Harvest Monday 27 June 2016

The Green Beauty snow peas are blooming so I should have peas soon.



And sometimes the view of your neighbor's weedy plot is actually pleasant. This bee definitely likes it. And speaking of weeds, just ignore any that slip into my pictures. By the time you read this the "gardener" will have removed them.



There are still a lot of greens coming from the garden, although the spinach is about done. The onions are some of the excess Copra seedlings that I planted closely together along the edge of the onion squares.



These two small heads are the first of the Natacha escarole to be harvested.  I could not remove one without the other, so two. They were pretty nice with no slug damage.





I harvested my first Webb's Wonderful crisphead and it was very nice, just a little tip burn and a few baby slugs. It is a little tougher than an Iceberg lettuce but still nice and much fresher. I saved some of the outer leaves that weren't slug damaged and found they go well with a sandwich. I just need some tomatoes now for my BLT.



The kohlrabies are sizing up fast now. I am saving these to try making kraut. I may add a few of the radishes to the kraut for color.



A second crisphead was harvested later in the week. It is getting hot here and remains dry so I do not want them to bolt on me.



Finally, the rest of the garlic scapes were ready to harvest. The German Extra Hardy, a large garlic, was first a week ago and had nice sized scapes. This week harvesting the other varieties, I found it interesting that the size of the scape has nothing to do with the eventual size of the bulb. The German Red, my largest garlic by far, had smaller scapes (both length and diameter) than the other varieties. But the stems on the German Red are huge, indicating a large bulb is going to await me at harvest. I guess it is putting its energy where it does (me) the most good, into the bulbs.

That was the harvest for the week, but I did take a few kale leaves from each variety just to compare them. They will eventually wind up in a beans, sausage and kale dish this week.



Nero di Toscano or Dinosaur kale. The leaves are a dark green/gray color. This is a good kale for use in salads and is supposed to be very cold hardy (although that is not my personal experience).



This is Nash's Green, a selection of Nash Huber from his farm in Washington state. It is described as a tall kale but it is the shortest one of three in my garden. The color variation is interesting. Some leaves are lime green with a yellowish stem, while others show some of the blue shades found on the rear of all leaves.



The Red Ursa kale is a knockout, a beautiful, vigorous plant. Leaves vary from green to blue, all with purple stems and veins. I think this one is going to be a favorite of mine.



OK, this is not actually a kale, or is it? This is Spigariello liscia, a plant that doesn't know what it is. Technically, I think it is a broccoli, but a broccoli where you eat the leaves. Brilliant, because in this climate I am expert at growing broccoli leaves but not so good at getting broccoli heads I can eat. So to heck with the heads, lets eat leaves. And it is looking like I will get a lot from my four plants.

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