by A.J. Coltrane
Previous post here. October 4, 2014 post here. October 7, 2013 post here.
We harvested the last 9.8 pounds of tomatoes this week.
Monday saw us harvest everything except for the non-ripe cherry varieties:
Today we brought in the cherries. The girl cat is checking the sheet tray for potential deliciousness:
We removed the remaining tomato stems and cages today. Later this week we’ll plant Mache in those four boxes.
—————
This year we only weighed product from the EarthBoxes. We also didn’t count any overwintering veg, since the total was pretty paltry, and I was bummed out by the paltriness. Still, we harvested 282.5 pounds from the EarthBoxes — all of it between June 24 and October 4. That’s about 8.5% more veggies than in 2014.
2013 total weight: 228.0 pounds
2014 total weight: 269.4 pounds
2015 total weight: 282.5 pounds
For reference, 282.5 pounds comes out to just under 8 pounds of product (7.84) per square foot of growing medium. I’d guess that we’re getting close to the upper limit for our situation, short of swapping out the basil for something heavier — and that’s not going to happen.
—————
Each year I’ve done four garden Recap posts, looking at what worked, what didn’t, and what we think we might have learned. I’ll likely do the 2015 version of those posts over the next couple of weeks. As it gets colder I’ll also do updates on the progress of the new salad table and the status of the winter veg.
Wintertime also encourages turning on the oven again. I expect we’ll do more recipe and baking posts.
Looking forward to it.
FlatbreadGarden 
I think 8 lbs per square foot is very impressive! Even my more intensively planted beds don’t come near that amount, and the main garden seems downright wasteful with less than 1 lb/sqft yield.
LikeLike
Well, the 8 lbs/sq ft is compared to the volume of planting medium. I need to got out with a tape measure and see how much space on the patio we’re using in total. I won’t be surprised if it’s really much closer to a “regular garden” yield.
LikeLike
Hi! Interesting how you are gardening. I will have to come back later to dig further. Do you wrap your green tomatoes in newspaper to ripen? Nancy
LikeLike
My tomatoes are at the end of the line as well. We have a few warmish days coming, so I’m leaving them to see if they get a bit riper, but I’ll likely be pulling everything up by next week. I look forward to reading your recap posts – I did a bunch of those last year and found that going back over everything was really helpful for focusing on what I wanted to change & planning for the coming year. And as for the basil – I would take tastiness over volume/weight any day!
LikeLike
We’ve tried various things to ripen tomatoes. This time we just kept them on the counter where we could keep an eye on them. After about a week we chose to dice them up and put them in ziplocks, sorted by color. We’ll use the red ones in red applications and the green ones in green applications.
Most likely we’ll buzz up the cherry tomatoes this week, freeze them, and then use those to “stretch” other preparations too.
LikeLike