Harvesting Beets and Carrots

The first frost visited us this morning, pretty light though and much later than I thought it would be this season, nothing was damaged. We have been busy picking and packing our beets and carrots for storage before a hard freeze sets in. It was a decent year for most root vegetables and they all seem to be of fairly good size and shape...not too big and not too small, perfect for storage in the root cellar. Most of the unblemished beet greens were picked, blanched, and frozen for later use the day before we pulled the roots.

Our carrots, beets, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, celeriac, scorzonera, salsify, sunchokes, and root parsley are all layered in between slightly damp soil in totes and coolers. They will remain in good condition for a long time this way. I just gave the remaining few beets from "last years" harvest to our chickens 2 days ago, they were still hard and perfectly edible over 12 months later. The chickens will slowly peck away at them as they begin to soften up.

These are Lutz beets that we grew for the first time this season, they are supposed to be a good storage beet that I learned about on Throwback at Trapper Creek's fine blog. After I took these pictures I also covered the top of these beets and carrots with a couple inches of soil.

This perfectly edible beet has been in storage for just over 12 months.

A Mammoth Red Mangle (beet) from our own saved seed. They are colored like Chioggia beets on the inside.

Bull's Blood beets are the grandson's favorite because they make his teeth look bloody. What can I say, we do what we can to get the lad to eat his veggies.:) He will eat them raw just like an apple. If you hill dirt over the roots of this variety they can be left in the ground to provide greens throughout the winter months.

My wife's favorite Flat of Egypt beets. Peering at us in the background, Gimpy, is back on garden patrol as she has once again injured her leg...or perhaps she is smarter than we think and just faking it.

My favorite Cylindrical beets grow well, taste great, and are easy to work with in the kitchen. They must be picked before a hard frost though as they do tend to stick up out of the ground quite a bit.

Giant Yellow Eckendorf can reportedly weigh up to 20 lbs, fortunately ours never get that big...what would we do with a 20 lb beet? I would only have to grow one or two.:)

Detroit Dark Red is a good all purpose beet that produces my favorite beet greens.

New to us this year, Crapaudine. For what it's worth, Baker Creek says - "In 1885, the French book, The Vegetable Garden stated this is one of the oldest varieties. Today some experts feel this may be the oldest beet still in existence, possibly dating back 1000 years. This unique variety is one of the most flavorful, with carrot-shaped roots that have rough, dark colored skin which looks like tree bark. Inside, the roots are very dark, with almost black flesh that is of superior quality and sought after by chefs who want real flavor. We are proud to offer this rare old selection."

This was one of the best years we have ever had for carrots. Our main storage varieties are Chantenay, Imperator, Danver Half Long, and Nantes.

Imperators are not the very best storage carrot but they always grow well in our loose soil.

We grew a variety of "novelty" purple, white, red, and yellow carrots this year too. The whites bolted, the purples struggled, but the Solar Yellow carrots may become a main crop carrot for us as they did so very well. I will have to see how they hold up in storage. I should mention that I found the reddish colored tops of the purple carrots so interesting that we incorporated them into many of our summer stir fry dishes...yes, you can eat carrot tops.:)

And last but not least here is a picture of some of the carrots I grew from our own seed. They are a cross between three different types that I re-planted and let go to seed last year. We ended up with a variety of shapes and sizes but nothing too special.

The Treasure Seekers

Many years ago, tempted by the promise of untold riches and after some serious due diligence on my part, we set out by canoe early one dreary October morning in search of a mysterious treasure that we had only heard whispered rumors of. A treasure that we hoped to find on the shores of a small unknown lake nestled in the midst of a large foreboding swamp.

So it was that after many hours of paddling through fields of wild rice followed by a swamp so dense you could almost walk on the surrounding quagmire of mud and becoming lost more than once we finally broke free of the mucky filth and arrived at the fabled lost lake. We were wet, muddy, and our canoe was full of spiders...thousands of little spiders everywhere. Some adventurers have snakes, others leaches, perhaps bats, we always get spiders.

Anyway, to our delight, on the far banks of this little hidden lake nestled in amongst a few beaver lodges a fabulous treasure awaited. A veritable carpeting of the finest ruby red jewels imaginable, millions of them everywhere. Amazingly, the murmurs of a lost treasure had been true after all.

The beaver lodges on the shores of the little lost lake.

My wife basking in the sun while gathering treasure.

