Garden of Salt Creek Acres

A happy Monday to you.

Isn’t it nice to see blue sky and green plants. Almost makes you feel warm even though it is January. Almost.

I thought you might be interested in knowing what Salt Creek Acres grew/produced over the last twelve months. I guess I should clarify. The only things that have been producing for twelve months are the chickens. The first crops of the garden began in June (thanks to our above average temperatures) and the goat milk began the end of May for Brown Sugar and the first of July for Halle Berry.

Here is a list of what we grew in the garden this year. If you want to skip down to the bottom for the total pounds feel free.

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Kentucky Blue Beans                                 9 lbs.
Di Cicco Broccoli                                        1 lbs  6 oz
Danish Ballhead Cabbage                       10 lbs 14 oz
Incredible Corn                                         27 ears
Homemade Pickles Cucumbers            82 lbs
Spacemaster Cucumber                         113 lbs 4 oz
Brown Russian Cucumber                      23 lbs 9 oz
Slim Jim Eggplant                                      4 lbs 12 oz
Mexican Sour Gherkin Cucumber          5 lbs 8 oz
Marconi Red Peppers                                7 lbs
Winter Luxury Pie Pumkin                  108 lbs
Delicata Squash                                        23 lbs 13 oz
Sweet Dumpling Squash                         66 lbs
Oregon Spring Tomato                             11 lbs 5 oz
Tom Watson Watermelon                      86 lbs
Suyo Long Cucumber                              19 lbs 7 oz
Evergreen Bunching Heshiko Oninon 2.6 oz
Early Jalapeno Hot Pepper                   11 oz
Poona Keera Cucumber                         23 lbs 11 oz
Potatoes                                                     29 lbs
Coosa Summer Squash                         121 lbs 9 oz
Caserta Summer Squash                        41 lbs
Red Pepper                                                  6 oz
Cantaloupe                                               27 lbs
Honeydew Melon                                   29 lbs
Boysenberries/Logan Berries              10 lbs 4 oz

Produce production: 843  lbs.

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Although we bought seeds for a winter garden, we never put one in. It is on the “honey do” list for this year though.

I also didn’t keep track of all the fruit (apples, pears, plums) Michael would give crates of fruit away before I got a chance to weigh it. Mostly though, I just didn’t have the time or motivation to weigh the fruit.

In all due disclosure, those weights are not exactly PERFECT. There were many times when I forgot to weigh stuff before I used it. For example, I never logged the weight of those Sweet Meat squash in the first picture. Somehow it just didn’t happen.

I can tell you we gave away  A LOT of food. It was actually a great thing. I wanted to be able to help others who didn’t have as much and we were able to do that. The big things that were shared were the cucumbers. As you know, Joshua has a penchant for cucumbers so he planted a lot. He didn’t pick very many so I gave a lot away.

Even though we gave away what we could, some still went to waste. I was really unhappy with the type of pole beans we bought so what didn’t go to the goats and chickens rotted on the vine. I was also disappointed in the type of corn we grew. Really large kernels.

We planted as many tomato plants as we usually do and they just didn’t produce this year. Still not sure why. Figuring out how to fix that is the main objective this spring. Thankfully, my friend Bryn shared her abundance of tomatoes with us so we were still able to can tomato based stuff.

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Our animals got in on the production scene. The goats gave us delicious milk and those chickens gave us gorgeous eggs.

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Milk lbs. Brown Sugar          241 lbs          28 gallons
Milk lbs. Halle Berry             397 lbs          46 gallons
Egg Count                                968 eggs

I’m in the mood to start planning the 2016 garden, but I know better than to bring it up just yet.

Here is wishing each of you a fruitful 2016.
Karen