Monday, July 4, 2016

Harvest Monday 4 July 2016




A couple of the turkeys that make a pass through my yard every day. This time they were particularly focused upward towards the foliage, rather than the ground. They know berries are in season. So much for my chances of getting any blueberries this year. Sorry for the poor photo. It was shot through a window into the sun.



I am sure they have designs on these beauties, my secret stash of wild black raspberries, not quite ripe yet.

Speaking of turkeys, we had a sort of tragedy last week. A local foods institution, Tom's Turkey Farm in Lancaster, Massachusetts, had a barn fire that destroyed 7,000 turkeys. Since they were uninsured, they think they are probably going to close the business, which supplied fresh turkeys and turkey pot pies to the community and employed a lot of people.          



The Winter Density romaines have sized up and are threatening to bolt, so I have started harvesting them. It is nice to now have harvests coming from the garden that can make a meal. The romaine went into a Caesar salad with grilled chicken and made a nice dinner.



Kohlrabi is going to be a feature here for another week or so as they size up quickly. Some of these went into a fermented kraut a la Dave @ Our Happy Acres. The smell of that was pretty pungent when it first started fermenting but after a day it toned down and smells quite pleasant. The radish is a Korean daikon type radish called Alpine. I pulled one to see how they are doing, since I don't want them to bolt on me. This type of radish is stockier and grows partly above the ground, which is great since I do not have the bed depth to grow standard Japanese daikon.




Another Webb's Wonderful crisphead. Per Mark's suggestion, the outer leaves were used for lettuce pockets with a Thai ground chicken saute, another meal from the garden (along with garlic, scallions, and cilantro from the garden).



When I prepped the first romaine from the garden and cut off the root end, I noticed a lot of milky white latex around the cut, a sign the lettuce is bolting and becoming bitter.  So I cut another romaine lettuce but found it so damaged by slugs only the center was salvageable. The third lettuce was much better and we have the makings of another salad. I also cut the first few sprouts from the Atlantis brokali and picked a few snow peas.



The last Webb's Wonderful started to bolt so it was harvested. The refrigerator is getting stuffed.



I pulled some of the beets to give the smaller plants some sun. The large red beet at the top is Shiraz, a great beet that I had germination trouble with this year (old seed). The two darker red beets at the bottom are Paonazza D'Egitto, an Italian heirloom beet from Pinetree. They germinated very well and are growing enthusiastically, and their foliage is beautiful



Finally, the garlic harvest is about to start. These are German Extra Hardy, the first to produce scapes and the first to be ready to harvest. I will probably dig the rest of the garlic in the next week. The weather is good for garlic harvesting right now, hot and dry, while the rest of the garden would like a nice drenching rain. I am going to start these off drying under the deck where it is less humid than the garage with good air circulation. Last year humidity was sky high and the garlic and onions cured very poorly.

That is what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners from around the world are harvesting, visit Dave at Our Happy Acres, our host for Harvest Monday.

12 comments:

  1. That's so sad about the turkey farm - hopefully they find a way to push through and not have to go out of business.

    Some beautiful lettuces coming out of the garden and that garlic looks great! I'm surprised you have slug issues with the lettuce right now. That's one of the benefits of our dry weather - the slugs are minimal around here. And a great tip about the milky substance when cutting lettuce - good to know!

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    1. Once the slugs get inside the head they are protected. The toads and snakes can't get them. Applying Sluggo around the base is no longer effective. So lesson is to hit them early.

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  2. That is a shame about the turkey farm. Seeing the wild turkeys is neat although eating your secret berry stash isn't! I made a note to try that Webb's Wonderful lettuce. I used lettuce leaves to hold a taco seasoned meat filling a while back. Your Thai chicken treatment sounds good and I'll have to give it a try when I have some lettuce again.

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    1. The Thai dish is called larb gai, I think. Lots of recipes around. And the taco filling sounds like a great variation. I'll have to try that next.

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  3. Really nice harvests Dave. Funnily enough, I have just started noticing our wild turkeys picking at the wild black raspberries just as the are ripening. Then the smaller birds (jays, catbirds) take over. You have got me thinking that I should pull up one of each type of garlic to see if they have bulbed. I thought harvest was not until later in the summer.

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    1. For hardnecks you harvest when 40-50% of the leaves are brown. If you dig late the bulbs open up and will store poorly.By the way, my wife informed me the turkeys found and were inspecting my berry patch today.

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  4. How awful for the turkey farmer and the poor turkeys and the community. Speaking of turkeys and lettuce, sauteed spiced ground turkey is a favorite lettuce cup filling here, we like it sort of Thai/Vietnamese style with noodles, herbs, and a fish sauce and lime based dipping sauce. Perhaps you might be able to substitute wild turkey for local raised domestic turkey...

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    1. That might happen if they mess with my berries.

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  5. I can't imagine how big that barn fire must have been, so sad.

    Your lettuces and kohlrabi look so amazing. And the garlic looks really good. I've always had trouble growing beets, getting them to bulb. Do you think we're too far into summer for me to start some from seed?

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    1. You should have no problem planting beets now. My problem is it's hot and dry here and the raised beds dry out so fast I have germination problems.

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  6. That's terrible news about the turkey farm and so many turkeys dying.
    It's neat to see wild turkeys, although it is never fun for the wildlife to take all the harvests. Right now there are so many wild blackberries that my three little blueberry bushes got completely ignored by the birds. All your harvests look lovely- especially the lettuce and beets.

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  7. The saddest part about the turkey farm fire is that they didn't have insurance. Surely that is not normal? I would expect any business to be insured. I won't be copying your use of Webbs Wonderful lettuce any time soon, because I have so far not managed to get any to germinate this time, which is a big shame considering that it is a new pack I'm using and many other varieties are doing well. I'm just about to sow Endives for the Autumn so there probably won't be any room for the Webbs' anyway. Your harvest this week is nicely varied, isn't it? It certainly widens the options for meals!

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