Mr Cat always is excited to see what we harvest

Even if it's not officially winter yet on the calender.  In MN it really feels like winter as soon as the calender turns to Dec.  This year is no exception.  What we left in the garden is now frozen and the ground almost is too.  We have snow and its in the teens and twenties for highs now.  Needless to say the garden is officially put to bed now and it's starting to look a lot like Christmas.... I'll still post about gardening only it will be more focused on ideas and planning for next year's garden.  Next year we plan to do small expansions, grow all of our own seedlings, beautify our existing garden, and build better structures for our garden.


I harvested the last of our garden for the season.  I decided to harvest our carrots, instead of over wintering them like we accidentally did last year, and our turnips. I was so excited to see what we finally had.  I love root crops because when your busy tending to your crops in the summer you just forget about them, and then right when the garden is pretty quiet you have a nice surprise.
 
Carrots

our heirloom carrots harvest

We have tried to grow carrots for a few years but they never amounted to much.  They usually got mixed up with herbs and I forgot about them so they didn't get thinned and were planted to close together.

This year we planted them with tomatoes since they are suppose to be good complements. Instead of thinning them I planted only a few seeds far apart.  It worked we actually had a real harvest.  I am so excited.  Some were so long I actually lost the tip because I didn't dig down far enough.  Harvesting was kind of like pulling a really deep dandelion out.  I've never harvested any carrots bigger than a few inches so this was new to me.

I was very pleased with the heirloom variety we planted. I looked through my seed packets to see what we planted for carrots but I couldn't find it.  I think it was Burpe's kaleidoscope.  They're so pretty because they're purple, yellow, white, and orange.  They also tasted subtly different.  I think the purple was the sweetest. 

our turnip harvest

Next season I plan to plant them with the tomatoes again, but also in our backyard cinder block raised beds that I plan to add.  We eat a lot of carrots and it would be great to have even more next year now that I know we can grow carrots.

Turnips

 This was the first year we planted turnips.  We used Martha Stewart's organic purple top white globes.  I only devoted a square foot to it and I forgot to plant a second crop so this is our harvest from what we planted in the spring.

They worked well so next year I plan to plant a whole row and plant on time so we can get two harvests.  If all goes well next year we would have 40 turnips, based on this years crop. 


Dec Harvest

our kale is frozen!

turnips   1 1/2 lbs
carrots  2 lbs 11 oz
kale       3 lbs
broccoli 1/2 lb

Dec Total Harvest=7 lbs 11 oz
Total for the year=182+ 7 lbs 11 oz = about 190 lbs of produce this year                                              

Don’t forget to “like” us on Facebook.  Let’s be friends on Pinterest and we can follow each other on Twitter and Google Plus.  And check out my other blog OhYou Crafty Gal.  

©Minneapolis Homestead www.theurbanhomestaed.blogspot.com All rights reserved. Photos and content cannot be reproduced