The beginning of the harvest

This weekend just past we started the harvest from our very small garden. We have already had and enjoyed our first and second early potatoes and are just starting to pull up our main crop as we need them. The next things to pull were the garlic and the onions. For the last couple of months or so all the onions in the supermarkets have been coming from the Southern Hemisphere. This is far to great a distance for us to bear bringing food that we can grow at home so we have simply gone without. We managed to grown between 80 and 90 onions this year. Spadger grew them, I braided them and now they are hanging in my Momma's shed to dry. We paid her in onions for this service :o)





We tried our hands at beans this year and it was a bit of a disaster. We sowed the first lot which proceeded to grow straight away. This was far too early. The same happened with the second lot. At this point we decided to ignore the sowing instructions on the packet. We started them on the windowsill, planted them on out home made frame when the time came and prayed. Sure enough some didn't grow, others were eaten by bugs and slugs and some were ruined by the terrible winds we had. However we did get enough off them for one meal for 4 people. They were the tastiest beans I have ever had! Below is the last bean. There were only 1 or 2 left on the plants, not enough for a meal, so we chose to just dig them into the soil as they are great for fixing nitrogen.


So now all that is left in the ground are some potatoes, the parsnips (man they spend FOREVER in the ground) and some jerusalem artichokes. In the mini green house there are the tomatoes which are just starting to ripen. And in one big pot there are random gourds. I have no idea what they are, we think there are 2 different plants and they could be anything from pumpkins, harlequin squash or butternut squash. I can't wait to find out. There is one fruit on one of the plants that has grown well and several on the other that might develop. They all had the most beautiful flowers.