed pretty good until we found out you have to shell them twice, once before you blanch them and once afterward. I didn’t end up weighing them once we had the shelling work out of the way but I’m guessing we got closer to 2.5 pounds, still not a bad return on 10 feet of plants.
The onion harvest didn’t turn out to be as successful as I had hoped. I planted them in a bed that doesn’t get enough sun during the early spring and so we had bad development on many of the bulbs. The red onions were worthless in general though that was to be expected. Most recommendations for onions in the Wylie area talk about yellow and white onions and say not to plant red ones. I didn’t listen and also didn’t get any red onions, losing 10 feet of them. This was probably largely due to the wacky weather as almost all the red onions shot up flower stalks which happens when the onions have radical changes in temperatures. All told, we got about 8 pounds of yellow 1015Ys which isn’t bad, enough to last us most of the summer wrapped up in foil in the fridge.
The garlic has been pulled up as well now and though quite a bit of it was planted in the same unsunny bed as the onions, we got good production. Lots of the purple garlic I tried developed quite well. I haven’t weighed the garlic yet to see what the production was but overall, it looks good. The stalks didn’t flower this year, I wonder if that also had to do with the weather. The purple stuff smells fantastic and though I haven’t had a chance to cook with it yet, I’m looking forward to it. Roasted garlic sounds pretty good right now.
Other than that, we haven’t really had any harvest to speak of. The cherry tomatoes are just starting to produce, we’ve probably got a pound or so off of two plants. The cucumbers are way behind this year due to the snow and then a late replanting on my part. We’re probably a month away still from any of those showing up. We have a jillion blackberries that are slowly ripening, I’m hoping to be able to keep the birds off them long enough to get half of them. Finally, the peach tree has quite a few peaches on it but I’m not sure how many of them are actually going to ever ripen. I struggle every year with some damn insect that comes along and bites the unripened fruit, causing sap to bleed out from the spot and eventually ruin it. I sprayed reasonably consistently this year to no avail.
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