Winter Squash Update

I've decided that I planted some of my winter squash too close together. They're running over into other beds and the paths, though they may do that even if I space them out more.

In one bed I have my buttercup squash with at least 6 fruit set.In the same bed, I have two butternut squash hills and I've seen at least 4 butternut squash.There are also two hills of delicata. They have been shaded out a bit by the other vines. There are at least three squash set, though this one is the only one this far along.
I did better spacing the plants in the pumpkin bed. Even still, the vines want to take over other parts of the garden. I have about 5 pie pumpkins set.And last but not least, I have one large Jarrahdale pumpkin set. It is so beautiful I'm hoping others will set and mature too.
We're looking forward to enjoying lots of squash this fall and winter.

How to String Onions

As I wrote before, I used the method from John Seymour's "The New Self-Sufficient Gardener." Here are photos to go along with the steps.

Start with dried onions. The tops need to be brown and mostly crispy.
Next you need about three feet of string I recommend something strong like twine. I used a light string for my first set and it broke the next day. Twine worked better. Tie a knot with the two ends and hang from a hook. I recommend doing it outside, as you end up with many onion skins and leaves all over by the time you are finished.
At the bottom of the string at the loop, take an onion with a long tail and tie it to the string. This is the only onion you'll have to tie.
Take the next onion and set it on top, putting the greens between the two strings.
Wrap the onion leaves around the string on the right, bringing it to the front. Then put them behind the string on the left.
Do this a few times to secure the onion.
Add another onion, and weave the leaves in and out between the strings. I found that if I continued to weave the leaves from all the previous onions in, that the weave got to too big and the onions were to spread apart.
Instead, it was better to weave the tops in some and then let them stick out at the sides, leaving room for the tops of the next onions. Make sure to add onions starting from all sides of the string.
Stop when you are getting close to the top of your string or you run out of onions.
Tie a knot with the twine above the last onion. Trim off the ends of the onion greens that are sticking out, then hang in a cool place to store.

Harvest Monday 8/9/10

This week I weighed my onions after I strung them. Here are my four strings of yellow onions. I have one string of white onions too. All together my storage onions weigh 25 pounds and 4 oz. I've hung the strings in a cooler storage room in the back of the house.
Following the onions in weight this week were cucumbers with over 6 pounds. They just keep on coming. I need to make another batch of pickles.
The zucchini keep coming too with over five pounds of them this week. I had to spray some milk/water solution on the leaves to counteract some powdery mildew but they continue to produce.
The cherry tomato production has picked up with over 1 pound 6 oz of them this week. It has been a daily routine to pick cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini.
There were two 'firsts' this week. The first non-cherry tomato, was a green zebra at 2.5 oz. This was one of my early started tomatoes. Next year I'll start a red tomato early because while the green zebra is good, I still want a large red tomato.
The other 'first' was the first pepper. It is a Hungarian Wax with a medium level of heat. There are a few more of these on the plants. These seemed to be the only peppers that flowered and set fruit during the high heat last month. Now the other peppers are recovering and flowering again so we should have more variety in a month or so.
Other things harvested this week include kale (3 oz),
carrots(3 oz), basil, and pineapple tomatillos (1 oz).
Total this week: 32.9 pounds
Total this year: 97.4 pounds

You can see other gardeners' harvests at Daphne's Dandelions.

Sunflowers

All my sunflowers in the vegetable garden are volunteers. They are either lemon yellow or golden yellow. Some are 8 feet tall. They are good supports for my climbing beans when they happened to grow in the bean bed. Otherwise, they attract the bees as they bloom, and when they go to seed, the goldfinches come to eat the seeds. I've yet to catch them in a photo though. Today my husband helped me cut off about 8 large seed heads to put away to feed to the birds in the winter. I'll let the goldfinches enjoy the rest now.

Stringing Onions

Here is my first string of onions. This is the section of the white onion harvest that had tops long enough to use. There are a handful of other onions which I put in a mesh bag. I didn't braid the tops of the onions, rather I used a method from John Seymour's "The New Self-Sufficient Gardener." He recommends tying together the ends of a 3 foot string to make a loop. Then you hang the loop from the hook. You have two parallel strings. You tie the first onion on the bottom of the loop and weave the tops back and forth between the strings. For the following onions, you don't have to tie, instead you just weave the tops in and out between the strings. Move the onions around the string to start in different places so the onions are evenly distributed around. I didn't end up using the whole length of the string for these white onions, so I knotted it off at the top and made a loop to hang it from.

Now I need to go practice some more on my yellow onions. There are many more yellow onions than white. Maybe I'll add photos to the steps above after I do my next string.

Harvest Monday 8/2/10

This week cucumbers took the prize for the most weight in the harvest totals. I picked over seven pounds of cucumbers. I made one batch of bread and butter pickles, and started a crock of cured dill pickles. This is my first time crock-curing pickles so I'm excited to see how it goes. The recipe called for grape leaves to help aid in crisping and I was thankful for my grapevine on the front fence. I harvested about 3 oz of grape leaves.
Also in the photo above you can see my first raspberry. It made it in the photo but didn't last long enough to get weighed. This is the first year for my ever-bearing raspberries and I don't expect much but I was pleased by the large size and flavor of the berry.

The cucumbers took the prize in weight this week, but can't sit securely on that pedestal because I did not weigh my harvest of onions. I picked all my yellow and white onions and they are in the process of drying. I'll weigh them in the coming weeks and add them to my totals then. Behind the cucumbers in terms of weight were potatoes, with 5 1/2 pounds. I harvested all my Irish Cobblers that were left and sampled some Yukon Gold and All Blues as I cut back their foliage this week.
Other harvests this week include zucchini, but I have stopped photographing all the zucchini I pick. They only make it into group shots like below. It was just over one and half pounds this week as I'm trying to stay on top of them and pick them when they are small.

Other harvests this week include chard, cilantro, basil, arugula, romano beans and cherry tomatoes. I'm still waiting for my green zebra to fully ripen, and then I'll still be waiting for the first large red tomato. I probably have another 2 weeks to go.
Total this week: 15.7 pounds
Total this year: 58.1pounds

You can see other gardeners' harvests at Daphne's Dandelions.