Luke's attempt at 100,000 calories

I keep forgetting to snap photographs when we are harvesting. We've pulled a load more beets, I'll have to remember this week when we are putting together the veg. boxes.

In the mean time, our French ('kidney') beans and some of the borlotti beans have started to dry on the plants and need harvesting. I've taken in about half of the ripe beans so far and they are drying in the kitchen. Some of the beans I'll save for seed, for next year. Most of them will be eaten over the winter.

I podded enough beans to fill a large pyrex mixing bowl, a little over 1kg. There are plenty more and I'd expect to yield somewhere closer to 2.5kg that I will dry and put away for storage. Over the summer we have eaten a lot of immature beans and their pods too. I'm hoping, next year, to grow about 5x as much as I really enjoy growing legumes.

We grow most of our beans as '2 sisters'. That is, we grow the beans up hazel poles, initially with lettuces or other short crops beneath them. Once the short crops have been harvested, the beans have climbed the poles and we can transplant our squash plants. The squash then cover the ground beneath the beans, protecting the soil and shading out most of the weeds.

One of our beds is true '3 sisters', with sweetcorn planted amongst the squash and beans. The corn has done pretty badly this year - it's slow and several of our plants were eaten early on - but the guild seems to work nicely, even in wet West Wales.

Kidney/French beans harvested: 1kg (3300kcals)

And that is species #11! Just a few more beets to go...

I wish I could eat beans, but they give me a nasty stomach ache. Here in SoCal I am mostly harvesting pumpkins and squash. My tomatoes are almost done, and so are many other crops. Left are more squash and pumpkins, Cassava which we are not harvesting until thanksgiving, and sweet potatoes we also are leaving until thanksgiving or longer. The plan is to harvest one bed, to see just how many we are growing and how big they are. Then depending on the results, we will either leave the rest until spring, or harvest them a little by little starting December until we are in April, which is when we usually plant sweet potatoes. This way the potatoes won’t go bad. I also don’t do big harvests of my carrots. We leave them in the ground until we need some for cooking. I have found that this is the best way to preserve carrots in our climate.
So far in 2024 we have harvested 1299 pounds of produce, equal to 243 thousand calories. It makes me grateful that we purchased a freeze dryer last year. With this amount of produce including grains, it’s impossible to process them all into canning jars or for the freezer. The freeze dryer runs 24/7. I do a load overnight, let it defrost for 90 minutes and load it again.
Next year we will be able to harvest things like avocados and asparagus, plus I will get more berries.

Ulla, your squash look amazing as usual! I love the crooknecks.

I've not taken a serious venture into growing grains yet. There is a tradition of growing oats in my part of the world and I would like to try that at some point. I don't have the equipment that would make it viable at the moment though - I'd either need to shade off some of the grass for a year, till the soil to create a seedbed or, better, do both. I imagine (and hope) that I wouldn't need to till the soil each year and I can probably work out a rotation with legumes (broad beans!) to keep the soil healthy. That's a project for another year though.

Your sorghum looks great. Well done on getting such a good harvest.

As usual, the squash we are harvesting are taking over the house. Any flat surface has one on at the moment! I've attached a photo of our staircase for comedy value.

Luke Mitchell wrote:Ulla, your squash look amazing as usual! I love the crooknecks.

I've not taken a serious venture into growing grains yet. There is a tradition of growing oats in my part of the world and I would like to try that at some point. I don't have the equipment that would make it viable at the moment though - I'd either need to shade off some of the grass for a year, till the soil to create a seedbed or, better, do both. I imagine (and hope) that I wouldn't need to till the soil each year and I can probably work out a rotation with legumes (broad beans!) to keep the soil healthy. That's a project for another year though.

Your sorghum looks great. Well done on getting such a good harvest.

As usual, the squash we are harvesting are taking over the house. Any flat surface has one on at the moment! I've attached a photo of our staircase for comedy value.

Thank you. I only planted summer squash like zucchini and the crock neck because you wrote last year how well yours did. It inspired me to plant some this year.
I think it’s amazing that you can and do make boxes to sell after such a short time. Once my kids have moved away, we are probably either going to start selling at the farmers market, or cut down/ on how much and what we grow. I love following your block, since it inspires me to work harder and plant things I otherwise might not have planted.
Your squash/pumpkins looks amazing too.
Btw, the main reason I am growing sorghum is that I felt I needed to find a useful crop to grow during the “hot as hell” season. We already brow hot loving plants like peppers, squash and sweet potatoes, but I wanted to try something else. Sorghum loves the hot weather. It won’t even germinate until the soil it too hot for most plants. Other than spreading the seeds and watering (which are done automatically), I have done nothing. I just let them grow. They are heavy feeders though, so I am going to add rabbit poop to the compost, when I top up the beds.

How is this experiment going? I am so impressed and inspired!