Monday, August 23, 2010

Harvest Update!

Just after I bought 27 lbs of tomatoes 2 weekends ago, I actually had a large harvest from the garden:

11.25 oz tomatoes
9.6 oz hot peppers (these largely became 2 batches of tomato and hot pepper salsa)
3 lb 4.25 oz pickling cucumbers (these became 4 qt of pickles)
2 lb 4.5 oz zucchini (this got shredded & frozen for future zucchini bread)
1.75 oz thai basil (this became kra pow)

This adds almost 7 lbs to my total harvest, bringing it to 19.03 lbs. Not bad for my small, not-completely-planted garden, but not great. It hasn't been a good year from my garden and via eavesdropping at the local nursery and farmer's market, I'm not alone.

My goal (maybe I should call it "my hope") this year was to average $3/lb in produce (harvest divided by this year's start up costs, $115). Thus far I'm at $6.09/lb with tomato plants that aren't looking so good and zucchinis that are almost refusing to set more fruit despite looking perfectly healthy. I don't think I'm going to make it. I suppose the upside is that I've estimated that buying the organic produce from my garden would have cost me about $85, with herbs doing most of the heavy-lifting there.

The year isn't over. I've ruled out doing a fall garden this year (that side of the house doesn't get good light in the fall/winter), save for some arugula, mustard greens and carrot seeds thrown into a pot or two, though, so I guess there is a tiny chance I'll make it.

In a few weeks, when the season is really over, I'll review and post the hits & misses of the season.

2 comments:

  1. You're not alone. The tomato plants in my garden plot died because of the heavy rain and high heat. They were all confused! I had to pull them up this weekend because my garden association doesn't take too kindly to dead plants in peoples gardens. Now I have what feels like 100 lbs of cherry tomatoes to use up and some green ones too so I'm determined that something delicious will come out of it!

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  2. If you need ideas...
    I made lots of oven-dried cherry tomatoes (that I mostly froze) at the end of the season last year and make Green Tomato and Apple Chutney with the green ones.

    The oven-dried tomatoes were green with purple basil, garlic, walnuts, parm and a few olives pureed in a pesto. And the chutney is really good with roasted or grilled chicken or pork! (or with really sharp aged cheddar)

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