It’s Harvest Week!! We decided to do something fun, and have a whole week of harvest activities!!
We made all sorts of delicious fall time drinks like Pumpkin White Hot Chocolate and Harvest Punch and baked goods like Apple Fritter Bread, Snickerdoodle Pumpkin Loaf plus so much more, and we had fun being crafty too!! Each day we worked in the garden and it took us nearly the entire week to get everything done!!
Let’s get started!
Day One – Monday
A good garden may have some weeds.
— Thomas Fuller
Here’s the garden. We have one large garden in the middle and three on the far side. The other three do not have dirt yet. When I stepped into the backyard, I made a list of what we needed to do.
First off, the weeds are horrendous!! So, to start, we picked all of the weeds. There’s no landscaping cloth, so the weeds tend to overtake this area, around the large garden bed.
After almost all day picking weeds, here’s the outcome! I’m so pleased with how much we got done Day One! Let me show you around!
The weeds in this section were picked within a couple hours, and it looks so much better already! I left the weeds in the rocks for now, and that I’ll pick what I can later, and then toss a homemade weed-be-gone mixture (which works amazing) so the weeds can dry up. Then it’ll be much easier to pick.
Here’s to the left of the big garden bed that’s always overtaken with weeds too. It looks so good now!
Here’s the cherry tree, shrubs, the pumpkins and the other two garden beds further down. We had so many thistles to pick — those are the worst!
Here’s the large main garden from the other side.
Here you can see the large main garden to the left, the 3 honeyberry (haskap) bushes, the small garden, and the back 2 gardens where my daughters planted squash, radish, potatoes, pumpkins, dill and mint. The pumpkins did great here because it’s full sun all summer long! To the right is another garden bed.
Here is rhubarb, strawberries, cucumber and sunflowers. We planted late so I don’t think much will come of it unfortunately. Next summer will be much better since the gardens are prepared and ready. We also had a cold spring. This garden bed gets full sun all summer and it gets extremely hot back here!
Here is ‘L’s garden up close — she’s growing potatoes, radish and patty pan squash.
Here’s the patty pans. They did quite well.
Look at those golden beauties! I love patty pan squash. They’re so versatile!
‘L’s’ small garden box. Here’s beets, carrots, mint, peas and there were two kinds of sprouts growing earlier this summer.
My daughter decided she wanted to try harvesting radish seed. Here’s the radish seed so far. They’re not quite ready yet. Inside the pod is still green and fibrous and the seeds are soft. We will let them continue to dry out on the plant.
Look at the pumpkins! They grew so well here. There’s 6 plants and they really spread out. It’s the perfect spot for them and they enjoy the full sun.
There’s some beautiful pumpkins growing! So exciting! And there’s so many flowers but unfortunately with frost in the forecast, they won’t grow in time.
Here’s the blueberry bush — already turning fall red colors!
The gooseberry bush isn’t looking so well. It was full of leaves through the summer. Hopefully it survives the winter!
Here’s the saskatoon bush. It was just planted this spring, so it did not yield any saskatoons yet.
Day Two – Tuesday
To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.
— Christian N. Bovee
Today we are finally starting to harvest the garden! Weeds are picked so we can focus on the veggies now. We are starting with the large garden bed. We will be sure to clear out the above ground stuff like beans, squash and pumpkins since it may freeze later this week.
Here are the potatoes. There’s also dill, squash, corn, beets, carrots, lettuce and zucchini growing here.
Same garden, but looking straight on.
It’s a hot and beautiful day today! It is a sunny +24C/75F. I am working on harvesting potatoes while my girls are picking patty pan squash.
Here is my daughter ‘H’ and her part of the garden. These are her patty pan squash. They grew so well!
Look at those patty pan squash – also called sunburst squash. They are looking fabulous!
They have a neutral flavor and take on any seasoning you add to them similar to zucchini. I like to pan fry patty pans in butter, 3 onion seasoning, salt and pepper. Simple but delicious! They’re great as a dill pickle too!
You can check it out here: how to cook patty pan squash
Hiding in the squash was one lonely zucchini.
Here’s the zucchini and all of the patty pan squash. We did have more but we shared some with our neighbors and dill pickled some as well.
Potatoes are definitely ready to be harvested!
While we were working, a few geese flew overhead — I hate seeing them leave!! A definite sign of fall!
Our chihuahua Rio loves being outside while we work! Here I am picking Warba potatoes which are a white potato. They have a white skin with red around the eyes. These potatoes are generally an early producing crop given the right growing conditions. Warba potatoes are good for boiling and baking.
Look at these lovely Warba potatoes!
One row done…about ten to go!
Here’s the beans, dill, carrots and beets in amongst the corn, squash and potatoes. Looks like a mess but after the weeds are picked and potatoes taken care of, it won’t look so bad!!
Here are the Cerisa potatoes. They are a specialty variety and the first time we’ve ever grown them. They produced much better than the other kinds we grew! Cerisa potatoes produce smaller elongated potatoes, similar to a fingerling potato. They’re nutty in flavor, have a deep red skin and yellow flesh and are firm in texture.
Here are the Red Apple potatoes. They’re a red skinned variety with creamy white flesh and are sweet yet earthy. They’re good for roasting, boiling/mashing and good for soups and salads. They’re generally high producing and tolerate heat and drought.
Day Three – Wednesday
A good gardener always plants in threes — one for the bugs, one for the weather and one for herself.
— unknown
Today started out a bit cloudy, but it cleared up and was quite sunny and +21C/69F. There’s not much breeze, so the backyard gets quite hot!! That was a hot +21C!!
Yesterday, we did quite well. We cleaned out 5 hills of potatoes, the squash and zucchini, and some beets and carrots. Here’s how the garden looks after yesterday!
