A Veritable Cornucopia of Food

As long as I mostly want greens anyway.
Here's the BIG salad I got from my garden last night for supper (and some left for lunch or supper today):
















It's in a giant colander that Gram gave me for christmas which is awesome. It's almost as big as the sink (and an enamelware antique so probably worth $$ but I just use it).
Included in the salad: Red lettuce, green lettuce (with curly edges, not sure what kind that is), kale (scotch I think), chard, 2 beats...one is just a straight root, other is about 1" across), 2 radishes (they were dying in the heat...will try again when it cools off), and ONE TOMATO!!, some parsley, spinach, and probably more stuff. I thought about picking a carrot but I have so few I'll let them get bigger first. The onions are just sad so I didn't bother pulling one up.

Here are the highlights:















The tomato is a bit wee, but quite delicious. Don't know the variety, but it's some heirloom.

I also got a good handful of raspberries later in the evening.

The greens are doing surprisingly well right now. I think partly because they are shaded by the overwhelming size of the squash plant. There are three in the raised bed and I may have to cut two of them out. They are too big. The biggest is putting out those lovely blossoms seen in previous post, and starting little squashes, but they shrivel a week or two after appearing. Odd. There is another late start squash in a giant pot that I have high hopes for.

Peppers are out and looking good too. And I may get a strawberry one of these days.
The potatoes are confusing me. The tops are dying. Should they be dying already? On the 5 early pots they are dying back. On the later pots, still growing. I mulched pretty much everything with a new layer of compost last week and will do that again. The nutrients in the soil are probably pretty well gone by now. I'll have fresh worm poo in the next couple of weeks too. The smaller bin (the one in the shower, not the one on the toilet), is about finished so rather than pile on new bedding like I would in the winter, I'll harvest a good portion of the compost and fill the gap with new bedding. With canning season upon me, I'm going to be feeding the little beggars alot.

I need a new worm bin idea. If anyone has an idea for something I have lying around the house that I could make into a worm bin, please speak up. One is in an old refrigerator veggie drawer. Another is in an old plastic filing box. The recycling bin is in use for potatoes (and I miss having a recycling bin frankly). So what's next?

Anyway, I did make my first JAM this week. I picked the pie cherries across the street, pitted them with the new-to-me pitter I got at the goodwill (the kind you pound on rather than the kind you run like a syringe...I call the new on "the slapper"...it looks like this:


















This photo is taken off the web. Not a picture of my pitter but it's the same kind, style and color.)

It works pretty well clamped to the counter. The only place to clamp it is right by the sink. Just load cherries with one hand and slap the knob with the other. (if you know British slang you'll be giggling now).

I got 2 batches of jam by adding in a cup and a half of the same cherries I picked a few days back. The trees are pretty well cleaned now of everything I can reach or could pull a branch down and get. Not as good a crop as some years but not bad at all. There weren't any to put in jars with syrup for pies this winter. I have one container full frozen from the first picking so I can get one deep pie or two shallow pies. If I stretch them with apples or something I can get 3 pies. Oh well. Here's hoping for huckleberries and other things to fill in the gaps.

The huckleberries look promising...but one never knows until the day.

As far as my experiment on how much food I can grow in the area of one parking space...clearly "some" is a good answer for now.