Monday, May 30, 2016

Harvest Monday 5/30/16

My garden is picking up the pace.  I harvested my first ever Chinese cabbage.  I've never grown it before and I've also never eaten it before.  Here it is with my first amaranth greens of the season.


With my first ever Chinese cabage I'm going to make some stir fry.  I hope that I like it.  I grow the amaranth and cabbage under a row cover and was very disappointed to find that the amaranth were covered with aphids.  The rest of the veggies under the row cover looked fine except for the amaranth.  I grow amaranth for the greens.  It and Swiss chard are my reliable summer greens.  After the cabbage and broccoli are done, then I will remove the row cover so that natural predators like ladybugs can get to the aphids.

Also this week was plenty of lettuce.


This will probably be the last week of this All Star mix before it starts bolting.  I do have some heat tolerant lettuce planted to continue the lettuce harvest as the temperatures continue to increase.

This is a random assortment of an onion (white castle), peas (I think those are green arrow) and our first ever apple that was not successful.


Our apple trees are now three years old and this spring was the first time they flowered and set a few fruits.  This little apple was looking so perfect and we were hoping we were going to harvest our first apple ever this year.  Sadly that was not the case, as this little apple fell from the tree.  We are going to have to wait even longer for the first apple harvest.

I continue to have plenty of greens, mainly kale and Swiss chard.  They get sauteed and added to my breakfast.  I've gotten a bit tired of the green smoothies, but still make them one or two times per week.

I also harvested turnips this week.  I've had a lot of damage to my turnip greens this year that you can read about here.  I was happy to still get some decent sized turnips despite the leaf munching.


I made garlic parmesan mashed turnips that were very delicious.  I'm not a huge turnip fan, but when you add cheese, butter and garlic they are much more edible!

I also harvested some snowpeas and made some fried rice that included more greens.


Weekly harvests:

Turnips 1.4 lbs
Lettuce 1.75 lbs
Chard 0.5 lbs
Kale         0.5 lbs
Peas         0.9 lbs
Onion 2.2 oz
Chinese cabbage 2.8 lbs
Amaranth  0.6 lbs

Yearly total: 98.8 lbs - almost at the one hundred pound mark!

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week.  To see what others are harvesting, check out Harvest Monday on Our Happy Acres.

12 comments:

  1. What a fabulous haul! Well done. Chinese cabbage - yum. We use this to make the best Asian noodle salad. Try it and you will be hooked.

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    1. Hmm.. Asian noodle salad sounds delicious.. any recipes you'd like to share?

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  2. Ooh, that fried rice looks good! That's something I can do with my snow peas while I have them. I didn't grow leaf amaranth this year because mine gets attacked by beetles. It's always something, it seems.

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    1. I'm glad I'm not the only one that has pest problems with amaranth!

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  3. Holy cow - almost at 100 lbs?? That's awesome! And those are some very nice harvests. It's too bad about the apple - the first fruit harvest from a tree is SO exciting. I remember when we harvested our first cherry & it was divvied up between the four of us (no kidding!!) Hopefully you'll have better luck next year. And that fried rice looks delicious!

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    1. I'm sure we will do the same when we finally get our first apple. My overwintering carrots definitely boosted my harvests this year, I'm way ahead of average for this time of year.

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  4. That is a big basket of lettuce, and it's amazing that you've harvested 40 pounds of carrots this year. Do you like mashed turnips more than mashed potatoes?

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    1. It was a great winter for carrots here, the most I've ever grown. I prefer potatoes over turnips. J is a turnip fan and I've been figuring out ways to eat them that I like.

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  5. That is definitely plenty of lettuce, looks wonderful (I'm still waiting for my first real harvest). And I'm glad to see your pics of the amaranth (very pretty) as I'm growing it for the first time from an impulse purchase of seeds - hopefully I don't get the pests but, well, that's unlikely. :)

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    1. I'm convinced that if a pest exists, then it shows up in my garden! I hope you have better luck!

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  6. Really beautiful lettuce. One of my favorite ways to use Chinese cabbage is to make Asian style slaws with grated carrots, scallions or sweet onions, cilantro (and/or mint or basil), peanuts, maybe some chicken or shrimp, and a mustardy slightly sweet dressing.

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