Harvest Monday - March 2, 2015

The winter garden is really starting to wind down although I've not quite reached the "hunger gap" yet. Everything that I'm harvesting now was started last summer or fall. There's actually quite a few new veggies growing in the garden that were started through the winter months, but none of them are anywhere near harvestable size other than baby onions. It will be interesting to see how big the gap will be this spring.

One more bolting kale plant got cleared out. There's still two plants left and I am going to try to put off removing those for as long as possible. The plant that I most recently took out was being severely attacked by aphids, I actually tossed quite a few leaves into the compost because I didn't want to deal with the masses of sap sucking critters. The remaining two plants aren't so badly infested but I'll have to keep an eye on them. I used some sweet onions that I had grilled and preserved with vinegar and olive oil last summer to flavor one preparation of sauteed kale. It was really tasty, the agrodolce vinegar that I had used for the onions was a nice compliment for the kale.

Lacinato kale

The last two heads of Sweetie Baby romaine lettuce were developing "blowouts" on the side, not quite bolting but on the verge of it, so out they came.

Sweetie Baby romaine

The oldest of the volunteer Spanish Black carrots were getting to be quite large. The biggest one was more than 30 inches (76 cm) from the tip of the root to the tops of the leaves when laid out.

Spainish Black carrots

I'm still harvesting nice little bulbs from the fennel that I planted for spring of 2014, the second growth bulbs aren't as pretty and fat but they are tender and tasty. The celery is resisting bolting so I'm still harvesting stalk by stalk. And the celery root is also resisting bolting but the roots aren't growing much either. The small roots are good nonetheless, this harvest trio went into a mostly vegetable stew along with some of the last of the Romanesco broccoli and some shredded duck confit (how to stretch one remaining portion into 3 servings).

The Peppermint Stick chard that I sowed last October was getting to be quite big so it was time for a trim, actually the first harvest. The photograph really doesn't give a clue to the size of those leaves. That's over 2 pounds (nearly a kilo) of chard there. The leaves were amazingly tender in spite of their size. I prepared them simply wilted with some garlic, raisins, pine nuts and a dash of vinegar. I reserved the big fat stalks to make another preparation, probably a gratin (they're still in the fridge).

Peppermint Stick chard

The only other harvest last week was some baby onions that I thinned from the onion patch.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Spanish Black carrots - 12.6 oz. (trimmed of leaves)
Dorato di Asti celery - 1 lb., 7.6 oz.
Monatch celery root - 6.3 oz.
Peppermint Stick chard - 2 lb., 2.2 oz.
Romanesco fennel - 14.8 oz.
Lacinato kale - 1 lb., 3.4 oz.
Sweetie Baby romaine - 2 lb., 1.5 oz.
Spring onions - 1.2 oz.

Weekly total - 9 lb., 1.6 oz.
2015 to date - 70 lb., 3.7 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.