Each year we return to refill our larder with these exquisite gems. This year our motley crew consisted of three. Rowdy's first outing in a canoe was a success, no one fell out. Normally we spend many hours trying to push and pull our canoe through the muddy mire until we find spots where the water is deep enough to actually paddle, much like that scene in the movie "African Queen" when they were hopelessly stuck in the marshlands...one of my favorite movies.:) Spiders are everywhere and the stagnate waters can be quite foul smelling on a warm fall day, how I ever talked my wife into searching out this fortune for the first time years ago is beyond me.

Because the water levels were so high this year the going was pretty easy, we did not get stuck once...Rowdy even fell asleep on the trip in.

Behold, the lost treasure of Cranberry Bog Lake!

Real food is our wealth.


All drama aside, freshly picked cranberries can be stored at around 40° for a month or so. We prefer to freeze ours and use them as needed, they will remain good for years in the freezer. When picking cranberries in a bog surrounded by beavers one has to be diligent in washing the berries to avoid "Beaver Fever" or Giardiasis, a nasty infection of the small intestine.

The swamps in this area are surounded by fields of wild rice, we have gathered it in the past but as it was still green this year we left it be for another time.

With the assistance of a third member our party was able to quickly gather enough berries for the entire year.

Harvesting Potatoes

The weather has been surprisingly nice this past couple weeks, perhaps we will have an extended summer after all. Our potatoes have been harvested and we are quite content with this year's crop. Diversity in the potato patch, seemingly, once again played an important role. Some of the varieties that did great last year not so much this year and vice versa but in the end we were provided another fine harvest.


A fellow gardener talked about a method of planting potatoes that did not involve any hilling. I happily followed suit, planting our potatoes in a similar manner by digging them in deeply atop loose soil in an effort to avoid having to hill the dirt around them as they grew. While the amount harvested was not dramatically different I did notice that for the first time ever we had absolutely no issues with the scab that so often affects our purples and blues. This was perhaps due to the fact that the potatoes received a more adequate water supply, the rows were not nearly as mounded and less water was wasted due to runoff.

Speaking of scab, because we use our own potatoes for seed I am always on the lookout for any buildup of viruses and diseases related to this endeavour...so far so good and we have been doing this for quite a few years now. I am very careful to rotate our potato crop and only select the very best looking spuds for re-seeding purposes. I would imagine that people of old, from the Indians of South America to the settlers of North America, saved their own seed potatoes in a similar manner.

Actually, besides our russet varieties and Yukon Gold that never do that great (but I like the way they taste) the only potatoes that performed poorly were the two new "purchased" varieties that we tried this season. Red Viking and Shepody were both nice looking potatoes but only provided a few spuds per plant.

The potatoes in boxes will be used to plant next year's crop.


Potatoes are pulled in late September early October before it gets too cold and rainy out. Each row has a stake at the beginning with a bunch of tags attached to it with the varieties labeled in the order planted, this way I can keep track of all the different types. For the most part I know what everything is but I do tend to get the red potatoes mixed up in my head sometimes so the tags are of great benefit. Once dug we separate some of the nicest ones to be used for next year's seed. The rest are laid out on a tarp in the root cellar where they will remain until needed and if I am diligent in keeping any spring sprouts cut back they will remain edible and of good quality for a very long time. Below I have included pictures of a few of the many varieties we grew this year.

Some of the purple Peruvians were quite large this year.

This picture depicts two plants worth of Shepody, nice potatoes but not very numerous.

La Ratte has performed well for us the past two years.

Huckleberry is my wife's favorite potato, they are pink inside.

Russian Banana is one of the first "unusual" varieties I ever grew.

We have been growing this variety and saving seed for so long that I call them Mike's purple just to keep them separated from the other purple varieties I grow.

Anna Cheeka Ozette was originally brought from Peru in the 1700's by Spanish explorers to the Makah Indians at Neah Bay on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, where they still grow them today.

Yellow Finn is a nice producer that we have only been growing for a couple years now, they are yellow inside.

Austrian Crescent is another fine fingerling.

French Fingerling, one of my all around favorites.


"O Creator! Thou who givest life to all things and hast made men that they may live, and multiply. Multiply also the fruits of the earth, the potatoes and other food that thou hast made, that men may not suffer from hunger and misery." - Inca Prayer

Harvesting Green Tomatoes, Peppers, Corn, and Squash

The vast majority of this year's tomatoes stubbornly refused to ripen on the vine. I coaxed and pleaded with them, all to no avail. Their fate was set in stone when spring declined her initial invitation and showed up late for the party. If I could have tossed a lasso around the sun and pulled it closer to our garden perhaps that would have helped...but alas I have no such magic.

