Harvest Monday, 5/31/20

It's been such a wet cold spring the garden didn't get planted until last weekend. My husband actually had to re-till because the only things that had germinated were lettuce, carrots, beets, and grass. We ended up growing a nice lush lawn.

The two beds closest to the house that were home to herbs, greens, and lettuce were saved from being re-tilled. So, we have loads of lettuce to harvest. Yesterday, I harvested as much lettuce that could fit in our fridge since 90 degree weather is headed our way.

Giant Caesar lettuce has a buttery texture. I was actually expecting more of a crunchy romaine type, but the tender leaves and flavor were still nice.

I'm pretty sure this is a Bibb lettuce and that the Nevada lettuce never germinated. It has a very nice tender leaf, but it very much was planning to bolt.

Black Seeded Simpson lettuce is as lovely as ever. It didn't look like it was even thinking about bolting.

Here's a picture of the lettuce bed before harvest. I do think the mountains of rain made the leaves a lot more delicate then they normally are.

What to do with so much lettuce? Lettuce cucumber salad with crunchy Vietnamese eggrolls sliced up on top accompanied by a sweet, sour, spicy dressing. Also chicken, celery, cucumber salad with walnuts and dried cranberries. The chicken is baked with a soy sauce, HappyWorcestershire sauce, brown sugar, ginger, lemon grass, and pear infused balsamic vinegar.

I might grill a couple pork chops marinated in a lemongrass sauce for a rice noodle lettuce salad. Which is usually served with cucumber, bean  sprouts,  chopped roasted peanuts, and the sweet and sour and spicy dressing.

Summer is here to stay. I hope we all get some glorious weather with just the right amount of rain.

Please join us for a fun filled Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Happy Acres.

The Garden Is Gone

Grey Seeded Simpson lettuce.

Giant bed of Simpson lettuce.

The Swiss chard is getting gigantic.

The bitter melon was mowed down and has grown back. The fruit is unlikely to mature before winter.

I had to leave town without a watering contingency plan during the hottest part of the summer so it was not a surprise to come home to a burned up garden. Sorry no pictures of the dead garden because it has since been mowed down. It is amazing how quickly the grasses have taken over, it is as though there was never a vegetable grown in that spot.

The summer drought has finally ended and the weekly rainfall has wrought an unusual sight. Lettuce starts abound cutting a chartreuse swath through the lawn, little bush bean plants, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers are starting over again. They are terribly cute, but it is unlikely they will bare fruit even when frost comes late in our area. I have a terrible urge to plant a patch of winter radishes, since they are so juicy and mild when grown in the fall months.

Preparing the Vegetable Garden Soil for Tilling

New garden extension covered during the winter in wood dust and ashes from the woodstove

A nice array of weeds, overwintered lettuces, and fava beans

Tiny little Swiss chard or silverbeet

Tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings waiting on the back step

I am a bit embarrassed at all the weeds in the garden, but the only excuse I can offer is a bruised rib and pulled rib muscles. It hurts to breath let alone cough or laugh. So any weeding has only been half hearted at best.

The garden was more than doubled in size in the fall and then the garden extension was allowed to lay fallow covered in wood dust. All winter we have been taking the ashes from the woodstove out into the garden to combine with the wood dust left from having tree stumps ground down. Along with 400 pounds of purchased aged manure and compost all the soil amendments will be tilled under in the next few days. Hopefully the manure will be acidic enough to balance the basic pH of the wood ash.

It is amazing how well the overwintered lettuces and fava broad beans are doing. Even with weedy competition the lettuces seem to be holding their own. And the lettuces are everywhere. There are lettuces in the lettuce bed, the Swiss chard silverbeet bed, and the fava broad bean bed. Too bad the Swiss chard otherwise known as silverbeet are doing so poorly. The chard looks good but they are so little, hardly worth the effort of overwintering but that may be due to not getting them big and established enough before the cold weather set in.

