Denise's spring/summer harvest totals

As the year's last Early Girls slow roast in the oven, I'm totaling the season's harvest. I thought I'd wait until all the beds were empty, but that's not going to happen: some of the Sungolds are still fruiting, plenty of kale is going strong, and both the jalapeños and the jalapas are still producing, too.

So it looks like about 430 pounds. The biggest producers were

• the summer squash: zucchini (89 lbs 4 oz from 3 plants) and scallopini (39 lbs 3 oz from 3 plants)
• the tomatoes: Sungolds (27 lbs 15 oz from 4 plants) and Early Girls (63 lbs 6 oz from 4 plants---I didn't count the bush EGs, which hardly produced)
• the winter squash, of course: butternut (14 lbs 15 oz from 2? 3? plants) and Lakota (18 lbs 13 oz from 3 plants)
• the cucs, of all things: cucumbers (17 lbs from 4 plants) and lemon cucumbers (22 lbs 11 oz from 4 plants)
• and the greens: True Siberian kale (24 lbs 2 oz) and Lacinato (13 lbs 13 oz and counting)

Like Stefani's total, mine doesn't include all the foraged food: blackberries, huckleberries, and mushrooms. I'll keep better track of those this year. In the last week or so alone we've gathered over 33 pounds of oyster mushrooms. Yippee!

Some were quite large.


All ended up sliced and fried up with garlic and plenty of olive oil, then frozen: instant dinner starter.

I'm not a big hot-pepper fan, so today I had to process over a pound of jalapeños that have gathered in the fridge. I pickled some with tiny potatoes from the garden and carrots (all prepped on the beautiful cutting board Kevin made for me of reclaimed redwood, black walnut, and cherry).

Some I just canned with lemon juice. I'm not sure the latter is officially sanctioned; I'll let you know. Pretty, though, isn't it?

And as we prep the back bed, we've given the chickens their first field trips. They're such dirt monkeys! And they left their first contributions to the soil.