Harvest Monday 17 October 2016

I was wondering what kind of foliage season we would have given the extended drought, but it looks like it is going to be a knock-out. This sugar maple in the woods behind West Burial Grounds in Bolton is a traffic-stopper when the afternoon sun lights it up. The photo does not do it justice. We are planning a trip Tuesday out to western Massachusetts to enjoy the foliage for ourselves, after being inconvenienced all weekend with the peepers out of Boston plugging up town roads. Hope they dropped a lot of $$ at the local orchards and farms.



There is not much left in the garden except for the root vegetables. I pulled the last few beets and dug up a leek for Sunday dinner. I sliced the leek and some Jimmy Nardello peppers and mushrooms and sauteed them, then poached some flounder filets from our CSF on top of the vegetables.



I harvested the first of the fall radish crop, with plenty more left in the ground. Since they grew in cooler weather, they were sweet can crispy with no heat. I would have liked to plant a few more things, but in August the garden was bone dry with temperatures around 100F/38C. The radishes germinate and grow quickly so I waited until temps cooled off and we got a little rain.


We did not get frost at the house but at the garden, 2 miles away and downhill, we definitely had some kind of event. The tomatoes are all dead as are most of the peppers. The survivors are the ancho poblanos, which are still loaded with peppers, and the Hungarian paprika, but none of them are really happy. As happens every year, one killing freeze and now the weather is going to be balmy for weeks with a high on Tuesday of 80F/27C.


This will be the last basket of tomatoes. A lot are green so we should be able to enjoy tomatoes in our salads for a few weeks.


The other thing I planted in August that actually germinated was peas. These are Green Beauty snow peas and the cold weather did not bother them. They are now flowering and maybe I will have a few peas to pick in a week.

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

Harvest Monday 26 September 2016

I finally got enough Ancho Poblanos to make a batch of chilies rellenos this week. The plants are a meter tall and very healthy, but unfortunately the weather is getting colder. It is 40 F/4.5 C this morning, which is getting uncomfortably close to freezing. The mature pepper plants can endure a little cold weather as long as we don't have a killing frost. Seems we are never lucky in that respect.  Also in the pile is a Melrose sweet red pepper, a pile of Jimmy Nardello, and a ripe jalapeno.


Another boring basket of cherry tomatoes. I already had a large number of these in the refrigerator from our Acadia trip. I ran out of time to process them so I threw two bags of them in the fridge, following Mark's lead. One bag was then slow roasted and frozen. The second bag went into the blender for gazpacho, along with onions, peppers, summer squash, and a chili. I used some of the suspect red onions I had set aside, the ones with the apparent bruise on the side.


You can see the flat spot on the top of this onion. The spot is flat but does not seem soft. I don't remember dropping any of the onions, and even so the onions are rock hard and wouldn't show a mark unless they were whacked hard. In fact, they had these spots when they were harvested.


On peeling the onion, you can see the black mold growing under the skin. So it was a good idea to set these aside and not put them in the onion storage bin. The mold must have caused the flat spots by collapsing the onion cells on the surface.


Slice off the infected spot and you can see the mold has not yet penetrated the interior of the onion, so the onion is still good. I only have  a few more to use up.


I also used garlic in the gazpacho and was disappointed to find some of the bulbs are already starting to soften and dry up. Unfortunately I just grabbed a bulb and did not notice which variety it was. From the same head, the two cloves at bottom right were white and juicy, the two at the top had yellowed and softened but were still used, and the clove on the left was brown and nasty and was tossed. So I have to get on with trying to preserve some more of the harvest this week. I plan to slice and dehydrate some, and I will also try roasting a number of whole heads and freezing them. I tasted one of the fermented cloves I made and it was eye opening. Very pungent but the clove was still firm and could be used in cooking.

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

Harvest Monday 19 September 2016

I missed Harvest Monday last week because we spent a week in a cabin on Somes Sound on Mount Desert Island, Maine, doing strictly non-gardening tasks, like watching the sunset from Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.


Or a little before the sun set, we watched the moon rise over the fog bank on Frenchman Bay from the other side of Cadillac. A storm front went through the day before and it was very cold and windy up there, so not a lot of flatlanders were around to spoil the picture.

