This Week's Harvest

YES! I bit the bullet this weekend and harvested 3 of my Meyer lemons. These are destined to become marmalade (which I will get into in another post). I am very pleased with how my little tree has performed thus far. I now have about a dozen tiny new lemons from flowers that bloomed a couple of weeks ago. Though I'm expecting at least half of them to fall off the tree in the coming weeks, I'm hoping that some will make it through the winter and continue to grow.

Just to give you a sense of how big these lemons are, this particular lemon was 4 inches tall. Collectively, these 3 lemons weighed 1.7 pounds. That's quite a feat for a small tree to accomplish. The remaining 6 lemons that I'm expecting to harvest this year are slightly smaller than these 3. I think they will be ready in a couple of weeks.


On the veggie front, I harvested all of my tatsoi, some young pea pods, and more lettuce mix.


I'm beginning to realize that in order for me to have a successful garden this time of year, I have to have a strategy in place to deal with slugs, which seem to be the only major pest in the garden right now. It's amazing how they can seem like a minor annoyance one day and then become a major problem a week later. I must have lost about 40 percent of my tatsoi harvest to these buggers. They are doing a number on my Red Russian kale and spinach as well. They don't seem to be bothering the lettuce. I will have to make a trip to the garden center to pick up some Sluggo.

I played it safe and harvested all of my crop of tatsoi. While cleaning them in my kitchen sink, I found 6 or so slugs clinging to the leaves as I was cleaning them in my kitchen sink. I will admit it was gratifying to run them through my garbage disposal. :)


Finally, my fall carrots (Nantes) are finally starting to fatten up. I'm guessing that they will ready to harvest in a week or two. I had sown these carrots in early August. It has taken much longer than I had expected for them to reach this size. However, I am very pleased that they have made it to this point, are showing no signs of pest damage and are tasting pretty good. Hopefully, they will really sweeten up as they mature and we get a few more frosts.

If you'd like to see what others are harvesting or would like to join in on the fun, visit Harvest Mondays at Daphne's Dandelions.