Anyway, I'm still reaping the benefits of previous efforts in the garden. Here's one of the more interesting harvests of late, a basket of Guntmadingen Winter Spinach.
It's a very pretty spinach with a distinctive oak leaf shape. This spinach isn't just a pretty leaf, it's also delicious and seems to have less of an oxalic tang than the typical store bought varieties.
I haven't been very successful at growing spinach in the past so it's been a nice surprise to have this variety do fairly well. That's in spite of pushing the limits by starting the plants very late last fall and leaving the baby plants totally unprotected out in the garden through the winter. This variety is best for overwintering but it should be started early enough in the fall to develop some good growth before cold weather and short days slow growth down to a crawl. The plants are supposed to keep well through the winter and then put on a good burst of growth as the days warm up and start to lengthen. Winter spinaches are cold hardy but supposedly bolt more quickly than varieties that are suitable for starting in the spring. I think I got lucky this winter because we had a very warm stretch of weather through January and the first half of February. That warm weather produced a nice growth spurt but the days weren't long enough yet to trigger bolting so the plants are still putting out good leafy growth. Spinach is triggered to bolt when daylight reaches 12.5 to 15 hours per day. Now that we're getting 12+ hours from sunrise to sunset I expect the plants to bolt soon. I'm looking forward to giving this variety a proper start next fall.
The rest of the harvests over the last few weeks have also been quite leafy. I harvested nearly 2 pounds of Olive Leaf Rapini. That got blanched and then sauteed with garlic and pine nuts. I paired that with some mashed Petaluma Gold Rush beans and crispy bacon on some bruschetta. The Couve Tronchuda (Portuguese cabbage) produced a couple more pickings that I used in a couple of different soups - a batch of the traditional Portuguese soup Caldo Verde and a batch of Celery Root and Farro soup. And there's been lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce. I've been playing around with my favorite Lemon-Honey-Mustard salad dressing. The latest version uses the juice of half a Meyer lemon, about a teaspoon of honey, about a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, a dash of truffle oil, chopped fresh tarragon and chives, and olive oil. Butterhead lettuce with that dressing, toasted sliced almonds, and perhaps some crumbled bacon has been delicious.
Here's the harvests for the last three weeks:
Cilantro - 1 lb., 6 oz.
Couve Tronchuda (Portuguese cabbage) - 1 lb., 4 oz.
Golden Corn Salad - 5 oz.
Butterhead lettuce - 1 lb., 10 oz.
Ear of the Devil lettuce - 1 ounce
Sweetie Baby Romaine lettuce - 2 lb., 15 oz.
Olive Leaf Rapini - 1 lb., 15 oz.
Snow Pea Shoots - 1 oz.
Guntmadingen Winter spinach - 13 oz.
Yu Choy - 5 oz.
The total for the month was - 10 lb., 8 oz.
The total for the year is - 26 lb., 6 oz.
Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.
Hope your funk leaves you soon! I look forward to seeing what lovelyness your garden puts forth and what delicious recipes you have. Hope the rain and cold miss you and you get some goodtime in the garden, we are being rained up on now, but I am enjoying it by staying inside with the baby and reading until it's time to go and get the kiddo at school. Sending sunny happy thought up north!
ReplyDeleteI think I should try your spinach...I can't seem to get others to grow here in NE Florida. Do you remember where you got your seeds from?
ReplyDeleteLovely leaves and it's so good to see them in the sunlight. Spring is here at last...I've been feeling a bit down about the garden too, but I think the warmer weather, the summer planting and the spring growth should cheer us all up!
ReplyDeleteNartaya, thank you, I need some sunny cheering up at the moment. :)
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Katrina, the spinach came from Adaptive Seeds, there's a link to them on my Favorite Resources page and they also offer seeds through the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook. I'm not sure how well it would do for you in NE Florida since it is supposed to be a cold climate adapted variety but it would be interesting to find out. It seemed to do fine for me here on the central coast of California, but I'm not going to push my luck even further and try to grow it in the spring.
The spinach looks more like dandelion leaves than spinach. And your dressing sound really yummy. I need to experiment with putting other dressings besides coleslaw dressing on cabbage which is my main green right now.
ReplyDeleteYou do seem to have a lot of problems with animal pests! I'm just thankful that the rabbits don't seem to have discovered my patch.... touch wood!