Harvest Monday 8 August 2016

This will be a short post this week, being away in Maine for a week on a windjammer cruise. The garden is in-between the cool weather crops and the summer crops. I am still waiting for tomatoes, peppers and squash to arrive. I expected to see baseball bats lying among the squash plants when I got back but there were none to be found. At least the Romanesco has a couple of male flowers on it. I also expected to see a few ripe cherry tomatoes but there were none. Since it is almost mid-August, I wonder how much of anything I will be getting. It was dry last week except for a few quick showers that provided no real relief since the water quickly evaporates. My son did help me by watering, keeping the plants alive and healthy.


 

A last trip to the garden before I left produced a few goodies which went in to the refrigerator. I got my first Dunja zucchini and the first Sunburst squash. A lot of the Hungarian Paprika peppers ripened enough to harvest, since I didn't want to trust leaving them on the plants for a week. I also got a first batch of the Amarylla yellow tomatillos and a few Jalapenos.



I checked out the garden on Sunday and found a few things. The Super Shepherd peppers had a few ripe ones that were suffering from sunscald, so I harvested them. The Helda pole beans yielded a few beans, which might be most of my bean crop for the year. The cucumbers are diseased yet again, despite being planted in a new spot, but we got a couple stunted ones. It is not bacterial wilt that is causing the problem and I have not yet seen a cucumber beetle this season. I also got another ripe Hungarian Paprika pepper so it is time to fire up the dehydrator this week.

That's what happened in my garden the past two weeks. To see what other gardeners around the world are doing, visit Dave at OurHappyAcres, our host for Harvest Monday.

Garden Update - July

Because of the weather and other things, the garden got in late this year, so it is time for a quick update. I have two plots in the community garden, one with raised beds and one planted in-ground. The raised bed garden is a cinch to maintain with its beautiful soil that is easy to weed and great for most plants. The in-ground garden requires more work prepping and weeding, which I try to minimize with plastic mulches. I always wish I had space for more varieties, but I do have 32 tomato plants and 31 pepper plants between the two plots.

In the raised bed garden, I have two 4x6 foot (1.2x1.8 m) beds with an 8 inch (20 cm) depth. The tomatoes are planted around the outside east edge of the beds so they don't shade out other plants. The tomatoes are trained up a trellis cord, pinched to a single leader, and planted 1 per square foot. This spacing actually does work quite well.

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So, going counter-clockwise around the beds, the tomatoes planted on the end this year are Jaune Flamme. This will be my third year growing these and they are doing quite well and will probably be my first tomatoes.

Garden Update - End of May 2016

The Solomon Seals my wife planted last year in the back of the hosta bed are up and blooming. We have lots of False Solomon Seal growing wild around the yard but I have never seen a Solomon Seal around here. When pollinated each flower will produce a small blue-black berry. The False Solomon Seal flowers at the end of the stem and produces a cluster of red berries.

In the community garden, now that it almost June I finally got all of the cool weather crops transplanted or seeded. What remains to do is plant the warm weather crops (beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash). That will happen the first week of June after I return from a visit to St. Louis for my niece's wedding next weekend. I still have to prepare the beds in the in-ground plot for the tomatoes and peppers, but otherwise I am all set to do it when I get back.



The tomatoes are potted up and under the grow lights. They are looking good and should hold for another two weeks before being set out in the garden. The weather here is still pretty unsettled. You can see that after declaring a disaster, I managed to get enough seedlings started to meet my needs, except for Sunkist, where only 1 of 10 seeds germinated. The current inventory (out of 6 planned seedlings for each variety):

• 4 Bing
• 5 Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye
• 3 Black Beauty
• 1 Sunkist
• 5 Sweet Treats
• 4 Rose de Berne
• 5 Jaune Flamme
• 3 Honey Drop
• 6 Juliet
• 4 Black Cherry (purchased)

Since I have room for 28 tomatoes, I will have to select from the above for my garden and try to give the rest away.

