And I’m trying to one up last year’s early start. I’ve got five of six kale starts from the fall that survived (thrived really) in the cold frame. I transplanted them into a raised bed today. And put a simple hoop cover over the row. In theory that will help them grow faster in a warmer little micro-climate as spring heads our way. Hopefully we don’t get any more snow now.

The fruit trees and berries on the north and east sides of the house should now get their summer irrigation from mother nature thanks to Portland Purple Water.

Today I dug and braided 21 shallots. We’ve been eating our own sweet onions since early summer and still have four left. The hope is these shallots get us part of the way into winter. Next year I’ll plant more. They took very little space and grew much better on the first try than real onions ever have for me across multiple years attempting them. We should be able to bump up to eating our own onions (or shallots anyway) pretty much year round assuming I plant a really good storage variety.

Our tater harvest is in and it is a bounty! 45lbs today, plus another 10 or so over the past weeks. And that from maybe 45sqft of dirt that was never watered…one amazing plant. That’s something like 25,000 calories we got nearly for free.

We planted: Dark Red Norland (better than any previous red we’ve done), Yellow Finn (massive massive production), and Purple Majesty (also quite productive). Unfortunately the purple aren’t supposed to be a good storing variety so we’ll need to get eatin on them. Hopefully the yellows store reasonably because I’d guestimate we’ve got 25lbs of them alone.

We dug up this year’s garlic a week and a half ago. It dried in the sun a couple days, I cut the greens off, the bulbs/stalks went into the garage for a week, and today I finally cleaned the bulbs the rest of the way. Six pounds, five ounces total for the 40 bulbs. This is roughly what our household consumes in a year. We’re just finishing off the last of our 2010 harvest.

I’ve planted some peppers, which were in a “cold” frame until now, in my garlic spot for the next two months, at which point I’ll put next year’s garlic in. I started the pepper plants from seed and despite a cool summer they’re doing as well as any I’ve grown so far (which isn’t saying much). By starting them inside and using a cold frame I hope to eventually figure out how to harvest decent peppers at least one month out of the year, if not two (or more?) in hot years.

I wish I’d have taken a picture. I wasn’t intending to eat it, but I went to test it and it came off the tree clearly ripe and needing eaten…

We got a lot of kale, lettuce and peas from the garden though.