And we are back to harvest comparison posts! Welcome to the 2024 season where we will be looking at our harvests from month to month and how they stack up to our 2023 harvests.

Some of this is out of our control and depends on the weather, but some of it comes down to what we did to prep, when we planted and how we work the garden.

Kicking off our 2024 harvest is our garlic. As you can guess, this was an accidental harvest that was a leftover from last year. One of the bulbs was missed and when we weeded the bed we realized what we had. It wasn’t much, but it went to the kitchen and was used, so the harvest of the early garlic counts.

We’ve trimmed some green onion off our well established onions that were planted in the fall. I actually think I will be harvesting some of those onions soon based on how tall and big some of the greens are, but I am trying to be patient. I would like some really warm weather to hit for a little bit to ensure that the onions are a good size. In the meantime, we will continue to enjoy the greens in salads and other recipes.

Up next we have some ground cherries. It is a small harvest, but a delicious little harvest none the less. We started the ground cherry plants in the house much earlier this year and low and behold, they started flowering and producing in the house! Luckily we were able to get them into their permanent outside beds soon after the fruit started. Our first few berries fell, and were a beautiful golden colour, with plenty of flavour. Now we wait for them to really start producing.

This is technically a new harvest this year, so nothing to compare to last year. But, it is doing so well that I wanted to track it, so here we are. I love having kale right out the back door. A quick few steps and I have fresh kale for salads and other meals. We are just waiting for the lettuce to catch up, though I just found the little green moth larvae chewing away, so I had to rid the lettuce of that first. Luckily, the larvae didn’t make too much of a mark on the lettuce. I will be inspecting the plants regularly to ensure I don’t loose any to those greedy little bugs.

Pak choi was a new harvest this year, and I’m not sure if it will be a future harvest. Although delicious, it only really served a single purpose, so I am not sure if I want to keep using valuable space to grow it. What we did grow though was delicious in some early spring stir-fry’s.

Rhubarb! Oh the early spring cousin of the abundant zucchini. Not actually related in any way other than once it takes off you are overwhelmed with it and can’t even give it away. Good thing that I have been experimenting a lot more with recipes and have found a few keepers. The jelly is amazing, as is the topper and the cake. Next up is some rhubarb curd. I grew up with lemon curd, so I am excited to try rhubarb curd. mmm, I’m already drooling!

Our everbearing strawberry harvest is a little light compared to May 2023. It may be because we have mostly returning plants this year that haven’t spent the spring in the greenhouse flowering. Last year, all the plants were new and had a good start in a greenhouse before going to ground. This year, those same plants are having to wake up from their wintry nap before getting going. We’ve still had a few tasty berries, with lots of flowers waiting for some sunshine.

Out volunteer strawberries are really established now. Another year of beating out the previous years harvest. This year the harvest was almost bang on the same day as last year, May 17. We have been steadily picking them and enjoying them. They are an excellent topping on strawberry shortcake, or added as a little topper on ice cream. The plants are still going strong with lots of new flowers, so I expect our June harvests will also be quite high.

Overall, not bad