Harvest Monday - February 2, 2014

There was one new vegetable in the harvest basket this past week, I pulled a couple of celeriac. These are not the best specimens that I've ever grown, they are small and have a lot of foliage and lots of small roots growing from the main root.

Monarch celeriac

They weren't a total bust though, they were decent enough after trimming and peeling, firm and tasty just small. I'll be pulling the rest of them soon to make way for some different vegetables.

The celery is still producing plenty of stalks.

Dorato D'Asti Celery

And there's still a few fennel bulbs to be gleaned from last year's plants. They aren't perfect specimens, not as big and tender as the bulbs that form on new plants, but they're very tasty when thinly sliced and used in salads or when they are braised in vegetable stews.

I cleaned out the patch of China Rose radishes because nearly all of them were starting to bolt.

China Rose radishes

These radishes are big, and fortunately those big tops are very mild and delicious when sauteed or braised.

There were a few other stragglers in the radish patch that got cleaned out also. I won't be harvesting any more radishes until I can set up a tunnel in another bed.

Selzer Purple radishes

Helios radish

The shoots and main head on the second Romanesco plant started to expand so I harvested everything from that plant.

Romanesco

There's still plenty of lacinato kale to harvest. You can see the variation in the leaf shape from my 4 plants. Most of them produce a long strap shaped leaf with a curl at the end, but one of the plants has a shorter leaf that doesn't have the pronounced curl around the edges that the other leaves have.

Lacinato kale

The spinach doesn't grow very quickly in the short days of January, it was nearly a month from the previous harvest to this one.

Summer Perfection spinach

The lettuce is much faster to size up, here's another round of Ruby Gem romaine that I've been harvesting on a cut-and-come-again basis.

Ruby Gem romaine

The only harvest that I didn't photograph was the big bunch of Speedy Arugula that was the result of cleaning out the patch. It was starting to bolt so I cut all the plants down to the nubs. Speedy is a mild flavored arugula so it doesn't get too spicy or bitter when it bolts so most of what I cut down is usable.

We got through January without a drop of measurable rain. I don't know if it was a record for Monterey as well, but San Francisco had the first completely rain free January since record keeping started in 1850. This drought is really getting to be scary. There's supposedly a chance of rain later this week so keep your fingers crossed, do a rain dance or whatever it takes... just make it rain!

I don't know if it was because of the lack of rain or in spite of the lack of rain or perhaps I just did a better job in the garden, but this January was a harvest record breaker since I started keeping track back in 2010. The total harvests came in at 41.6 pounds, my best January total before that was 20.9 pounds in 2012, 12.7 pounds in 2014, and single digit harvests for the rest.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Speedy arugula - 1 lb., 6.6 oz.
Romanesco broccoli - 2 lb., 15.9 oz.
Dorato di Asti celery - 15.1 oz.
Monarch celeriac - 11 oz. (trimmed)
Romanesco fennel - 10.3 oz.
Lacinato kale - 1 lb., 1.6 oz.
Ruby Gem romaine - 7.8 oz.
China Rose radishes - 5 lb., 15.8 oz. (including greens)
Helios radish - 1.6 oz.
Selzer Purple radishes - 7.5 oz.
Summer Perfection spinach - 6.1 oz.

The total harvests for the week were - 15 lb., 3.3 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for 2015 up to - 42 lb., 9.6 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.