Mixed new potatoes, red currants and some delicious white currants.
The girls were helping me do all the harvesting today which consisted of new potatoes (and a couple a bit longer in the tooth), shelling peas, currants, a few cherries and a bunch currant sized wild strawberries.
Colorado Potato Beetle eggs are in orange clusters under the leaves.
There were some Colorado Potato Beetle larvae and eggs but not in plague like proportions. I'd like to thank the predators that were also hanging out on the potato foliage such as daddy longlegs. Ladybugs, ground beetles, lacewings, spined soldier bug, two-spotted stinkbug, parasitic wasps and two fly species also prey on CPB eggs or larvae according to Growing Potatoes Organically by Canadian Organic Growers.
Young larvae of the Colorado Potato Beetle munching away. I take care of them with my crushing fingers.
We also 'harvested' a couple chickens this week. As I have not parted a chicken's life since I was a little girl on a hobby farm back in the day, we did two this week as practice before the girls witnessed the event. However, they did quite happily come out for the processing afterward.
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Don't Scroll Down if you aren't a fan of eating meat.
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Still here?
My former Non Gardening Partner, now Garden Helper and Poultry Processer.
By the way, the girls named them all. The first two, that are currently sitting in our freezer, were known as Bomb and Plasma.
The kids love the chickens in both forms - pet and plate.
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Colorado Potato Beetle
Good Video on how to slaughter a chicken.
9 comments:
Looks like the makings of some good dinners! Oh and your peas are absolutely beautiful!
Yum, currants. I want to plant some but they're outlawed in our state. I'll have to go pick some soon from a farm in the next state over.
The chicken looks great! Unfortunately we can't butcher our own birds. We have a good butcher who let's us participate in the event though. Last time we went, our four year old "helped" him do the job. We were a little worried that he might be traumatized until he asked to take one of the feet home with us. We're taking 25 silver cross to the butcher tomorrow. It will be a busy day of quartering, packing and freezing our new summer stockpile.
Happy Harvest Monday! Although we all love our vegetables and fruits (beautiful currants, btw), we are also meat fans, so I always find it interesting to see these meat harvest tidbits in some fellow gardeners' blogs.
China Choy grown from seeds you shared last year grew absolutely fantastic for us this spring (last fall, not so much for whatever reason) and it was the last of the asian greens bolt in the garden. Its flavor was the best of all our asian greens, too. Thanks so much for sharing!
You also shared some seeds for sugarloaf chicory. I wasn't and am still not familiar with this green. Do you eat it raw in a salad, or do you cook it in any way? It's growing well in the garden at the moment, but it tasted pretty bitter when I took a bite of it raw straight from the garden a last week. I wonder if it's already too late for harvesting, like some lettuce?
"The kids love the chicken in both forms-pet and plate." That just cracked me up a bit. Thanks for showing the bug eggs. I am growing potatoes for the first time this year and need to know what to look for!
Nice harvest, of both the veggie and not so veggie kind. I think it's great to involve kids in getting to know where their food comes from, be that meat or veggies.
Peas and currants are lovely looking and I am sure the chicken will be tasty too. I was raised on a small farm where we did big chicken cullings periodically... while I am quite capable of doing the task, I had my fill of that for a life time and will let others do that chore.
Oh ick potato beetles. I never had any in my old garden. There were so few gardeners there that I think they couldn't find me up on the hill. I just hope they don't find this garden. There are plenty of potato growers a few doors down from me.
Our town voted chickens in a couple of years ago. But only 5 on a lot with a lot of restrictions. And one restriction is that you can't butcher your chickens in Arlington.
Thanks for posting about the potato beetles -- I'm a fairly new gardener and didn't know about them. I found a cluster of eggs under a parsley leaf about a week ago, but I didn't know what they were. I'll keep an eye out for them.
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