The weather is still pretty mild for this time of year. We have had some cold nights near freezing and most things in the garden show it.My garlic is planted and I am doing the final cleanup of the beds. When pulling the last of the pepper plants from this bed, I noticed these carrots have finally germinated. I planted 10 squares of these at the end of July, after pulling the onions. So that is almost 3 months to germinate, and now winter is just about here. I doubt these get big enough before the beds freeze solid. They may or may not survive the winter, depending on how bad it is and how much snow cover we have.
There are still greens in the garden. Above I cut some kale, endive, escarole, parsley and pulled a few small watermelon radishes. The escarole seems to be the least cold tolerant of these and is showing some effects of the cold nights. I have been particularly enjoying the endive, dressed with a warm bacon fat/vinegar dressing, crumbled bacon and gorgonzola.
My other harvest last week was not of my own doing. After thinking about it for a year or two, I decided to try a share in the Cape Ann Fresh Catch CSF – Community Supported Fishery. It is like a CSA but for fish. Every Friday for 8 weeks I get two pounds of fish filets delivered to a local orchard in Bolton for pickup. You can’t get more convenient than that and you can’t get fresher fish unless you land them yourself. Above is this week’s delivery, Yellowtail flounder from the F/V Sabrina Marie out of Gloucester. For us, that is a lot of fish and made three meals.
That’s the harvest from my garden. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.
Lovely harvest of greens. And it is too bad those carrots took so long. I've found that I can get a good stand if I cover them with a doubled over row cover on the ground and water them every afternoon. They usually come up in a week or two when I do that. Carrots are such a pain to get up.
ReplyDeleteI tried the row cover this year and it didn't work. No carrots so I went up the road to buy some from the local organic farmer. He had none for sale, same reason. He planted a field of carrots and none germinated. Ouch.
DeleteThat would hurt. I've always been happy that I don't have to rely on skills as a gardener to make money. I have a lot of successes, but oh so many failures.
DeleteI am so envious that you have a local CSA for fish. Wish we lived near the coast to take advantage of that - our family just loves fresh fish. And your salad dressing for the endive sounds delicious!
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh about the slooow carrots. I managed to get mine to germinate but then the sowbugs decimated them. The second, or is it the third round are up and growing now, but I have no idea if they will amount to anything, even in my mild climate, the short days really slow things down. The endive salad sounds delicious, bacon and blue cheese, yum! I've been participating in a local CSF for a couple years now and we love it.
ReplyDeleteThat CSF sounds fantastic! I'm too far from any water to expect anything like that here. And mmm, bacon fat dressing on endive - nice!
ReplyDeleteThe endive salad sounds yummy, and the fish CSF sounds like a great deal. Too bad we are so far away from any commercial fish operations.
ReplyDeleteI am envious of your fish CSF and am drooling thinking about your yellowtail flounder.
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