Harvest Time……

This has a been a crazy summer with a ton of stuff going on, so instead of making excuses/explanations of what has been going on I am just going to jump back into this blogging thing. OK? OK, so here we go.

We have planted a pretty big garden this year. This is the second year we have tried raised bed gardens, I have 6 - 4 foot by 4 foot raised beds and it has been working out well for us. We planted tomatoes, peppers, hot peppers, carrots, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, green beans, peas, eggplant, yellow squash, zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, and a lone pumpkin plant. We have been harvesting a lot of produce all this summer, but now fall is upon us we went out did a bunch of picking tonight since a ton of it is ripe.

That is about 40 Roma tomatoes, green beans, jalapenos, and a couple of eggs.

Fresh Carrots

Now, I have been growing potatoes by the bucket method for the last two years. Last year I didn’t get a whole lot out of the potatoes but this year I did a lot better. The bucket method is pretty easy, you take any old 5 gallon bucket, drill holes in the bottom for drainage, lay a layer of topsoil down, then place 3-4 sprouting taters in the bottom then cover with another inch of soil. Once the potato shoots break through and grow 4-6 inches high cover the shoots with top soil to just above the top leaves, then repeat this process until the dirt is at the top of the bucket and the potato shoots are growing from the top of bucket. Then keep watered and in the sun. It will flower, grow and at the end of the season die back. Once all of the shoots have died back, leave it sit for a week or two before harvesting. After that its pretty easy harvesting, just flip the bucket over, dump out the dirt and search for fresh potatoes.

I dump the buckets in the chicken run, because after I finish getting the potatoes the chickens like to peck and scratch through the dirt for bugs or whatever else.

I probably got about 3 – 4 pounds between the two buckets. Not too bad right.

So now I have to figure out how to can the tomatoes and make “dilly beans”.

How did your garden do this year???