All of the peppers are potted up and doing well under the lights. I did have a complete failure of the Carmen seeds to germinate and I killed a few of the Super Shepherd plants, but I did pretty well with the rest. I am also missing the Tiburon Anchos I planned because I simply forgot to order seeds. Jalapeno plants will just be purchased. Here is the inventory:

4 Hungarian Paprika

2 Super Shepherd

6 Jimmy Nardello

5 Lemon Drop

6 Revolution

A couple of the Lemon Drop peppers are going into containers I will bring inside in hopes of extending the season. A big problem will be whether there is enough light for them in the winter.

The cruciferous flea beetles have found my uncovered brassicas. Fortunately they have not yet bothered the waxy leaved plants like the Golden Acre cabbage and the kohlrabi. But they have found the mustards and are feasting on them. I did one spraying of Spinosad but that did not bother them. Pyrethrin is next to try. I usually alternate those two sprays to try to avoid building up immunity. My radishes are starting to emerge in another bed so I need to get that covered before they find them.

Seedling Progress

The weather has been variable and it is chilly and breezy, more like March than late April weather. It has also been quite dry but still cloudy, and starting the garden is going to be difficult until the pump man re-installs the foot valves removed for the winter. I have not done anything in the garden yet except visit a few times, but I need to get going really, really soon.



As an example, the kales above are just about ready to be set out in the garden. I will have a single brassica row for the kale, broccoli, collards, and cabbages. Putting them in one row will allow me to cover them with row cover on hoops to keep the flea beetles and cabbage caterpillars at bay. From left: Red Ursa, Nash's Green, and Nero di Toscana.



Most of the broccolis are also ready to go. From left: Spigariello liscia, Blue Wind, and Atlantis. I am particularly impressed by the size and vigor of Atlantis and have high hopes for it.



The cabbages are ready as well. Clockwise from upper left: Golden Acre cabbage, Flash collards, Green Wave mustard, and Minuet Napa cabbage. The Green Wave mustard is getting impatient and starting to bolt. I may just re-seed it in place. The Minuet cabbage seedlings, new this year,  look a little strange for a Napa. The leaves are serrated on the edge and a bit fuzzy. I may start some Soloist as a backup.



The kohlrabis are doing well and are ready to go. These will get planted in the raised beds. Again, I have to plan the bed assignments so I can group plants that need covering together. Flea beetles are a big menace but the caterpillars seem less likely to attack these smaller plants. Top row is Azur Star and the bottom row is Winner.



Lettuces are also ready. Clockwise from upper left: Green Ice, Red Sails, and Buttercrunch, The fourth flat has escarole in the top row and endive in the bottom. I decided I was planting too may of them and didn't use them all before they bolted. So this year, three of each to start. The three lettuces above will go into my City Picker self-watering container on the deck, for easy harvesting without driving to the garden. I have also started seeds for Midnight Ruffles, Winter Density Romaine, and Webb's Wonderful crisphead which will go into my raised beds at the community garden.



I have shown the good and the bad, so now for the ugly. Above are pictured my successes with the solanums this year. The peppers clockwise from upper left: Revolution, Jimmy Nardello, Hungarian Paprika, and Lemon Drop. The sole tomato flat is Juliet. The rest of my tomatoes and peppers either failed to emerge (even after pre-sprouting) or I killed them by failing to notice a flat or two under the humidity dome had dried out. Just takes one oversight to wipe out weeks of effort.

I am happy with what I do have. Revolution and Jimmy Nardello are must have peppers for me. And how can I not be happy that I managed to sprout and grow those beautiful Lemon Drop plants after swearing off baccatam peppers. The best of those will go in containers to be brought inside for the winter to see if I can get some to ripen. And I have three (maybe four) Hungarian Paprika plants to play with again. Carmen completely failed to germinate from fresh seed, so that is puzzling and disappointing, but I may be able to buy them locally. The Super Shepherd peppers germinated but I managed to let their flat dry out and kill them. If I can find Carmen I will just substitute them for the Super Shepherd, which were just an experiment.

The tomato situation is a somewhat bigger disaster, since none of the tomatoes I was planning to grow are available locally. I did push some new seeds into the cells in the flats and some of them are starting to emerge now, so I may recover partially. After all, it is still 5 weeks or more to setting out.The Chinese gentleman in our community garden direct seeds his tomato plants and they eventually catch up with everyone's transplants. So not all is lost.



