The New York Early onion germination was a bit spotty, didn't make efficient use of the big tray I put them in, so today I started, in paper towels, some new bulb onions which will go into the same tray to make use of the space. I went with a new-to-me red onion (Red Globe) so that I'll be able to distinguish the varieties (since they'll all be jumbled together).
The leeks and green onions from round one also weren't as thick as I wanted, so started more of those.
Used up all of the rest of the New York Early onion seeds.
After sitting in a stainless steel bowl since harvest a few months ago, today I pulled off the kernels from the few sad ears that had escaped the raccoons.
The kernels measured up to 3/4 cup.
Popped 1/4 cup of them on the stove -- and it worked fabulously! Used margarine, with some salt; heat at medium. Started by putting just three kernels. After the first three popped, added the rest of the kernels and shook the pot nearly continuously until they were pretty much all popped.
Only three or four kernels didn't pop, and these were nicely easy to crunch/eat.
Very tasty!
Will definitely try growing it again, and will try to harvest before the raccoons find them.
Dang, all those plants, and all that harvesting and drying, turned into only 1 ~3/4 cups after I put it in the mini blender. Will use only 1/2 tsp per thermos and see if this lasts through until next year's harvest.
WOW, what a carrot haul!!! Between the first/main bed, the second/smaller bed near the north end, and the third/smaller/late-planted bed along the west edge, today's harvest consisted of the following:
- ~3/4 blue bucket
- overflowing white rectangle bin
- blue bin
- and a flimsy berry basket for the late-planted bed, which had some decent-sized carrots but also a lot that were too small (this bed was sowed on August 4th and suffered from poor soil and little water since it was very dry and I didn't water very often).
When I got home, most of them I just rubbed off soil and spread them out to dry, on the 3-level metal rack (with a mix of towel / newspaper underneath each layer), as well as on newspaper on the table.
For a sizable batch, which I'll donate to food banks, I removed most of the soil very easily by dumping them in a bucket of water and swooshing them around.
And WOW, what a carrot haul!!! See other post.
Leaf collection started and finished tonight -- two garbage bins full = enough to cover yard and put 1 bag in basement.
And, there are still some leaves in the basement left over from last fall -- one nice bag, plus two bags of finely shredded.
(I no longer shred anything, way easier this way.)
Part 1 was planted Sep 28th.
Today (Oct 11th) was part 2.
See photo in October/garden folder of my hand-drawn map of today's plantings + Sep 28th's plantings.
Weird -- normally I find the bush beans put out a second round of flowers/beans in late summer / into fall -- that didn't happen this year. Maybe the lack of rain was an issue especially since I didn't keep watering them after the first harvest (but the plants still survived).
Quite a lot of cobs, though most at this point are quite small -- it will take 4 or 5 to make a portion, but that's fine.
Starting to harvest the rest of the watermelons, gradually. Overall 3 were full size (for Blacktail Mountain), the rest are about half size. The first half-size that I harvested, today, was delicious!! Really red inside, and sweet and tasty.