So, with the rainy cool weather pushing the last of summer aside we made the decision to pick all but our cherry tomatoes rather than risk the possibility of dampness or even frost stealing away our crop in the next couple of days. Most, if not all, of these tomatoes were fully formed and should slowly ripen inside over the next few weeks. We've had to pick our tomatoes green many times in years past but never this many. I am happy though as I was somewhat concerned for a while that we would not even see the fruits fully develop this year.

All the tomatoes were removed from the buckets, wiped clean of water (we picked them in the rain) and placed in cardboard boxes on our porch. We will bring them into the house a few boxes at a time to help speed up the ripening process and slowly convert them into salsa, sauce, and such.

I believe this box contains a few German Strawberry, Kellog's Breakfast, and (hybrid) Margherita's. They all have such a pretty green hue to them don't you think.:)

Yesterday I picked sweet (green) peppers from all but the potted pepper plants which were brought back into the greenhouse, I am hoping that they will ripen up a bit more. We will probably pull the remaining hot pepper plants and hang them upside down, this often helps them to finish ripening and hopefully "heat" up a bit as most are lacking in that department.

My hots aren't hot and the Paprika has no color.:(

While our popping corn is still outside trying to finish forming we were able to harvest our Painted Mountain and Blue Jade corn. We didn't spare much space for corn in the garden this year as there is still an abundance left over from the previous season. Once the kernels have shriveled enough to be removed from the cob they will be put on a screen in front of our wood or pellet stove to finish hardening because they have a propensity to become moldy if they are not cured properly in a warm dry environment. We do the same with our sunflower seeds. All of our corn is dried, stored in gallon jars, and will be ground into cornmeal as needed.

I love the color variance that we get with these varieties of corn.

And then there is the squash. A dismal harvest, perhaps our worst ever. I left many squashes outside on the vine to finish growing but with this cold rainy weather I hold little hope for them unless a couple more weeks of warm dry weather shows itself. Thank goodness for large hubbards, sugar pie pumkins, and gold nuggets. All three of which struggled mightily but at least gave us a few mature specimens to be used sparingly throughout the winter.

Normally at this time of year the vines have begun to die back and the rind has hardened to the point that it can no longer be easily pierced by a thumbnail. I leave a couple inches of stem on the squash as they perspire through their stems, any without may begin to rot. Those that lack stems or have soft spots are always used first and are usually the ones we steam and freeze to be used as soup or in mashed squash dishes. Unblemished squash is allowed to cure on our porch for a couple weeks or until the temperature drops below 50° at which point it is brought inside and kept cool and dry, right around 50-65°

All of that said, I am very excited to harvest our root veggies as I think they will be our summer's shining star. We hope to begin harvesting beets, carrots, potatoes, and parsnips as soon as we are afforded a couple of dry days in which to work.

Onion Harvest

Spring came, summer went, fall and winter are quickly approaching. The change in seasons finds us scurrying to procure all that we can from the gardens. Timing is key. If we wait too long the cold and wet will take its toll, too soon and the produce will not store well.

Recently we pulled most of our storage onions as a few days of wet weather is soon to be upon us and with the cooler nights I don't want them to succumb to rot. They were close to being ready, not as close as I would have liked under better conditions but they should cure up good enough nonetheless. While not as big as they could have been given a longer gardening year they were not too bad, not bad at all. I planted Borettana, Juane Paille de Vertus, and my favorite Yellow of Parma. All of the mentioned varieties grow well from seed and store for a long time for us...although I did struggle to get our Borettana's to germinate properly this spring. Anyway, once pulled I laid the onions out on our porch -

and patio to finish drying before removing the stalks about an inch from the bulb.
In a normal year I would have waited to pull these Yellow of Parma↓ until after the green stalks had withered away and then laid them out on the porch to cure for a few weeks before putting them in airy baskets for storage in a cool dry area...our basement works good for this.

We also had a fairly good garlic harvest this season. Again, the cloves were a bit on the small side but numerous...bring forth the fidlyness.:) I had to replace quite a few this spring because they had rotted in the ground over winter as we had almost no snow for protection...a first for us, we normally have plenty of snow cover. The spring planted replacements were just as large as those garlics planted the previous fall so, in the end, other than the wasted garlic, it really made no difference.

These garlics are for eating and the ones with tags on them in the second picture will be replanted for next years crop ~ and so continues the cycle...