Finally, just to add additional pressure to get the garden ready, my onion plants arrived from Dixondale Farms last week and are being kept cool in the basement. These are Copra yellow storage onions and Red Wing red storage onion. They are huge and beautiful, better than anything I can grow. The one disadvantage is they are dormant, which makes it possible to store and ship them. I have found it takes up to a month before they break dormancy and resume growth. I suspect a well grown onion start might compete, being actively growing when it is set out in the garden. Anyway, the race is on to get these in the garden since day length is what it is all about, and how much foliage they can add before the summer solstice starts to shorten days up here in the northern latitudes.

Spring Tiptoes In

I took a photograph of my Meyer lemon tree in January and noted it lacked blossoms, which it produces in abundance each spring. Well, the tree now has blossoms, so it must finally be spring. The sun is definitely stronger but it is still chilly and windy outside. On Sunday I stopped at the garden while doing a shopping excursion. It may be spring but the garden looks like tundra.



The only green is from the weeds that overwintered. The soil is still a bit boggy and not really ready to work. And there is more rain in the forecast, so no need to rush things.



There is a bit of green showing in my own garden plot. The garlic looks healthy and just needs a shot of nitrogen to get it really going.


Inside it is warm and the seedlings are doing well under the grow lights. The lettuces, broccoli and cabbages are sown and have germinated. While small now, they are weeks away from weather where it would be safe to plant them outside, so  these are on schedule. A couple of years ago I was wooed by an unseasonably mild spring and transplanted early, only to be set back severely by a single hard freeze.



The peppers this year are doing very well. The technique of pre-sprouting with a wet paper towel inside a plastic bag worked really well and all peppers have germinated adequately, and most of the sprouted seeds have emerged from the flats in which they were transplanted.



The tomatoes, however, are a mixed bag and I am not real happy. Usually I have much better luck with tomatoes. I tried the same pre-sprouting technique used for the peppers with the tomatoes. I was really surprised with how long some varieties took to sprout. Currently I am still waiting for Sunkist, Black Beauty, and Jaune Flamme to sprout after two weeks.. I sprinkled a few more seeds on the paper towels in case the original seeds are DOA. These are three varieties I can not buy locally so if they do not sprout soon I will not be growing them this year.

Seed Starting Season

Here in Massachusetts zone 5b, the gardening season has begun. Most of the brassicas have sprouted and are tucked snugly under the grow lights. The pepper seeds were placed in damp paper towels inside plastic bags on top of the grow lamp, where a warm  environment is maintained 16 hours a a day, and have started to germinate.



Outside, the picture is a bit different. We had a quick moving storm come through which gave us an inch of wet snow and some wind, but the sun is now out. This will all melt quickly.



This cardinal arrived on its way north and is not bothered in the least by a quick spring snowstorm. And fortunately, no power outages.



The pepper seeds have been on top of the grow lamps covered with a kitchen towel since March 27 and are starting to germinate. First to germinate were Revolution, Carmen, and Super Shepherd.

 

These germinated Super Shepherd seeds were placed in 6-cell flats and are now kept on the heat mat until they emerge from the starting mix.



The onions and shallots have received their second haircut and the trimmings are destined for omelets and other culinary uses. The expensive Takrima leek seeds finally emerged after a month and received their first trim along with the onions. I’m happy I will not have to buy leek seedlings after all.

Sunday I sowed nine varieties of tomato seeds, using the same technique I used with the pepper seeds. They are now on top of a grow lamp and will hopefully start to germinate within a week’s time. The plan is to get six of each started, or 54 tomato plants. That is much more than I have space for, but I will pot them up into 4 inch pots and then select the best for myself. The rest will be shared with friends.

Next up will be lettuces and chard. The lettuces will mostly go into self-watering planter on the deck where they are easily accessed without a drive to the garden. Then I have to get the garden beds cleaned up and figure out where I am going to put all of these plants. Hopefully we don’t fall into a pattern of stormy Sundays because that is the only day I have free until late April.

Pimenta Moida

Continuing with my interest in Portuguese cuisine, I noticed my Azorean cookbooks talk about a pepper paste called Pimenta Moida that is used as a condiment. You can find it at the small Portuguese shops around here but I have not seen it in the Portuguese food sections at the local supermarkets so I have never tried it. It is a fermented product and looks like a good way to preserve and use some of the peppers from the garden.

