Harvest Monday - January 5, 2015

Last week the weather got even colder than the week before. Temperatures dropped to freezing a number of nights and daytime highs struggled to max out in the mid-50ºF's (about 12ºC). That's a cold day for us, but I know those of you in colder climates might think that a balmy day at this time of year. So guess what the high is forecast to be today - a balmy 72ºF! (22.2ºC) But the rain has disappeared before the drought is even close to being over. I would definitely trade some cold wet days for the balmy ones ahead.

There's a couple of new things in the harvest basket this week, I've started to harvest the Ruby Gem romaine on a cut-and-come-again basis. It's so pretty. Oh, and that's a few sprigs of arugula that I didn't tally. There were just a few snap and snow peas ready to harvest. I haven't taken a good look at the plants since the nights got to be so cold, they could be frost nipped into oblivion by now.

And I harvested the first spinach. I've got two varieties for the winter. Guntmadingen is a Swiss heirloom. I love it for the unique shape of the leaves and it's sweet flavor.

Guntmadingen spinach

And Summer Perfection spinach which also happens to do well in the winter around here. I used some of the Guntmadingen spinach is a dish of wilted spinach with garlic and Maitake mushrooms. The rest of it and the Summer Perfection spinach was used in a dish of creamed spinach and mushrooms baked with eggs and Parmigiano for a meatless main dish accompanied by a salad of the Ruby Gem lettuce with radishes, celery, apple, and pomegranate arils.

Summer Perfection spinach

More of the rapini needed to be harvested, it was getting leggy even though it really wasn't forming flower heads, the leafy greens will be good. I think it's probably best to grow these for spring or fall harvests.

I keep getting to harvest stalks of celery. I've got four plants so I can harvest a stalk from each plant without cutting them back too hard. I hope these plants don't bolt early this spring.

Most of the radishes except for the China Rose are nearly all harvested.

I had to clear out part of the carrot patch to make room for the new onion plants. The Muscade carrots have sized up the best.

Muscade carrots

Most of the rest are on the small side, although many of the Deep Purple carrots are a respectable size. Next fall I have to do a better job of keeping the birds out of the carrot patch, it took three attempts before I could get the patch going so these were weeks later than they should have been.

Rotilde, Lunar White, Amarillo, and Deep Purple carrots

There were a few other things that didn't get photographed. I had a basket of Tarbais beans that hadn't been shelled yet, they were from the second round that the plants produced, so I cleaned those and got them into the tally. And I harvested more Tronchuda Beira cabbage leaves for some soup and probably the final harvest of Di Ciccio broccoli.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Tarbais beans - 8.9 oz.
Di Ciccio broccoli - 9.6 oz.
Tronchuda Beira cabbage - 8.7 oz.
Amarillo carrots - .9 oz.
Deep Purple carrots - 2.5 oz.
Lunar White carrots - .7 oz.
Muscade carrots - 9.9 oz.
Rotilde carrots - 4 oz.
Dorato D'Asti celery - 1 lb., 9 oz.
Ruby Gem Romaine lettuce - 4 oz.
Super Sugar Snap peas - 3.1 oz.
Golden Sweet Snow peas - 1.8 oz.
China Rose radish - .9 oz.
Helios radishes - 1.2 oz.
Pink Punch radishes - 2.8 oz.
Selzer Purple radishes - 9 oz.
Early rapini - 12.9 oz.
Guntmadingen spinach - 1 lb., 1.6 oz.
Summer Perfection spinach - 13 oz.

The total harvests for the week were - 8 lb., .4 oz.
Which makes the final tally for 2014 - 1207 lb., 6.7 oz.
And starts the tally for 2015 with - 1 lb., 10.8 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.