‘H’ is pulling carrots while I work on the potatoes. The carrots are small, but the dogs love them! They’ll be perfect to roast!
Here’s one last look at the pumpkins before we pull them all!
We got the pumpkins cleared out today and ended up with 8 pumpkins which is great!! Here’s all of the pumpkins. We will be setting them in the sun every day to cure them. Curing the pumpkins will help them last much longer! You can read about curing pumpkins here: At The Pumpkin Patch
We pulled the few carrots that were growing with the pumpkins and we cleared out a couple more rows of potatoes — Yukon Gold and Cerisa.
We also cleared out the corn which yielded all but 1 cob. The rest had corn silk but no cobs. My dad who’s a wonderful gardener, and grew up on the farm, said it was too hot too soon which made the corn ripen and finish growing even though it didn’t even grow yet.
Here are the Yukon Gold potatoes. They are a cross between a yellow and white flesh potato and are good for roasting, frying and mashing.
Unfortunately Yukon Gold are more susceptible to blight and scurf (a type of fungus) or streptomyces scabies (scabby lesions). I had a hard time removing dirt, but I could see these potatoes may have scabby lesions. This could be caused by a bacteria-like organism, imbalance of minerals in the dirt, a pH problem in the soil or too dry of dirt. Our summer was quite hot and although we watered, we may not have watered enough. These potatoes will cure in the sun and then the dirt will be easier to remove. Then we’ll see what these Yukon Golds are like.
Day Four – Thursday
Inside every seed is the potential for an incredible harvest.
— Farrah Gray
It was a warm and sunny +17C/62F today. It was a nice day to be in the garden!
Time to pick the last of the potatoes!
These are such beautiful potatoes! The dirt easily wipes off the Cerisa potatoes and they’re easy to harvest and produce a lot of potatoes per plant.
Here’s all of the Cerisa potatoes we grew this summer. I couldn’t believe how many there were! We were calling them jellybean potatoes because it looked like we were harvesting jellybeans!! So funny!
Here’s the Yukon Gold and just as I suspected, these have the scabby lesions. They are still edible, so we’ll be sure to use these up first. From the amount of hills we dug, they did not produce that well.
Not only did the Yukon Gold potatoes have the scabs but several were split open. This could be from a lack of moisture, uneven soil or a rapid uneven uptake of water.
Here’s all of the Red Apple potatoes. I’m actually quite surprised how little the plants produced — especially since we harvested about 10 plants! But they’re beautiful potatoes with thin, even skin and the dirt wipes off easily as well.
These were store potatoes that we bought that we did not eat as they had sprouted over the winter, so we planted about 4 potatoes and this is all they produced.
These were from random potatoes left over that ‘L’ planted in her garden bed by the radishes and patty pans. She planted 4 potatoes, and this is what she yielded.
Here’s the large garden bed at the end of today. we left the dill and beans for seed.
Here’s the other garden beds. We left the mint and radish for seed. The cucumbers were left, but we’ll see what’s happening with them next week.
Day Five – Friday –
A garden is not a place… it’s a journey.
— Monty Don
It was a cold, windy, rainy day!! It was sunny and cloudy this afternoon, but brrr…it sure felt like fall time today! It was a cool +13C/55F.
We did not do much in the garden because of the weather.
Here’s such a pretty little sunflower growing in the back garden bed that doesn’t yet have dirt. I’m thinking a bird must have dropped the seed!
We went through all the potatoes, organized them and set them in the basement where it’s cool.
We picked tomatoes. Once I organize them, and the kinds, I’ll share all about it. We did not get many tomatoes which is so surprising, considering we had about 12 plants. I’ll share that shortly!
That’s it for today.
Day Six – Saturday
A garden is a friend you can visit anytime.
— Okakura Kakuzo
It was a chilly day today!! I forgot to check the temperature, but it was definitely a sweater and pants type of day! Today we are harvesting the herbs and peppers. Here’s the parsley. It grew great! I’m going to pick it, wash it and dry it.
That’s a lot of parsley!
Here’s the rosemary. I’m going to clip it and either freeze it or dry it.
Here’s the purple basil. I’m going to let it go to seed. I harvested some of the basil leaves. I find it much more mild than regular basil.
Here’s the regular basil. It’s so fragrant. I’m doing the same as I am with the purple basil.
Here are the chives. They look amazing! We will chop them up and dry them too. It’s great in homemade ranch dip mix!
Now, onto peppers! We have jalapenos, habanero (which are just starting to produce peppers), chili peppers then a Red Robin tomato plant and then bell peppers. We wanted to separate the bell pepper from the spicy peppers because we had had cross pollination in the past and the bell peppers ended up being quite spicy! So we separated them with the tomato and it worked great!
This variety of tomato plant does not grow very big, which made it perfect for here, but produces a lot of tomatoes.
There’s so many jalapenos!! I’m so excited!!
Here’s the stevia.
And here’s the Victoria Rhubarb. I’ll trim back the plant and chop and freeze the rhubarb or I’ll can and make rhubarb fruit. This plant did not produce well this year, as we are only getting one crop, but I’m guessing it’s because we just planted it this spring. We’ll see how it does next year.
Here is the Viking Chokecherry shrub. We only got a few berries this year, but hopefully we’ll get a bunch more berries next year. The leaves are turning such a pretty red!
And just like that, Harvest Week is over! It has been a lot of fun and we’ve accomplished a lot!
Once the seeds are ready, we will harvest the seeds and remove the plants. Next week I’ll check the cucumbers, harvest the rest of the rhubarb and any herbs that are left. We’ll clean all the garden beds up, add dirt to the empty ones and pick any weeds.
We are almost ready for winter!
How did harvesting your garden go?
enjoy from Our City Homestead to yours