The local Azorean community used to make their year’s supply every fall, buying cases of Shepherds peppers from the produce markets and enlisting all family members to process them. I have never heard of this pepper but it is supposed to be a long, slender sweet red pepper, probably of Italian origin. Apparently it is very popular in Ontario, who knew? I have not seen this type of pepper in the stores around here, at least under that name. Checking seed catalogs, there is a “Super Shepherd” pepper which seems to be the right type: long, red, slender and of Italian origin. Another one is called “Shepherds Ramshorn”, described as originating in Spain but now commonly grown in Italy. This pepper is supposed to be very sweet, having one of the highest brix ratings. I may try growing one of these two next year, or maybe I will just grow some extra Carmen peppers.

Since it is far past pepper season here in New England and I do not have peppers from my garden, I checked out the supermarkets. What I found was mostly hothouse peppers, except for these. The peppers below are LeRouge Royale peppers. LeRouge is an elongated red pepper that was developed in Israel. It is commonly field grown in California, Florida, and Mexico. Mine came from Mexico. In addition, I picked up a few red Fresno peppers to add a little spice. Little spice? These Fresno peppers are hot! Since I can not believe that Pimenta Moida is not just a little spicy, I will make my paste spicy to taste by adding the Fresno peppers one at a time until I get a paste spicy enough for my timid tastes.



The preparation for making Pimenta Moida involves cutting the peppers into strips, removing seeds and membranes, and salting with sea salt.



The salted peppers are placed in a glass bowl. I covered them with a piece of plastic wrap and placed a plate on the wrap. The bowl was covered with a towel and set aside to ferment for a couple of weeks at room temperature.



After fermenting for two weeks, the peppers were limp and a lot of moisture was extracted from them, forming a brine in the bowl. There were a few small moldy spots I trimmed off first, then I drained the peppers and put them into a food processor. The result was a bright red paste. To spice it up, I started adding  the Fresno peppers, one half at a time. It turns out just one half pepper made it spicy enough for me. I can enjoy the intense pepper flavor of the Moida with a little added snap from the Fresno but without a lot of pain.



The three peppers only made a half pint of paste. It has a nice pepper flavor but is very salty, so it probably needs to be treated as a condiment and any additional salt in a recipe needs to be adjusted. I poured a thin layer of olive oil over the top to help preserve it and put it in the refrigerator. My first use of it was to coat some split chicken breasts. I let the breasts sit for an hour before baking them. The result was excellent. The Moida formed a nice peppery, salty crust on the breasts and added a lot of flavor to otherwise bland chicken.

I did eventually find a commercial Pimena Moida in the supermarket. Gonsalves is a New England based distributor specializing in Portuguese foods. Their Pimenta Moida was labeled “Crushed Red Peppers” and looked like any other jar of hot peppers. I was about to buy a jar until I read the ingredients. While actually sourced from the Azores, their product contained vinegar and a long list of preservatives and additives. The vinegar means it is not a fermented product and it is certainly not a “living” food, so that was disappointing and made any comparison pointless.

Pimenta Moida is a fermented living food and is another way to preserve the garden harvest in a way that is both tasty and healthy. I am reading two of David Perlmutter’s books, Grain Brain and Brain Maker. Grain Brain shows the research that gluten and carbohydrates negatively affect cognitive health. Brain Maker details how our gut biome (the trillions of organisms that live in our gut) also affect brain health. At the end of the book he has recipes for foods that will help restore the health of our gut biome, all of them fermented foods. So fermented pickles, salsas, sauerkraut, kimchi (yes, you kimchi skeptics, he considers kimchi one of the healthiest of foods!),  yogurt, kefir, pickled fish, pickled meats (e.g., corned beef), pickled eggs are all brain-healthy foods. I am really looking forward to the coming garden season and planning to try fermentation as a way to preserve more of my harvest.

Harvest Monday 31 August 2015

The dry weather continued, with no significant rain but at least temperatures have been a little more moderate. It makes it tough to get any seeds to germinate if the beds continually dry out. Summer harvests continue to come in. The peppers are starting to come into their stride, too bad our season is not longer.