ReplyDeleteThat's a very interesting looking spinach. This weather just doesn't want to stabilize any where. It was 75 the other day and now it is 40 cold damp and raining a bit. I need to go out and plant some peas!!
ReplyDeletechaiselongue, the sun that day was a fleeting thing, winter has returned with a vengeance and it looks like it will be staying for a while. *sigh* I hope spring doesn't wait too long to come back!
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Daphne, You're right, it does look like dandelion! It tastes a lot better than dandelion though.
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jan, the rodents have been a big problem lately, it's so frustrating. Knock wood that the local rabbits don't rediscover my garden this year...
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Robin, This winter has been bipolar, we've had everything from 80F sunny days to snow. It got dry enough that I had to turn on the drip system and now there's so much water running off the hillside that there's a stream running through the garden. I've got peas in paper pots that need to be planted out but it's too soggy to dig in the garden - dang it!
Delicious looking greens. I have trouble with spinach too so maybe I'll have to look for this variety.
ReplyDeleteHey, I totally get the funk stuff. I can hardly drag myself outside, let alone post on the blog. I hope my jones comes back! You're of course going to figure it out. That is a fascinating spinach. I wish I could find a leaf-miner resistant variety!
ReplyDeleteMichelle,
ReplyDeleteI know about the funk, hope you kick it soon. Our garden looks like a bomb went off. Building a 24 foot bottle wall. Your harvests look great, never seen that spinach before.
We have much more greens than we can eat with the cold frames(uncovered them yesterday). We actually grew plenty of normal spinach and chard, planted in late October. Right now the chard it more than a foot tall waiting to be harvested.
I love how disciplined you are to track your harvest yields. And I love the details in your post. I haven't had much luck with spinach so it's helpful to hear what worked for you. I must say on first glance I thought it was arugula! I also understand the garden funk thing. Here's to stabler weather ahead.
ReplyDeleteMissed your blog for quite long. Feels great to be back. Yummy greens. More proteins!
ReplyDeleteI get the funk here and there - but hauling in 10 pounds of greens, it seems imposible to do in a funk! That is quite an acomplishment if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteI know snow pea shoots can be eaten. But I have not tried it yet. How do you cook your snow pea shoots?
ReplyDeletePrue, I'm not sure you'll have much luck finding that spinach in your neck of the woods, but keep trying different varieties, you'll eventually find one that works for you!
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Stefaneener, once the sun comes back out perhaps we'll both want to play in the garden again. Leaf miners, yuck, they've not shown up on this spinach yet but I think it's just because they aren't active yet. Leaf miners are another reason to not attempt a spring sowing of spinach. The biggest pest problem I've had so far with this spinach is the sow bugs munching on the stems but they've not caused too much damage.
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Randy, I saw a couple of your posts about the bottle wall, looks very interesting. I'm afraid the funk has extended to being lazy about commenting on blogs that I've been visiting - sorry.
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Christine, It's interesting to hear how many of us have had problems with spinach. I've seen so many posts by other garden bloggers with beautiful spinach harvests that I thought it was just me. I guess the rest of us need to keep experimenting with different varieties and growing times to find what works.
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Chandramouli, so nice to see you in the blogosphere again! I hope it was nothing worse than the blogging blahs that was keeping you away.
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Barbie, the funk doesn't keep me from enjoying the harvests, all the hard work has already been done at that point. But if I don't get my rear in gear and get things growing there won't be much to harvest later. I wish I had a garden slave....
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Malay-Kadazan, I like to stir fry the shoots with a little bit of minced garlic and ginger and just a splash of chicken stock and rice wine or dry sherry. They are also good raw as a salad green.
I'm down here in Santa Monica, so I know what rain you're talking about. Wow! Did we get hit with a storm or what! My garden's been over run with snails which I can see is not nearly as bad as what you've had to deal with. Hope you cheer up soon, Spring really is here and before you know it you'll be smiling again.
ReplyDeleteI've been quite lazy in blogging and commenting lately, it's a funk thing?
ReplyDeleteI like the oak leaf spinach you're growing, when it comes to spinach it's always hit and miss for me. I don't seem to have any luck with them in the spring, the overwintered spinach is ending soon, but I couldn't get some seeds started indoor, they refuse to sprout!