To Till or Not To Till the Garden and Mow Down the Fava Beans

Silver green colors of Windsor fava broad bean.

Overwintered self sowed free range lettuces

The overwintered free range or self seeded lettuces were mowed down by my husband as their bed was covered in weeds preparing to flower so he wanted to catch them before they spread. The lettuces are coming back quickly with the warm weather. The overwintered fava beans have been enjoying the heat as well and are laden with blossoms but not a single bean has yet to form, admittedly there are very few pollinators about especially since the weeds were mowed down. But still the fava beans are over knee high and not a single pod has been born.

I am still debating whether or not to till the whole garden. Starting over is alluring and oddly seductive. There is the whole clean slate put your plants where you want them thing, but the fava beans are growing so well and it would be lovely to taste some for the first time. My husband says they are utterly delicious.

It has been very warm for such an early spring with temperatures around 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius). I have been seduced by warm temperatures before and made the mistake of planting tender tomato, eggplant and peppers out early only to lose dozens of home raised seedlings. This was in an early April in the high mountain desert rather than the river country where I live now. Those lost seedlings were very large and well hardened off, it was a mistake I have learned from.

Big beautiful worms are living in the fava bean bed, I was pulling some weeds and managed to pull up a few lovely worms. Here's to a gigantic harvests of gorgeous vegetables.

Surviving the Winter Blooming Windsor Broad Fava Bean, Lettuce, and Swiss Chard

Some of the pictures are clickable if you want to get a closer look at the plants that have survived the dark cold winter after sprouting in October.

Lettuce of the Self Sowed Variety and Swiss Chard and Wild Onions

Flowering Windsor Broad Fava Bean

The Windsor fava broad beans are full of blossoms even though nary a bean has yet to form. The plants are not very tall yet maybe ten inches (25.4 cm) but they should grow up to three to four feet tall (0.9 - 1.2 meters). Just a few had blackened tips from the winter frosts and some of the plants had stems that had bent and died in the wind storms but every single plant has lived through the long dark winter days, after being directly seeded into the garden mid-October.

The lettuces have formed beautiful rosettes, although the weeds are also huge and definitely competing with the lettuces. But the Swiss chard are tiny tiny tiny and the wild onions don't look as if they'll be getting very big this year. All the large lettuces were harvested December 2nd before the first hard frost, and the lettuce that are now in the garden were tiny self-sowed starts at the beginning of winter.

Hard Freeze Coming to the Garden

Box of lettuce of Cimmaron, Grand Rapids and mixed parentage.

Icicle radish.

More gorgeous Icicle radishes.

Looks like Cherry Belle and Icicle have created a mutant radish, there's just a hint of blush on its shoulders.

There is a hard freeze predicted in the next few days so I went ahead and picked a giant box of the self-sowed lettuces and pulled up the rest of the radishes from the garden. The Icicle radishes had gotten huge with the longest at 12 inches and being that they were volunteer plants I was deeply pleased with their success. The green shoulders of the radishes were the parts growing above the soil. I remember reading a wonderful little gardening book of a man who had gardened in many regions of the United States. He had a photograph of radishes 3 foot long hanging off his fence in Alaska where daylight never ends in their long cool summers. He said the radishes would just grow and grow always sweetly tender and mild. I got the impression that the gardener turned writer was a straightforward military fellow who had a deep love for the earth and enjoyed experimenting with growing methods. I imagined that it was a nomadic military life that kept him moving while he continually tried to put down roots by planting things. A bit of fanciful thinking I am sure since he gave no reason in his book for the different places he gardened in.

I spent a couple of hours washing each lettuce leaf and drying them in the salad spinner before putting them up in a couple of lidded plastic tubs destined for the refrigerator. I keep the lid of the lettuce container cracked open. All this lettuce in the fridge begs to be paired with banh xeo a crispy Vietnamese crepe filled with meat and shrimp. Hot crispy fried food wrapped in lettuce with herbs and dipped in spicy sweet salty lime sauce also known as nuoc mam cham is a little bit of hot heaven. When I mentioned cooking banh xeo to my husband, his eyes got big and he said in a quiet voice how I should cook a large batch so we could freeze some for later. Heh heh. Good thinking.

