Greens In The Fall Vegetable Garden

This is a long post about the greens I'm growing in the fall garden this year. I like to try out a little of everything, so there are lots of varieties. Friday I'll post the different bulbs and root vegetables that are growing in the other half of the garden, if it doesn't end up raining again. 

These photographs are from October 25th so a week and a half ago.

This little back corner of the garden is boxed in by the greenhouse, back fence, and the little wire fence around my garden on the side of which is our shed that offers lots of shade during the winter. Bad shed! Three beds of greens are located in this area with most of them belonging to the mustard family. Asian mustards are fairly mild without the strong spicy bite some mustards are known for. These were all planted September 13th, so about 6 weeks before these pictures.

In the bed on the left you can see in front the spoon shaped leaves of tatsoi, after that is the Pot Herb mizuna with it's highly serrated leaves, and then long stately leaves of Mibuna.

The tender yellowy green leaves belong to Fun Jen cabbage. The leaves have a delicate flavor and texture much like lettuce.

An unnamed pak choi is to the left of the dark red leaves of Lady Murasaki mustard spinach, and on the right is Senposai.

From front to back this bed has Mizspoona gene pool, Senposai, Baby choi, Pechay pak choy, Yokatta Na, and Toraziroh.

The pak choys are packed close together so they're not getting exceptionally big. I go ahead and cut whole plants when harvesting to give the other plants some room.

This bed looks like it has quite a few empty spots but in reality it just has some achingly slow growing greens.

Red Veined sorrel at 6 weeks. It's still teeny tiny. I truly doubt it'll get much bigger before the first hard frost which should occur at the end of November or beginning of December.

Color Crunch pak choi mix.

Purple Stem choy sum. Choy sums are usually eaten for their flowering stalks. I've grown this a couple times and never seen it bloom, so we go ahead and harvest the leaves. 

Dragon's Tongue rocket is still tiny tiny tiny. It took a long time to germinate on top of being slow growing.

Green Brigade rocket just seemingly appeared overnight, but still pretty slow.

Garnet Giant mustard. I'm curious to try this variety. 

A bed of mild Asian mustards containing mizun, mibuna, and tatsoi. I'll give them another week before we start harvesting this bed.

Tatsoi is a pretty fast growing. The leaves are nice and tender but sturdier than the other two varieties so hold up to longer cooking. They're probably have a slightly stronger flavor as well.

Pot Herb mizuna is a new to me variety of mizuna. The leaves are shorter and you don't get that long pretty stem that keeps it well off the ground, but it still has the lovely serrated leaves. Mizuna usually has a mild flavor that is not at all pungent.

Mibuna. I find the stems on mibuna and mizuna tender and juicy when cooked. The leaves on mibuna can get pretty long.

I usually prepare greens as a simple side by sautéing with onions and garlic, and then add a splash of nuoc mam and some ground pepper. For a little variation I might add soy sauce and ginger, instead of the nuoc mam.

A bed of endives, chicories, and Simpson lettuce.

Pan di Zucchero chicory

Tres Fine Marairchere Olesh endive

Broad-Leaved Batavian endive

I think this is probably Black Seeded Simpson lettuce. I find lettuce seeds difficult to germinate and keep alive during hot weather, only this lettuce and the Freedom lettuce mix survived to transplant age.

Puntarelle chicory

I had just harvested the sweet potatoes from this bed, and then started planting the Freedom lettuce mix the same day but then it began to rain. I've since filled the bed with the rest of the chicories, endives, and lettuce.

The Galega de Folhas Lisas kale and Nero di Toscana kales were planted in the spring and they're still doing great. Although a lot of them have fallen over, especially when I was pulling the sweet potato vines out from under them. The one standing at the post is 4 1/2 feet tall and the leaves are incredibly massive.

Caterpillars love the big leaves of the Galega kale. I had to spray Bt a few times this summer, and then at the very end of the season the grasshoppers were at them. There were a couple harlequin bugs but nothing like previous years where they ended up being terrible infestations.

Looking through these pictures, I realized a couple of beds didn't get covered. One bed held Pink Lettucy mustard gene pool, endive, parsley, and leaf celery. The other bed has a mixture of gai laan, bok choys, and broccoli raab.

The root vegetables will get covered next time. The beets are the best I've ever grown, which isn't saying much, and the carrot tops are the biggest I've gotten while gardening in Kentucky.

Harvest Monday, 11/6/17

As part of thinning the beds and weeding, I've been harvesting choy sum greens and rapini to eat with spicy soba noodle ramen. These were seeded September 16th, so they are fairly large now and starting to form their little heads.

Choy sum is a tasty and juicy mild green with just a hint of the heat normally associated with mustards. But cima de rapa has a more assertive flavor that has a bit of bitterness, which tastes delicious with a dash of an acid like vinegar. But in ramen I usually add a squeeze of lime for the acid.

After tilling the garden, a bunch of squash plants came up. I got to harvest a nice amount of late season summer squash. There's definitely some frankensquash that look like one of their parents was a vining winter squash. And the greens are all putting on lots of growth with all the rain and moderate weather we've been having.

There were actually 3 different greens harvested on Sunday. On the left is choy sum with it's flowering heads, which is just sliced and sautéed with nuoc mam and pepper. In the middle is mizuna, to keep the plants going I just pick individual leaves. The real surprise was the mibuna on the right whose leaves grew to be a lot larger than I was expecting.

