Final 2023 Garden Harvest

Snow coming at the end of the week

[Post too long for email, mostly pics]

The final harvest was a long, drawn out process that also involved prepping beds for next year, a process I have been involved in for the past month. But the past three days have been the bulk harvest. This was the first round of the bulk potato harvest, Burbank Russet and Genesee. The buckets came from the Minneapolis Park Board, for free. The city plants 8000-10,000 trees every spring, the vast majority come in containers like this, approximately 10gal. The vast majority otherwise end up in the garbage.

A first round of cabbages and the last of the salad greens.

Counting the potatoes I gathered earlier this summer, I estimate I grew about 350 lbs of potatoes. Not bad, as I think I only planted about 20lbs. These potatoes are a good deal more dense than store-bought. They will cure in the basement for about two weeks as I sort them. Some will go to L the landowner, a few neighbors will get some, some will be thrown out, others will be set aside for planting next year.

Monday I finished all the potatoes. Carrots and Brussels came Tuesday.

Sorted, this is what I will store in the basement. Next year I will do a better job thinning the carrots so they grow bigger on average. Some of these might be a little small. Storing these is an experiment.

My old toybox my mom built when I was a kid, old-growth 1X, not plywood, filled with sand.

I got half-way through and realized I needed to set them more densely. The sand will have to remain damp, so I will spray it regularly. Two old-timers told me about the sand. Another one said, leave them in the ground, cover them with hay bails. That would be easier. If the ground never freezes, the carrots will flower and go to seed the next year.

Cabbages and squash and all the rest, Wednesday. I think cabbages are a beautiful thing.

There will be about 25 cabbages in storage. Most of them are designated storage cabbages, but I have no idea how long they will last.

Brussels.

These are considerably smaller than the first ones, which you can see upper-right. I gave one of these little one’s to L the landowner. She weighs about 95lbs and doesn’t eat much, so even with the small brussels she will have many meals worth.

Three kinds of squash.

Kale, mostly. The big thing in the bucket in the center is a kohl rabi that never bulb-ed out. The leaves are more tender than kale and somewhat spicy, so I figured we would treat them like spinach. There is also some spinach in the foreground.

The last morning glories and Roma’s.

About half the beds are prepped for next year. I had hoped to prep all the beds, but that depends on the weather. Next week, most days are not supposed to be above freezing.

Halloween is coming soon. All-Hallowed Eve. It has long been believed this time of year, the veil between this and the spirit-world is thinnest. I think that has a lot to do with the color, especially at twilight, as if the plants are illuminated from the inside.

I will profile the root cellar in greater detail in a forthcoming post, once the potatoes are cured and the cellar is full. I’m confident at this point, even if WWIII breaks out and there are supply shortages to make Covid-19 shortages look like a test run, my folks and I will stay healthy. Pretty good timing, it seems to me, as I have never put food away quite like this before. Not bad production at all, considering this was a sheet of turfgrass this time last year. The soil will be in better shape next year, production that much greater.