Hard Freezes and Over Wintering Lettuce and Fava Broad Beans

Grand Rapids and Cimmaron volunteer lettuces.

We have had two hard freezes in our area last week with the temperature getting down to the low 20's Fahrenheit. The volunteer melons, beans, and tomatoes have bit the dust but the volunteer lettuces of the Grand Rapids and Cimmaron varieties are still going strong and are filling their bed out nicely. It has been raining a lot lately and the weather has warmed to the 50's and 60's during the day. Which means the plants that love the cool weather are growing quickly in the grey wet wintry days.

Broad Windsor fava bean plant.

The Broad Windsor fava beans are growing beautifully. They are already 6-8 inches tall with most of them branching out and forming multiple stems. The fava bean plants should end up 3 feet tall at their tallest. I enjoy seeing the garden covered in fall leaves. It reminds me that despite the cold dreariness of winter that things can still grow and flourish in the cold earth.

Freshly tilled ground with mulch spread over top.

New ground has been tilled. We have extended the garden by more than twice its length and spread mulch over the surface which should break down over the winter months and then will be rototilled in for spring planting. I plan on storing and saving a lot more food by either canning or freezing the surplus. Most of my neighbors in Idaho tried to preserve at least 4 years worth of food by canning, freezing, and drying. My main food crops will be tomatoes for sauce and salsa, green beans, corn, dried beans, summer and winter squash, and peppers.

I have not been able to grow large amounts of cucumbers, eggplants, zucchini, or summer squash in western Kentucky. The heat and humid may play a part, but truth be told I have never seen so many insects in my life as they have in this area. The stem borers, Japanese beetles, and squash bugs can be just awful. This year I am going to try interplanting marigold flowers, nasturtium, dill, basil, and cilantro in hopes of deterring the insect pests from the vegetables.

Tomatoes, okra, peppers, green beans, and sweet potatoes do simply wonderfully in this climate. Japanese beetles do seem to love the okra and green beans and end up consuming a great deal of the plants foliage, but the plants always seem to pull through and produce in large quantities. I have heard of people pickling, canning and drying okra. Now, the idea of drying okra is somewhat alluring but the high humidity in this area curtails some of my enthusiasm. Hmmm.

Self-Sowed Lettuces in the Fall Garden

The chartreuse Grand Rapids lettuce.

Left: Cimmaron red romaine lettuce. Right: Grand Rapids lettuce.

The self-sowed lettuces sprouted just four weeks ago, after the garden was rototilled in preparation for the fall garden. The plants are starting to fill out nicely and gain some size. The soil has been too wet from the fall rains to do any hoeing, which is the excuse I'm using for only half heartedly pulling weeds.

I'm looking forward to a winter with lettuces, Swiss chard, beets, and fava beans from the garden. The only vegetables I've ever tried to over winter have been leeks which are wonderfully care free even in the harshest of winters.

Fall Lettuces Self Seeded and Wild Onions

The last row of the garden is taken up by free range lettuces that have self seeded this fall and some wild onions. The lettuces look to be Grand Rapids with its chartreuse leaves and Cimmaron a red romaine. I am going to leave the lettuces and onions where they lie and fill in the bed with a handful of Bloomsdale spinach seeds that I'm pre-sprouting. Let's see how they handle hard freezes and whether they will overwinter.

My soil is predominately good old western Kentucky clay which tends to form a hard crust when dry so it is best to plant the seeds shallow then what is recommended. Amending the soil has helped the clay structure with the addition of organic matter such as leaf mold, grass clippings, rotted manure, and wood ash. This is only my third year gardening in this soil and climate so there is still some experimenting with vegetable varieties and the timing of planting out seeds and plants.