The summer squash were sautéed in olive oil with a little salt and Penzey's Mural of Flavor spice and herb mix. The choy sum and summer squash were served with meatballs and rice, along with roasted sweet potatoes that were mixed with olive oil and mild chili powder.

Harvested:
1.024 pounds of summer squash
4.128 pounds of greens

Please join fellow vegetable gardeners at Our Happy Acre's for Harvest Monday. A wonderful tradition where we share what's growing in our gardens.

Fall Garden Update

It has been a bit strange in the garden lately. The weather has cooled but there are pole beans blossoming. (These are volunteers.)

Volunteer bush beans forming tiny little beans.

With 6 weeks until our first frost, there's even the promise of summer squash to come. They'll certainly be from mixed parentage, possibly even winter squash mixed with summer squash.

I thought it was a little bee hiding in there, but I'm not so sure now.

The rapini needs to be thinned.

Mizuna might be big enough to harvest in a couple weeks.

And even mibuna is gaining some size, there's definitely some fast growing Asian greens out there.

You can see little tatsoi seedlings around the older plants, I just sprinkle extra seed down and tamp down with a rake just in case we want to harvest whole plants instead.

Choy sum grows really fast, right up there with turnip greens and rapini. The whole plant is eaten and they're especially prized for their succulent flowering stalks.

In contrast the sprouting broccoli is a bit slower growing, germination rates are lower, and the seeds more expensive. I'm really hoping they're the same thing I've eaten before at a relatives home.

I don't know if the beets are going to make it. It's really late in the season and they're still pretty small. They're going to get covered with agribon row covers and we'll see what they'll do. Either way, hopefully we'll get some greens out of it.

Red Russian kale are just too adorable with their long spindly stems and serrated leave.

I thought this was supposed to be a frilly leaf lettuce mix, but I can see kale in there and maybe mizuna.

Red Knight mizuna (F1) is a lovely russet color, these were direct seeded almost 3 weeks ago.

Peas had to be reseeded multiple times, but it looks like the older plants might actually produce something.

Turnips are seeded in the same beds as the peas. They'll get thinned once they start bulbing.

10 days ago I seeded more radishes and turnips. I'm really hoping for some delicious gigantic radishes in December.

And I've been, oh so diligently, keeping the carrot bed weeded. But they are incredibly slow growing. I might just have to consider it an experiment that's going in the negative column, and never again plant carrots after August in a north facing garden.

I'm not sure when to start using floating row covers. It's supposed to be in the mid-70's this week (21 degrees Celsius), which seems much too warm for them. I might wait till mid-November.

There's still some planting needing to be done like lettuce and spinach in the greenhouse, and fava/broad beans out in the garden. It's a much calmer pace this time of year, a very peaceful time to be out in the garden.

Harvest Monday, 6/19/17

Green Winner kohlrabi, purple Kolibri kohlrabi, and 4 little Sungold cherry tomatoes.

A couple more bolted tatsoi heads, and 3 little Butta zucchinis.

A mixture of Black Cherry, Fat Cherry, and Sungold tomatoes. More Butta zucchini and the first Lunga Fiorentino zucchini. Male squash flowers are starting to open up so we'll get some pollinated squashes soon.

We had a huge rainstorm Sunday, it rained so much all day. Yay to not having to water the garden. Usually green tomatoes can heal when they split open after a big rain, it's when they're ripening that it's a worry. But I probably need to go ahead and top the Black Cherry plant, it's too top-heavy even with added supports. And I'll probably end up tying its cage up to a wooden fence post. My partner thinks we should tie all the tomato cages together in each bed to create more stability. It's an interesting thought. Has anyone else tried something like that?

And I can't believe it's almost July already. This summer is progressing way too rapidly. We planted almost 3 weeks later than normal, so everything feels like it's happening at a rapid pace.

Harvested:
0.904 lbs. zucchini
0.298 lbs. tomato
1.054 lbs. kohlrabi
1.364 lbs. tatsoi

Total harvest: 3.62 lbs. (1.642 kg)

Please join us at Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres. Where gardeners from around the world share their joys and trials of vegetable gardening.

Harvest Monday, 6/12/17

Mizuna still going strong without any signs of bolting. Harvested Tuesday, June 6th.

Blooming tatsoi even the thick juicy flowering stem is delicious. Just don't eat the stringy part near the flowers. Harvested Thursday, June 8th.

And more mizuna, there's so much of it and from only 6 plants. Harvested Sunday, June 11th.

There would have been a couple of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes as well, but a bird got the first one which I found on the ground torn open and our little one gobbled up the second cherry tomato before I could get a picture. There's a couple more cherry tomatoes ripening this week, but it's probably time to get a couple fake owls and snakes to keep the critters away. Plus I've seen squirrels running around lately along our fence.

The greens have all been stir fried this week. The first harvest of mizuna was stir fried with sliced ham, onion, fish sauce, sugar, and pepper. The tatsoi was cooked the same way. And then the second harvest of mizuna was stir fried with just soy sauce, brown sugar, and pepper and served as an accompaniment to spicy chicken with rice. I'll probably cook the next batch with ham, ginger, garlic and soy sauce.

Harvested:
1.868 lbs. mizuna
0.922 pounds of tatsoi

Total harvested: 2.79 pounds

Please join as at Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.