May 29, 2017

Harvest Monday, May 29th

As this includes our first harvest for the year, there's actually not much to show. The first harvest of Tatsoi and Mizuna greens went into a pot of spicy shrimp ramen soup with fish sauce and a couple of eggs. Delicious but it could have handled more greens if wanted. My father always made his ramen soup with sliced lettuce and bits of pork. In the spring both are mild and tasty greens that grow phenomenally fast.
The second harvest was more than a half pound of Mizuna collected on Friday. I was trying to cut it back to allow more light to the newly sprouted cucumbers planted along the wire fence. 
As you can see, there's still lots of Mizuna left after the trimming.
The Tatsoi is threatening to go to seed so will probably be pulled in the next couple of weeks and replaced with direct seeded Asian kale (gailaan).

Harvested:
0.612 pounds of Mizuna
0.080 pounds of tatsoi

Kohlrabi might be ready next week, but it will probably be at least 3 weeks for the first cherry tomatoes to ripen.

All the tomato plants have been caged and the only two big things left to do is hoe the garden and then mulch with hay. If you're curious, I've been getting 54" galvanized steel tomato cages for less than $2 from Rural King. I always like to look at the baby chicks and ducks when I visit that farm store.

Please join us at Dave's at Our Happy Acres where gardeners from around the world share their love of vegetables and gardening.

22 comments:

Michelle said...

That ramen soup sounds so good! I want a bowl of it right now. That sounds like just the thing to use some of the Mizunarubasoi that I need to harvest to make space in the garden.

Sue Garrett said...

Next month hopefully the harvests will speed up. For us it hopefully will be the start of fruit picking.

norma chang said...

So exciting as each week new crops are ready for harvesting, that sure is a lot of Mizuma and Tatsoi, have you tried freezing either?

gardenvariety-hoosier said...

The ramen with tatsoi sounds delicious, and the tatsoi looks very nice. Hope your tomatoes recover from the spray (your neighbor was very thoughtless).

Dave @ HappyAcres said...

I love mizuna, it's so fast and easy to grow. Mine is bolting now, but I'll plant it again in fall. It almost looks like a ground cover growing with the eggplant!

Phuong said...

Hi Mike,
Your tomatoes and peppers are doing so well. It rained buckets this weekend so maybe that'll help get rid of any weed killer residue that might be hanging around. It's too bad it's affecting the new growing tips so the plants get stunted.

Phuong said...

Hi Michelle​,
The mizuna holds up nicely in soup, my husband said the stems were a highlight. You grow so many different vegetables in your garden. If we're able to replenish our salsa stores this year, I'll try more varieties of greens next spring.

Phuong said...

Hi Sue,
It's​ amazing how early your fruits start, so exciting. We've been thinking about trying muscadine grapes, it'd be fun to make jam, jelly, and wine. My grandma was always making wine from my mother's grapes.

Phuong said...

Hi Norma,
That's a great idea about freezing those greens, I'll try a small amount and see how they do. Plus they'll probably go pretty fast in stir fries.

Phuong said...

Hi Dave,
All the up and down weather probably didn't help with the bolting. Mine are growing in the shadiest bed in the garden which likely helps. Hmm, maybe I should seed more cucumbers in a sunnier location.

wvhiker said...

And I see you have put your plants in earlier than I have :) We are so far behind, so much so that I am hoping to get tomatoes by July. I'll look into those cages, sounds like a good deal. I usually stake my tomatoes and peppers if they get big enough buy cages may be the way to go anymore.

Phuong said...

Hi Jay,
I'm planning on staking the cages with a couple 6 feet tall stakes to add height and stability. We usually stake our tomatoes as well, so I'm leery of the cages falling over.

Jane Strong said...

Do you make homemade ramen soup? If so, how? To my mind, ramen and a leafy green vegetable is the ultimate comfort food.

Lisa said...

All your greens look wonderful.

Kathy said...

Your soup sounds delicious and reminds me of the kind we used to buy late at night in China Town when we lived in London.

Are those small shiny dark green plants Bok Choi?

Phuong said...

Hi Jane,
I cook vegetables with the powdered broth and sometimes add shrimp or thinly sliced meat and some fish sauce, and then add the noodles last since I like my noodles al dente. Then in the bowl, top it with slices of hard boiled egg or just a soft boiled egg.

Phuong said...

Hi Lisa,
They're great growing in a shady bed, still managing to gain size quickly. The mizuna is especially fast.

Phuong said...

Hi Kathy,
The dark green vegetable is tatsoi, they taste similar to bok choy but without the thick succulent stems.

Bill said...

I like how you grow the greens among the eggplant seedlings. Good idea! Our tatsoi is going to seed now. We're going to miss it. So delicious.

Phuong said...

Hi Bill,
Our eggplant has been greatly weakened by flea beetles. I've been trying to treat them with beneficial nematodes which did actually control the flea beetles that attack brassicas, it'll probably take awhile because our soil was just teeming with them.

Unknown said...

Everything looks Amazing! I used to garden in Kentucky when we were stationed at Fort Campbell.

Phuong said...

Hi Karrie,
Western Kentucky is a great place to garden so many summery vegetables do well here like tomatoes, peppers, and okra. Although, I think I have early blight on one of my tomato plants, only the top of the plant is infected which is odd. But I still really want to dig it up, just in case.