Harvest Monday, 7/12/21

Mix of cherry tomatoes and small tomatoes like Jaune de Flamme, Sun Gold, Candyland, Yellow Pear, Bumble Bee, and Jelly Bean. None of the tomatoes are really sweet right now, which is likely due to the very hot dry weather interspersed with torrential rainfall. Yellow pear is sourish and the tiny Candyland has surprisingly crispy flesh.

Garlic chives, red shisho or perilla, and green shisho or perilla. I find perilla to have a complex herbaceous flavor that's hard to describe. People say it has an astringent or basil like flavor, but I don't find that at all. So far they've been put in stir fries at the end of cooking.

I had problems seed starting the perilla. What finally worked was wrapping them in damp paper-towels inside ziplock bags, and then wrapping that in a towel on top of a seedling heat mat with a thermometer to keep them from getting too hot.

On the left is Colza (rapeseed) and on the right is Nero di Tuscana kale. There's also assorted cherry tomatoes.

Ner di Tuscana can be a little coarse during the hottest part of our summer, but the leaves are never bitter. It's actually my first year growing Colza and I find the flavor very similar to kale, and the leaves are nice and tender with no signs of blooming. 

This is what happens when you don't go in the garden for 3 days, lots of big zucchini and cucumbers. There's a yellow Butta zucchini in the back, the short blunt ones are Bolognese which were still seedless surprisingly, and the round ones are Chiaro di Nizza.

I did grow some White Custard pattypan squash, but a few were terribly bitter. So now I'm always eating a few slices of zucchini raw before cooking.

The cucumbers on the right are mostly Telegraph which have been fantastic in salads. Luckily they go to seed very slowly.

From left to right: Stella, Nero De Tuscana kale, Colza, and sorrel. Stella's slender leaves are crunchy but it has a bitter endnote that I'm hoping cooking will tame. The bitterness could be due to the heat or the fact it's going to seed. Sorrel on the far right is shockingly lemony.

We've also been getting a few Jet Star tomatoes for a couple weeks and they are great in salads and stir fries. The plant has good disease resistance and has bounced back well after being terribly rootbound when planting was delayed. The other large tomatoes are still a ways behind.

I've been eating massive salads everyday for months. Makes me sad we didn't grow any spring lettuce. So, lots of endive, escarole, chicory and lettuce were started over the weekend in preparation for the fall garden.

One note on failures. I had started rhubarb from seed. Had nice beautiful plants, which were then killed by over fertilization. When they say one tablespoon of fish emulsion per gallon of water, that's really what they mean.

Please join us for Harvest Monday, a group of intrepid gardeners, where neither harsh winds, sun, or rain will keep us from growing vegetables.

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, 10/15/18

The kale plants seeded in March are still with us. Nero di Toscana kale is pictured here along with thinnings of various pak chois.

White moth caterpillars have been a menace this year. I've had to spray with Bt, an organic method of control, multiple times throughout the season. October's temperatures have finally dropped, so hopefully the moths won't be around much longer.

I had already started destemming the Galega de Folhas Lisas kale and trimming the Tall Top Early Wonder beets before I thought to take some pictures. The leaves on this kale are ginormous and the tallest plant is five feet tall. This variety of beet is extremely slow growing, it was planted in June and these are the biggest specimens. It's probably a combination of flea beetles and our hot weather that stunted them.

Both varieties of kale are growing in the shadiest bed. I find them extremely tender, although we don't eat kale raw. They mainly go in soups or just simply sautéed with eggs.

The plan is to harvest sweet potatoes next week if the soil dries out enough. And the Siam Queen basil has been hanging on, we've been eating tons of it in pho. So good, especially with added shrimp which isn't authentic, but delicious nonetheless.

Please join us for Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

Harvest Monday, 4/22/18

Kale and kale flowering buds. This is about a third of what we harvested on Saturday.

Spinach salad with pea shoots, raisins, and cashews.

We cleared out the garden on Saturday. I picked a ton of overwintered kale, spinach, and turnip greens, while the kiddo and husband dug up some carrots. We had hoped to till soon but it rained all Sunday and more is expected this week, so we'll probably end up planting late just like last year. It's been a very wet cold spring.

The carrots were seeded in the fall and grew slowly over the winter, and now we have a fifteen foot bed of baby carrots. They're excellent cooked with their young leaves. (My husband had accidently mowed down their tops in March.)

I had seeded a flat of peas last month to get an early start on a spring garden, but since it's much too late for that we've found that pea shoots are wonderful in salads. It makes me curious about the world of microgreens. I believe Dave at Our Happy Acres grows sunflower sprouts which looks very intriguing to me.

Most of the tomatoes and peppers have been potted up and they're growing quickly in the greenhouse. I've been debating about potting up the onions which have been in a 72 cell tray for two months, I'd much rather put them in the ground but either way they'll need to be fed soon.

Please join us for Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres. A place where irrepressible gardeners share their harvests and what they've been preparing in the kitchen.

Harvest Monday, 4/9/18

Harp and Clarinet spinach harvested Sunday. The spinach is staying nice and tender even with all the weird up and down weather. We had some last night in an omelet with a light sprinkling of cheddar, even the stems are delightful.

Red Russian kale was also harvested on Sunday. The kale did end up dying down with this year's extra cold winter, but it came back only to be bolting now. I can already see the florets forming which I imagine are very much edible.

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