December 1st - 8th
It's harvest time!
The group took some time out of our busy schedules to get harvesting before the weather gets below 32 F on Saturday.

Some of our harvested leafy green. The kale had some of the best results of all the crops planted.

A picture of our kale pre-harvest. Everyone in the group harvested enough kale to last weeks.

The tomatoes were a bit of a lost cause. By the time we had wanted to harvest, only one had ripened. The weather on Saturday, with a low of 30 F, means that there is little hope for these crops. 

The strawberry flowers! 

A developing strawberry.

A harvested pepper! 

The group also had a huge success with the turnips. They were almost as big as a head! The onions were unfortunate because they didn't develop well enough to be harvested at the end of the semester. 

November 17

November 17

So far, the plants are developing well. The tomatoes look great and continue to grow.  The peppers are a bit disappointing so far. We've come to the conclusion that the season isn't the best for pepper production. There's still a bit of a pest and weed problem that will require some work. 

Our inter-cropping of various crops is showing quite a bit of success but there is a pest problem though.

A scenic shot of the garden on Friday. 

The kale looking almost ready for harvest.

A close-up of the tomatoes.

November 10th

Some more virus afflicted tomatoes from Sean's Sweet 100. The weird splotchy patterns definitely weren't present on the previous tomatoes. The leaves still look wonky, but it surprisingly still has a lot of flowers.

Tomatoes from the large plant, I think they're ready to harvest!

The kale has gotten pretty big! Some of the older leaves have been attacked by something, but the marks don't look like they're from caterpillars since some of them are in the middle of the leaf?

Three of the beds were mulched this week! I'm hoping I never see a weed again.

Everything was super weedy before mulching, a horse could've survived for weeks off of our weeds.

Its clear I harvested this one too late since it cracked, but its huge! My family ate in a couple of days later when it was ripe, and they reported that it was delicious.

November 2nd

Some of the beds without any mulching :/ We have a ways to go with these guys!

The Red Olympic Kale we planted seems to be struggling, but were fertilized this week.

Toscano definitely seems like a more vigorous grower judging from this pictures.

These tomatoes were caged after being free for a while. I guess I can't market them as cage free anymore... Hehe.

The sweet potato is growing ferociously.

BEHOLD the mulched beds! I skipped a class just to finish a couple of beds, I'm pretty proud.

Bt was sprayed on the cukes, but they didn't look bad even without pesticide.

Progress pick of the tomatoes! I harvested one today, we'll see how it tastes in a week when its ripe.

10/27

Tomatoes are almost ready, some of them are starting to change colors!

The okra has gotten significantly taller in the past week! Some blooms were also spotted!!

The Kale and turnips are turning out great, although we were disapointed by the size of the turnip we pulled out. 

We harvested three cucumbers, but one of them was pretty eaten up by a caterpillar. I assume the yellow round stuff is fresh frass?

Sean, admiring his harvest before a bus ride. 

The tomatoes have gotten incredibly bushy, almost monstrously so.

Unfortunately we still have a lot of weeding/mulching to do...

A marvelous picture of Brandon and Camila holding up their cucumber children.

October 20th

This week we mulched down some of the beds, and checked up on our transplants from last week. We also checked up on some overdue pests that we should probably have been controlling for a while...

I found aphids on the bottom of all the okra leaves! I thought they had been growing slowly, maybe these are the culprit. I'm thinking we should maybe put some ant tape around the stems?

Behold! The culprit behind the aphids! I can't help but sympathize for them, since ants did start farming aphids before we started farming...anything. 

Unfortunately, I had to squish several leafroller caterpillars that were found under the cucumbers. This is a pupa, which I also... Exterminated so that it won't produce any cucurbit eating offspring in the future. 

While there were a lot of malignant insects, I also saw a lot of beneficial pollinators! The bee definitely seems to be benefiting from our endeavors as well. 

I also found this...? I have no clue what it is. It looks like it might be caterpillar frass, but I've only ever really seen dry frass, so I'm not sure if this poop or eggs or something else.

The turnips are also almost ready for harvest! I'm excited to make some turnip greens out of the tops as well as eating the bottoms, I'm a big fan of greens. 

10/13

We encountered our first real struggle this week as hundreds of weeds began to take root in our precious beds! We noticed the problem at the end of last week but could never have envisioned that they would invade so quickly. But no task is too large for the Veggie Tales! The four of us came together and managed to save the vegetables in less than an hour with only one minor speed bump along the way... darn you ants! In lighter news, we were gifted with five strawberry plants that fit perfectly in one of our unused beds and our kale keeps getting bigger and bigger. Our newest goals are to mulch all of the beds to prevent weed invasion and to try our hand at raising various herbs from seeds.