Monday, April 30, 2018

Harvest Monday - April 30, 2018

Harvests picked up a little bit this past week.  That's the final harvest of radishes, perhaps for the season unless I get around to sowing more in short order.

Pink Punch Radishes

I harvested the first baby heads of Queen of Crunch crisphead lettuce. These were some of the extra seedlings that I planted amongst the ones that I'll allow to grow to full size. It lives up to its name. this lettuce is super crisp. I cut the baby heads in half lengthwise and scattered thin sliced radishes over them and then dressed it with dollops of blue cheese dressing and finished it off royally with crispy bits of bacon.

Queen of Crunch Crisphead Lettuce
That's the last of the winter sown Three Heart butterhead lettuces.

Three Heart Butterhead Lettuce

These were small heads of Three Heart Butterhead lettuces that grew from the stump of a head that I had harvested a while ago. It was easier to photograph these before I harvested them, but they are gone now.

Three Heart Butterhead Lettuce

And here's a big basketful of Speedy arugula that I finally got around to harvesting. Needless to say that salad has been on the menu a lot recently.

Speedy Arugula

And the snow pea harvests continue. There's some Golden Sweet snow peas joining the Frieda Worlds in the harvest basket now. The Frieda Worlds are showing signs of powdery mildew, you can see it on the small pods up to the right, it leaves dark patches on the pods. A little bit of PM on the pods is ok, but those ones ended up in the compost.

Golden Sweet &
Frieda Worlds Snow Peas

Golden Sweet Snow Peas

One other significant harvest that I forgot to photograph was a few of the larger plants of Special Baby Leaf chard. The three plants were not quite babies anymore with a total weight of 3.6 pounds. The weather of late has been unseasonably cool which prompted me to use some of the chard to make a delicious warming soup that also featured chickpeas, pureed roasted tomatoes (from the freezer), dried roasted sweet peppers (from the pantry), plus leeks and garlic (from the farmer's market), and other seasonings. The plants had some big fat stems that I blanched and are ready to be grilled. The rest of the leafy parts of the chard got blanched and divided up into 2 portions to go into the freezer.

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.

6 comments:

  1. Radishes are such pretty things. Your Queen of Crunch lettuce sounds incredible, and it's really enjoyable seeing your continuous harvests of snow peas. Yay for productive snow peas. And the idea of lettuces coming back from their stumps, makes me very happy.

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    1. I've been enjoying the continuous harvests of snow peas a lot, it's not usually like that. It's a treat when the lettuce sprouts from its stump, that's also something that can't be relied upon.

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    2. Looks like salads are in this spring! I've added Queen of Crunch to my wishlist, it sounds like a keeper. And you had me salivating with the blue cheese dressing. I have fond memories of my mother making it every Christmas and giving it away as a present. She made it so thick with cheese you had to cut it with buttermilk before you could put it on a salad!

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    3. That sounds like the dressing I make, add buttermilk to get to the desired consistency. It's so good I could almost eat it with a spoon. Queen of Crunch definitely stands up to a thick dressing like that and it's a lot easier to grow than finicky Icebergs.

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  2. I really should get round to sowing some radishes but its not really salad weather yet here.

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  3. I love the sound of your blue cheese dressing. I must give that a go when we have some crisp lettuce heads ready

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