This week things are starting to pick up for us in the harvest department. We are enjoying nice harvests although all the plants are not in full swing yet.
Here are eight tomatoberries that weighed in at two ounces. They burst with flavor in a salad!
Here is our first Roma tomato for this year. It weighed in at two and a half ounces.
Our heritage raspberries are producing well, although half of the length of the row seems to be in distress. This first photo is of the four ounces that granddaughter Celie helped her Poppa pick on Saturday.
On Sunday, I went out and picked another four and a half ounces. We love raspberries!
On Friday I went out and picked three pounds of organically grown Fortex green beans.
On Sunday, I went out and picked five more pounds of green beans from our garden! That's a total of thirteen pounds of green beans for this year so far.
I hope everyone is having a great time in their gardens this year, with plenty of bountiful harvests!
Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Veggie PAK
Ok, how many plants does it take to produce 13 pounds of green beans? Seriously. I have about two 4-foot rows planted (about 20 plants) and they just aren't producing enough.
ReplyDeleteActually, I have six each, twenty foot rows. In addition, when I sowed the seed I sowed a double row. That is, two rows about three inches apart. I read about intensive gardening and tried it last year, but I had less than spectacular results. Just like with succession planting, you have to be careful what you try. You can't depend on what you read to work for you the way they say it will. There are things that must be considered before you attempt it. Last year when I planted the bean rows with three rows of beans, when they started to grow, the faster growing ones would shade out the slower growing ones. By the time my fast growers reached the top of the fence, the slower ones were mere green string with leaves sticking out. Succession planting dictates that you resow about every two or three weeks. Just think, if you did that the plants wouldn't be able to grow for being shaded out. And that's on a bush type plant. If you have your plants growing on fencing in a row, they would absolutely shade out the subsequent plantings of seeds. Now if someone is out in the wide open spaces with no row spacing restrictions, it might work for them. Personally, I have row space restrictions since I live on a postage stamp lot in a city.
DeleteIf I were you, I would try to plant one more row beside your existing ones, maybe 2 to 3 inches away, but make sure the seeds are on the sunny side of the row. They'll need all the sunlight they can get! It might be worth a try!
Oh goodness beans and raspberries. I'm a little sad about my raspberries this year. They are everbearers and I cut them down to the ground in the spring since I needed to get the supports in. Which means I won't get the July crop. I'll have to wait until August probably to eat any.
ReplyDeleteI had cut mine down to 12 inches tall and they came back great! Half of them anyway. I'm going to put composted chicken manure (purchased commercially in a plastic bag) around them to give them a boost. I read a lot about raspberries and soil problems and such this year. One source of information that I found did a comparison of synthetic fertilizers vs. various organic fertilizers. I was only interested in the use of the organic ones, and I found the information quite interesting. Of all the composted manures that are available, chicken manure gave raspberries the biggest boost in growth AND fruit production. So I'm going to apply it this weekend and we'll see if there is indeed a substantial increase in fruit production. I would really like it if there was. There's no such thing as too many raspberries!
DeleteI am always shocked by your green bean harvests. It seems like you must eat them with every meal in order to use them all!
ReplyDeleteSurprisingly, eating them at every meal is not the case. Not even close. Last year I canned 94 quarts of green beans from my garden. When we make a green bean casserole, we usually use two quarts of beans, but sometimes three. Even at two quarts per casserole, 94 quarts isn't enough for even one casserole per week. That would need to be 104 quarts for a year's worth of once a week green bean casseroles. Besides, I send some home with my kids for their families, I took some to my mom and sister in New York and I even had some go to South Carolina for my sister-in-law's family. I have a few quarts left, but I like it that way. An overlap in supply if you will. In case the crop doesn't come in, I have some to tide us over until it does. Best of all, I love to watch my grandkids eating the beans plain and really enjoying them.
DeleteTomatos, beans and raspberries...oh my! I can't wait for those harvests in our area!
ReplyDeleteIt's GREAT!!
DeleteWow, what a great harvest! Love those raspberries. Wish mine would grow better here. Apparently I need a better place for them.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I have mine where they will get sun most of the day. I'm still trying to figure out why the good plants from last year are the puny plants this year. All the raspberries I am getting are from a 10 foot long patch 12 inches wide, but it's packed with canes!
DeleteWow, your tomatoes and beans are already producing, and you're north of us! The raspberries look delicious.
ReplyDeleteWhen we had that very warm March weather, I couldn't resist the temptation, so I began planting everything. The soil temp had maintained 60 degrees, and that was good enough for me! While I did lose a few plants and had to resow about a third of my beans due to probably being too cold to germinate (very chilly nights, but no frost), it worked out well. I would do it again, and probably replant again as well. But, most of the veggie plants survived just fine!
DeleteWow 13 lbs of beans! Do you can or freeze them? And your raspberries look very yummy!
ReplyDeleteI grew up with my family canning a lot of the veggies they grew on the farm and also with them making their own concord grape jelly. I prefer canning simply because of the fact that the jars don't require electricity to remain good. Power outages can ruin food faster than you can eat it. The raspberries are delicious!
DeleteGreat raspberry and bean harvest! Hope we got a good lot of reaspberrys this year. Are tomato berries the same as cherry tomatoes? Nancy at Cozy Thyme Cottage
ReplyDeleteThanks! Good luck with your raspberries! You know, I don't know how the tomato folks decide what to call which type of tomato. Technically, they are not the same. I think cherry tomatoes are a little rounder and larger than tomatoberries. In 2010, we got 342 tomatoberries from one plant and they weighed 5.48 pounds. We haven't found such a productive plant since then.
DeleteThe beans look great! They are so nice to have fresh from the garden, I can't wait for my bean plants to start producing!
ReplyDeleteThanks! They really are nice to have fresh right from your back yard.
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