This week’s harvest brings us great delight! We’ve got …….
BROCCOLI!!!!!
This is our third attempt at growing broccoli. The first time was the spring of 2011. We got beautiful plants and no heads. Then the fall of 2011, we had horrible germination rates and poor growth. One broccoli plant survived and gave us a bountiful harvest of one large head and pounds of side shoots.
We decided that our spring gets hot too fast to attempt spring broccoli again, so we waited until fall. SUCCESS! FINALLY! We have harvested 7 heads so far; with more to come (see broccoli bed below) and side shoot production should start soon as well. This week’s harvest came in at 5.3 pounds; two heads like the one above and two smaller heads; our largest weekly harvest yet.
We also harvested a head of romaine lettuce. It was quite large. Our temps have been rather warm (mid 70s) and this one was actually starting to bolt. I hope it tastes ok because there will be no cooking this week. We are still not in the cooking mood after Thanksgiving and all of the leftovers are gone ….we’ll be eating sandwiches and salads.
We went ahead and dug up the fall potatoes. I figured there weren’t many and they weren’t that big. The plants died much soon than they did last spring, so potatoes may be best as a spring crop here.
Last but not least, TOMATOES! Not many; just a couple. I harvested these a few weeks ago before an expected frost. I didn’t include them until they ripen. I had more, but they spoiled while ripening?. I’m actually scared to taste them because they ripened in doors from a fully green tomato. I’ll brave it later this week on one of my sandwiches.
Check out more fall harvests at Daphne’s Dandelions Harvest Monday.
Those are great harvests. I have a few broccoli starting to appear on my plants. Right now they are only the size of quarters, but I am hoping for much more.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid in NH my parents used to pick all the tomatoes in the fall, wrap them in newspaper and put them in a cardboard box until they ripened. I remember it working pretty good and the tomatoes tasting pretty good.
ReplyDeleteLove your potato photo. Congrats on your broccoli success. Glad you figured out when to plant what in your climate, planting at the right time makes a huge difference. I am still learning.
ReplyDeleteMy attempts at Autumn potatoes have been rather similar to yours - Spring is much better here too. Your broccoli is super impressive - really good size.
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