 

 

This is a big pile of Jimmy Nardello peppers, with a few others. The Tiburon Ancho are finally starting to fruit heavily and I hope I get enough for some Chiles Rellenos. It takes them a while to reach size, now small bushes about 30 inches/75 cm. tall. This is probably the last of the summer squash. The bushes have been taken down by the powdery mildew and I will pull them this week.

 

 

Harvested a couple of flea-bitten heads of Win-Win choi that was replanted when I pulled out the Soloist cabbages. These were started from seed indoors so I could ensure germination before transplanting.The advantage of the dry weather is no slugs or earwigs.

 

 

I picked a lot of tomatoes, including this pile of paste varieties. Eight quarts of these were turned into 8 pints of chili sauce for the pantry. That task consumed Sunday but is well worth the effort. I used this recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. I do not like to can and normally avoid it.  I can buy canned tomatoes and pasta sauce that is pretty good, but I can not buy anything like this chili sauce. We like it on hamburgers, steaks, and scrambled eggs. This batch came out with a bit of a bite. In lieu of the red pepper flakes, I used two of the large Padron peppers for heat. This year they are hotter than a Jalapeno by far.

 

 

Some of the larger slicers are ready now, including Celebrity. A lot of the Sweet Treats and Juliet tomatoes are now in the dehydrator for my second batch of dried tomatoes. Another bag of tomatoes was harvested but misplaced so they did not get photographed, plus a few of the slicers were snitched for BLTs. More tomatoes are due in this week, so maybe I will have to change my mind about processing some. I will probably try Dave’s technique of blender sauce in my Ninja Ultima and then freeze it.

 

To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 24 August 2015

We had a week of unsettled weather, but at least it rained a couple of times, which really helped with the drought. Again, not much time spent in the garden. Besides the lingering cold, I had a partial nail removal for a pincer toenail (about as much fun as it sounds) which required me to stay off my feet for a couple of days. The good news is I have carrot seeds germinating, which is pretty much a first for me. What I did different this time is plant them deeper so seeds would be less likely to dry out.

 

 

Lots of peppers are becoming ready to harvest. The bell peppers are Revolution and are the only bell peppers that will produce for me. The other peppers are Carmen and Jimmy Nardello. The JN peppers are often red on one side and green on the other. You really have to do a total scan of the fruit before you pick if you want your peppers completely red on all sides.

 

 

More squash, some too big and some just right. and a Tasty Jade cucumber. The brown objects are very small Poona Kheera cucumbers, an heirloom from India. None of the cucumbers are doing well this year, despite having ducked the wilt bug so far. It has probably been too dry for their liking and I can not get to the garden every day to water.

 

 

Lots of tomatoes now coming in. This is a basket of small tomatoes including Jaune Flamme, Juliet, Esterina, Sweet Treats, and Chocolate Pear.

 

 

More squash and peppers, plus two more Tasty Jade cucumbers. I have the makings of gazpacho with the harvests this week.

 

 

The two pink tomatoes at the top are Pruden’s Purple, and it is turning out to be a nice tomato. Despite some early yellowing on the bottom, the plant has continued to grow and set fruit even in the raised bed, and is now over the top of the 6 foot trellis. It does crack easily. The larger tomato (at 1 pound 1 ounce) cracked on the bottom and became Sunday dinner’s side dish. The orange tomatoes are Sunkist and they are a great tomato. The fruits are usually completely blemish free and look like the catalog photo.

 

 

Here is a Sunkist sliced for BLT sandwiches.  Flesh is meaty and juicy with small seed cavities and flavor is very good.

 

 

The paste tomatoes are starting to ripen in large enough quantities to start doing something with them. Chili sauce is first on the list. The Roma tomatoes of unknown variety are interesting. Seeds came from one fruit but the resultant plants are producing fruit of two different shapes. Two of the plants have the long, slim profile of the tomatoes on top, while other plants are producing the egg shaped fruit in the middle. Shapes are not mixed on a plant and each plant bears only one shape of fruit.

 

 

More small tomatoes, so it is time to fire up the dehydrator again. The Sweet Treats are really tasty when dried. The color balance is off in this photo, since none of the Esterina cherries were green when picked.

 

That is what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are doing, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.