Pretty big harvest

I wanted to clear out half of what I call the "big bed" (though I have bigger beds now!) to put in fall crops that I have started in cells. So this morning, out came five crops: potatoes...

...and dinosaur kale, green onions, carrots, and rainbow chard.

It took a while! Luckily the weather is just lovely right now, so the work was pleasant. I cleaned all the veg twice, and later today I'll set up the dehydrator, blanch most of the chard to freeze it for winter use, and cook some potatoes and carrots and kale for supper.

Harvesting, prepping the bed for replanting tomorrow, and cleaning everything twice was definitely work, and it took me almost five hours. But this is why you do all the rest of it--the seed-starting, the amending of soil, the weeding, the composting, and the watering. To get this nice harvest. And since the weather was so grand, I can't even complain about the work.

I also harvested a few tomatoes (not pictured), but I'm not getting the size of crop I'd hoped. I'll go back next year to growing a few Early Girl hybrid plants in addition to my heirloom varieties, because I think they gave me 200 tomatoes each, and I want enough to can, make sauces, freeze, and dehydrate so that I never have to buy any grocery store tomato, canned or fresh, ever again.. Keepers among the heirlooms include: dwarf purple heart, mortgage lifter, and Boxcar Willie. Kellogg's breakfast was pretty good and pretty prolific, but I'm going to try two other yellows next year: Dr. Wyche's and Hillbilly, and see which of those three I like best. The criteria are: denseness of flesh, disease resistance, taste, and production. I probably won't spare space for more than 2 cherry tomato plants, and those will be for snacking on when I work in the garden. But that's next year. We're not done with this year yet!

Fall garden planting tomorrow: starts of kohlrabi, two kinds of beets, two kinds of kale, two kinds of chard, plus carrots wherever I can sneak a few in. A week from now, I'll start lettuce and spinach indoors where it's cool. About September 1 I'll plant out them and (small white) turnip and radish seeds. A couple weeks after that, I'll pull out the cucumbers, which are planted where the winter garden (lettuce, spinach, and kale under cover) is going.  Some of what will go in the fall garden will probably last until late November too, as it can withstand a frost.

Fun times! Next year I'll have 4 times as much growing space, so I'll have a lot more to do, and a lot more food with each harvest. Give me until 2021, and I think I might be able to grow enough to feed myself veg and fruit year-round.