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Monday, February 26, 2018

Harvest Monday - February 26, 2018

This is one of those harvest posts where you have to look at the same veggies presented in different ways because otherwise there's not much else to see.

One reliable producer at the moment is Frieda Worlds snow peas. It's a frost tolerant variety that has sailed through a couple of nights with temperatures down to 30ºF. I've found that a lot of pea plants will tolerate those lows but the peas get damaged. Not so with Frieda Worlds, the peas are in prime condition. But as of a few days ago the plants have been getting hit hard by something other than the weather, the birds have discovered that the foliage is delicious. Yet one more thing in the garden to cover up...

Frieda Worlds Snow Peas
Here's a combo that I came up with as a side dish the other night. Snow peas and thin sliced purple daikon in sage flavored brown butter. I didn't take a shot of the finished dish but it was pretty too because the radishes retained their color.


The purple daikons were harvested a while back when I pulled them all out of the garden in a fit of frustration (rage really) when the voles were going to town on seemingly everything and I just wasn't in a mood to share. I was so disgusted by the whole situation that I neither photographed nor weighed the harvests, just lopped off the tops and threw the lot in the fridge. I was really close to just tearing everything out of the garden so that the voles would have to dine elsewhere.

Here's a new radish in the harvest basket. That's just about the entire crop of Violet de Gournay radishes other than some that bolted earlier. I pulled all of them because I feared that they would be the next targets of the voles which have been working their way through the veggies in the bed where I've got had the bulk of the winter crops growing.


It was probably the right time to harvest them anyway, although it would have been nice to leave some of the smaller ones to see if they would have gotten larger.


Violet de Gournay is a French heirloom radish that I first read about in William Woys Weaver's book 100 Vegetables And Where They Came From. It dates back to the 1850's and came about when a Long Black Spanish radish crossed with a red radish. It's a winter radish and "was developed to take hard frosts without splitting and to store well in cool, moist sand. It will even overwinter under cold frames." In Gournay, the town where it originated, it is traditionally cooked with wine, bay leaves, and a very plump duck. I may try cooking it with wine and bay leaves but will probably omit the duck, or perhaps I'll pair it with some of the duck confit that I've got in the freezer. It's also supposed to be tasty raw or cooked like a turnip, with or without the skin left on. I haven't had a chance to try any yet but will report back when I do.


I pulled all of the carrots in that bed because the voles were mowing the tops down. They were a pretty wonky bunch for the most part and wouldn't have improved by staying in the garden.




The voles have not yet developed a taste for mature mustard greens. I'm sure it's just a matter of time...

Pink Lettucy Mustard



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.


13 comments:

  1. Oh yum, sage butter! I pulled my sage out last year as part of the garden revamp but I'm not going to go without this year - it's on the garden centre list for this spring. Those dang voles!! I know your frustration. I never thought I would be happy that the main garden has rocky soil, but when I started seeing evidence of voles on the much less rocky hilltop, I started to count my blessings.

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    1. Sage butter freezes well so next fall you can make up a batch and stash it away for winter. I think the voles have turned out to be the single worst pest in my garden. Grrrrr.

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  2. Oh we have voles too... such a pain in the posterior, aren't they? They chewed a lot of our crops too and I have started adding chilli powder around things to try to deter them

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    1. I use the hot pepper powder too and it works pretty well until the rain washes it away.

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  3. I'm growing that same bi-color sage funnily enough. It's so pretty. Though my plant is still small and I haven't eaten any of it yet. I also have a mostly purple type. Do all sages taste pretty much the same? I feel like you're much more of an herb connoisseur than I am!

    And... are those by chance Pusa Asita carrots in the basket?

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    1. I'm not really that discerning about sage, they all taste pretty much the same to me, but I love the different colors. My favorite culinary sage is Bergartten because it produces large roundish leaves, is very hardy in my mild climate, and rarely blooms so there's practically always something to harvest.

      The purple carrots are Black Nebula.

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  4. I'll have to try your purple daikon radish treatment, since I love sage butter and still have a few radishes in the frig. I have the William Woys weaver book too and it is fascinating reading as well as fun trying to track down some of the veggies. I'm growing Green grape tomato and Salade De Russie lattuce here this year, and trying to find a spot for Winter Luxury pumpkin.

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    1. My spelling is terrible - I'm blaming the paint fumes!

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    2. I love that book, it's so inspiring and like you say it is fun to track down some of the veggies. That's where I read about Golden Corn Salad and actually my seeds came from WWW. And there's a few other ones that I tracked down and still like to grow including Petaluma Gold Rush Bean, Rishad Cress, Chiltoma peppers, and Zucchino Rampicante (Tromoncino). Not everything I've tracked down has been a winner for me, but it sure has been fun to experiment with different things.

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  5. Oh gosh, snow peas in February. Here all you get is snow without the peas. Yours are really lovely, and so is the radish. I think voles are our greatest pest, and we never had problems with them before a few years ago. Where did they come from??

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    1. I'm not sure if they're recently pests or I've been blaming rats for what was voles all along. They are the most destructive pests in the garden and they're difficult to catch. The rats and mice probably received most of the blame because they're easier to catch. I did have have a couple of years when I caught a LOT of rats so perhaps the voles are filling the void?

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  6. Peas now - wow! I’ve never grown the large radishes,

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  7. I wish the owls and hawks would move in and take care of your vole problem. Maybe the voles are having a population explosion, I've seen that happen in the fall before.

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