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| One of the views from Pitamakin Overlook, Glacier National Park |
The east side of Glacier may be a hiking paradise but it is not a veggie lovers paradise. The veggies in the grocery store in St. Mary were worse than stuff I would consign to the compost bin. I'm so happy to be home and eating super delicious and fresh vegetables from my garden.
One green that has been in my garden since early spring and that is still producing is some cutting chicory. It's a nice mild chicory, not too bitter and quite tender when harvested young. I planted it for a salad green, but once it got going the leaves got to be quite large and then I ignored it in favor of other salad greens. It got to be huge so I cut it back and fed the compost bin. Then it leapt back into tender greens which I harvested. Instead of using it as a salad green I blanched it and sauteed it with some garlic and it was delicious so now I know what to do with it. The big surprise is that it isn't showing signs of bolting yet.
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| Spadona Chicory |
That's the very first Tasty Treat and Green Fingers cucumbers of the year.
I harvested all the Royal Burgundy and Slenderette beans that were anywhere near large enough.
The Royal Burgundy beans were starting to wind down so there shouldn't be too many overgrown ones on the plants.
I cleaned out the oldest patch of radishes. Fortunately they keep quite well in the fridge if the leaves are trimmed off.
I've got one small planting of beets in the garden that needed to be thinned. The leaves went into a mixed veggie frittata.
Here's a preview of beets to come. These are mostly the Three Root Grex from Fedco and a couple of Golden beets from Renee's
This is a Zebrune shallot that started to bolt so I harvested it. These shallots are wonderfully sweet and mild, even raw, they are much tastier than the ones that are available at the grocery store or even the farmer's market.
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| Zebrune shallots |
I used most of the shallots along with some Corsican basil, Persian mint,
and Rak Tamachat cilantro to do a stir fry of veggies and bean thread noodles that we had in lettuce cups with a Vietnamese Nuoc Cham sauce.
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| Rak Tamachat cilantro |
Here's the one and only harvest for the past week. When I got home yesterday evening I did a quick tour of the garden and spied these cucumbers. It's hard to tell from the photograph but they are at least two to three times the size they should be and the photo doesn't include the largest one which I used to make a salad. Even the largest of these cucumbers was still quite tasty. The skin was just a bit tough but not so bad that the cucumber needed to be peeled, but I did remove the seeds. I was craving something with some good yogurt (good yogurt was not to be found in St. Mary) so I made a sauce of yogurt, olive oil, garlic cream (it is keeping incredibly well in the fridge), and basil and folded in the chopped cucumber - it was so good.
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| Green Fingers Persian cucumbers |
Here's the details of the harvests for the past two weeks:
Royal Burgundy beans - 11.7 oz.
Slenderette beans - 1 lb., 5 oz.
Beet Greens - 14.2 oz.
Spadona chicory - 1 lb., 2.5 oz.
Green Fingers cucumbers - 2 lb., 9.3 oz.
Tasty Treat cucumbers - 2.2 oz.
Helios radishes - 4 oz.
Petite Dejeuner radishes - 4.3 oz.
Pink Punch radishes - 2 oz.
Zebrune shallots - 14.4 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 2 lb., 5.6 oz.
The total for the two weeks - 10 lb., 11.2 oz.
2015 YTD - 387 lb., 7.7 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.
I had a couple of the Green Fingers that got big on me too but they were still tasty. I went to Glacier with my parents when I was a teenager and I'd like to go back someday. Colorado is calling to us this year though.
ReplyDeleteLovely harvests, Michelle. I noticed you seem to pick the Romanesco while the flowers are still attached--is that because they get too big?
ReplyDeleteThis hybrid Romanesco develops big zucchinis before the blossoms open so I usually pick them the day they bloom or the next day, otherwise they get to be huge. This variety also tends to produce very few male blossoms after an initial flush so the zucchinis end up pointy shaped if they are left on the plant if they haven't been pollinated.
DeleteI love how you harvest the zucchini squash with the bloom intact - always looks beautiful in photos. Is it because you pick early in the morning? My squash flowers always look so limp ...
ReplyDeleteIs the chicory bitter as it gets more mature? Just wondering if it's like the batavian endive I grow - was thinking they are from the same family.
This zucchini holds its blossoms quite well for pretty much the whole day that it blooms. The ones in the photos were picked late in the afternoon of the day that the flowers opened. The next morning the petals will have gone limp and twisted.
DeleteThe chicory stays surprisingly sweet, as chicories go, even when the leaves are quite mature. I tasted one very large leaf when I cut back the overgrown plants and was surprised at how mild it was. I'm not sure if that would be true in a warmer climate though.
A "warmer" climate? LOL, I refer to your area as the warmer climate ...
DeleteUm, yes, winter here is certainly warmer than where you are. I guess I should have said a warmer SUMMER climate, summers here near the ocean tend to be on the cool side. We get lots of fog, it's rolling in even now...
DeleteThat's a nice mess of beans. I'm a week away from getting any pole beans. And what an amazing amount of zucchini from your one plant. And you got me Googling grex. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI don't like the sound of that place St.Mary! Knowing which veg to harvest before you go, and which to leave for when you get back is one of the few bad aspects of going away on holiday.
ReplyDeleteThose cucumbers look wonderful as does the cilantro. I didn't sow any this year (just too busy!), but may squeeze some in for a fall harvest - if I remember, that is. I'll have to remember to use some of the onion crème in a cucumber-yoghurt salad (one of my favourites). And all these beans everywhere are making me antsy for that first bean harvest.
ReplyDeleteI really need to get that variety of zucchini. I wonder if it would do as well here. Though I am getting some, I'm not inundated by any means as the zucchinis are pretty small.
ReplyDeleteLovely harvest! I like your beans and beets. They are so interesting for me.
ReplyDeleteI know this is going to sound silly to you, but as much as I admire your whole harvest - its the radishes that I have my eyes on, I have not grown them this year and miss them. Your courgettes look good too, I am hoping to harvest my first lot this weekend, that is if the slugs don't get to them first.
ReplyDeleteIt's so amazing to me that you're still growing spring vegetables like radishes and cilantro. The one year I grew radishes as a pest deterrent during the summer they were fiery hot. And the Zebrune shallots sound wonderful.
ReplyDelete