Harvest Monday - May 9, 2016

There's not quite so many veggie photos to wade through this week!

Lorz Italian green garlic and Batavia broccoli

I have 2 Batavia broccoli plants in the garden and they produced their main heads in quick succession. The largest and prettiest head was ready in time for Harvest Monday last week and the second started to loosen up just days later. It's not quite so pretty but it is just as delicious. I used some of the broccoli to make long cooked smashed broccoli to pile on top of bruschetta. More broccoli went into a braise with some turnips (shown below), favas (shown further along), a couple stalks of green garlic and some Merguez sausage.

Lorz Italian green garlic, Mikado and Round Red turnips

The first harvest of turnips are shown above. The red ones had some lovely leaves other than being full of aphids. I had no desire to fuss with the aphids and there's plenty of other greens coming from the garden so I fed the compost with the greens.

Extra Precoce Violetto fava beans

The Extra Precoce Violetto favas are in full swing now. That bunch above got  processed for going into the freezer - popped out of the pods, then blanched for a minute, cooled and peeled. The peeled beans keep exceptionally well when frozen in vacuum sealed bags. I did use some of the harvest from the previous week in one of Dave's favorite fava preparations, Fresh Fava Bean Dip, which we enjoyed spread on toasted wedges of pita bread and topped with avocado and feta.

Robin Hood fava beans

The Robin Hood fava beans (perhaps I should call them broad beans since they are an English variety) have started to get mature enough to harvest. This little bunch was popped out of the pods but then used unpeeled in that broccoli & turnip braise I mentioned above. These beans are not as large as the EPV favas, both the pods and the inner beans are more petite, but the plants make up for it by producing more pods per plant. It will be interesting to see how the final production amounts compare for the two varieties. I'll have to try to remember to do a side by side photo of the beans after the next harvest.

Not Pusa Gulabi radishes

I mentioned this radish last week, the Indian one that has turned out to be a different variety. They all started to bolt so I pulled them all. They were getting to be huge, that's a 12 inch (30.5 cm) ruler on the right. Big huge beautiful greens too, but I just didn't have the time, patience, or refrigerator space to deal with them too.

Apollo arugula

The apollo arugula also started to bolt, so that's the entire crop from this succession. I'll be eating a lot of arugula salad for lunch this week.

Joker lettuce

I cut the first head of Joker crisphead lettuce, it wasn't full sized yet and hadn't formed a tight head but it was large already. I'll have to remember to give this variety more space, although it was nice to thin out a head because I had run out of lettuce from previous harvests. The leaves are really nice and crisp, quite sturdy but not tough, even the outer leaves. I can't wait to see what a tighter head of this is like.

Italian Silver Rib chard

And speaking of large, the Italian Silver Rib chard is producing HUGE leaves. Each of those leaves shown above is at least 2 feet long (60+ cm.)  and the bunch of 14 leaves weighed in just shy of 5 pounds (2.3 kg.). I do believe it is on the verge of bolting though, they were planted last fall so it is time for them to bloom. I'm in the process of putting together another batch of quinoa stuffed chard bundles with some of those leaves, it was supposed to be dinner last night but I got started too late so we ended up raiding the fridge for leftovers instead. All the big fat stalks will be made into a Chard Stem Gratin.

Here's the details of the harvests for the past week:

Speedy arugula - 1 lb., 14.7 oz.
Batavia broccoli - 1 lb., 13.5 oz.
Italian Silver Rib chard - 4 lb., 15.8 oz.
Extra Precoce Violetto favas - 10 lb., 4.5 oz.
Robin Hood favas - 1 lb., 6.6 oz.
Lorz Italian green garlic - 1 lb., 1.9 oz.
Joker crisphead lettuce - 15.8 oz.
Not Pusa Gulabi radishes - 3 lb., 9.6 oz. (no leaves)
Mikado turnips - 8.3 oz. (no leaves)
Round Red turnips - 4.5 oz. (no leaves)

Total harvests for the past week - 26 lb., 15.2 oz. (12.2 kg.)
2016 YTD - 155 lb., 13 oz. (70.7 kg.)

Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave on his blog Our Happy Acres, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.