Henbogle

I have managed to harvest a few radishes through the weeds in the hoophouse.  These weigh about 1 1/2 oz.  Oooh boy.

Despite my post-holiday funk, it isn’t all bad news here at Henbogle.  Even without us, the garden is productive (just not producing as much of what WE want).  Dan is picking more blueberries as I write, and earlier this summer, Mom dug our shallots and garlic, both of which look great.  The shallots appear to be more evenly sized this year although a bit on the small side — unsurprising considering they were abandoned to fend for themselves amidst the weeds and weather.  I need to weigh the shallots but I counted 74 heads of garlic.

Today I did another walk through and pulled a few weeds (a little rain yesterday helped that effort) and had a closer look.  The pepper plants are mostly looking healthy amidst the weeds.  If I can get them weeded we may still have a decent crop of peppers. I pulled a couple of leeks, which are holding their won amidst the weeds.  If I can get them weeded, fertilized and a bit of water they may fatten up a bit.

The tomatoes have a lot of green fruit and some ripe, but I can see leaf spot and some sort of blight has hit a couple of plants, sigh.  I picked a few ripe tomatoes and pulled a few weeds, but I suspect the tomato season will be just about over.  Ah well.  Clearly I should have seeded the entire garden with a cover crop.  I’ll know better next time.

ps:  The Dilly Brussels sprouts?

Amazing.  We didn’t have dill heads, so used dried dill weed.  Next year, if I am unable to use dill heads, I’ll add a few dill seeds to the batch, but these are delicious.  YUM!

With temps dipping into the low 20s I decided it was time to harvest the last broccoli and cauliflower of the season.  The cauliflower seemed to have some frost damage but the broccoli was unscathed –from the frost, at least.  I do have some in the freezer, but I will miss the broccoli, which has been excellent this year.

If you look closely, you can see the broccoli amidst the kale, which looks a bit bedraggled after the snow.  About all that remains in the main garden is the kale a bit of Swiss chard, and some Brussels sprouts.

I have some Asian greens and lettuce in the hoophouse.  The snails and cabbage worms have done a lot of damage to the brassica family, but the lettuce is delicious, and unfortunately, disappearing all too quickly.

Earlier this summer, when I harvested my spring crop of cauliflower, I didn’t get around to pulling the plants.  They were behind some other plants and so I just ignored them, thinking I’d pull them at some point for the hens.

Fast forward to today, when I finally get around to pulling the plants, and lo, what do I find?  Many of the cauliflower plants, like a cabbage will, grew another set of florets.  Bonus!  Had I given these heavy feeders a side dressing of fertilizer, maybe the heads would have been larger?  Small or not, we’ll be eating them.