Monday, March 2, 2015

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.


11 comments:

  1. Lovely harvests for this time of year. Those are some giant carrots! And from volunteers too. Our storage carrots are just about gone, and there will be a 'carrot gap' before the spring crop gets harvested. Esp. since the beds are still covered in snow at the moment!

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  2. Your celery looks so much nicer than what I typically get from my garden. I wish it would grow better here, but I'll take what I can get.

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  3. I'm surprised you even have a hunger gap - your garden always to be in constant production and you're constantly planting something new! I've never seen or heard of "blowouts" before...is the lettuce still sweet at this point or has it started to get bitter?

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    1. The gap tends to be brief, but there always seems to be a time when there's close to nothing coming from the garden. I'm getting better at closing the gap though!

      The blowout in the lettuce isn't typical, but for some reason both heads of romaine started to grow sideways.

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  4. I'm glad it's not just me that has trouble growing Celeriac (Celery Root) to a decent size. And to us here in the UK a "Blowout" means something very different to what you have used it for!

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  5. Very pretty carrots and chard, you have such good words for Sweet Baby Romain, I'll have to try it sometime. I have some overwintered Russian kale and Lacinato kale, but they were infested with aphids and I had to pull them out, they seem to like Lacinato kale best.

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  6. We can't grow celeriac either or celery, After trying all ways we have given up now,

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  7. I just love the colored chard, and you are spot on. Nothing can really show you the size when they get like that. I had a couple leaves harvested last week and it was over a pound! LOL

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  8. The dark green of the chard leaves is a nice contrast to the pink stems. I added a pink chard to the list this year, but forget which one.

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  9. I have never heard about peppermint stick chard. It looks so interesting.

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