2008 Garden Harvest Summary

Here it is almost Thanksgiving again and a great time to review the year's harvest totals and give thanks for the blessings from our garden.

As of Nov 10, most of the 2008 harvest is in(we still have a few carrots remaining). We had a bumper crop of honey this year and the bees were also busy in the garden with pollination.

We set new records this year for production of green beans, tomatoes. We lost our cucumbers and a few squash plants to bugs, but still did well on those. We missed most of early summer due to travel so the early crops like rhubarb, lettuce and cilantro were way down.

2008 harvest totals:

• Basil (not measured)
  
• Cantaloupe 2.0 lbs (why bother?)
  
• Carrots 34.3 lbs (so far)
  
• Garlic 0.5 lbs (volunteers)
  
• Green Beans 26.9 lbs (new record)
• Honey 312 lbs (new record)
• Beeswax 3 lbs (new category)
  
• Lettuce & Salad Greens 1.5 lbs
  
• Onions 18.2 lbs
  
• Peppers 62.1 lbs
  
• Pumpkins 57.5 lbs
  
• Rhubarb 7.0 lbs
  
• Shallots 0.7 lbs
  
• All Squash 322 lbs
  
• Tomatoes 357.6 lbs (new record)

2008 Climate Summary:
The length of this summer's growing season was a bit longer than normal. We had our last frost of spring on May 11th and our first frost of the fall on October 7th giving us a little longer than normal 149 days of growing season. We had good rains in May and August this year, which probably helped the nectar flow for the honey production. Our total summer rainfall was also very close to normal with 7.94" from April through October with July being our driest month with zero rainfall the whole month. June was also dry, so the mid-summer required a lot of extra watering again this year.

Average temps were generally equal to last year through July, again without any days above 100 degrees. We had our only 100 degree day in early August, then it was a bit cooler from August through October compared with normal averages.