Turnips, Peas and Strawberry Shortcake

It is officially summer vacation for me.  Actually I've been on vacation for a week.  I made detailed lists of stuff I planned to do with all my extra time, but that first week I was utterly lethargic.  Hopefully this week will be more productive.  At least the garden has been productive even when I'm not!

I had my first turnip harvest of the year this week.  Those aphids that covered my peas several weeks ago have now moved on to the turnips.  Hopefully since they are mostly mature, the aphids won't have a big impact.  These turnips went on to get cooked (in my Instant Pot, which was way faster than boiling them on the stove top) and then mashed with some butter and salt.

I've also been harvesting plenty of greens.  Salads are being eaten at multiple meals a day here.  I need to get some summer lettuce started soon, since I have a feeling the spring lettuce is going to begin bolting.

I've also been picking and eating kale and Swiss chard.  I made a quiche with some greens and also some greens and cheese hand pies.  They end up in my breakfast every morning with eggs.

Peas have been abundant this week.  I only took a picture of some of the snowpeas, but there were lots of shelling peas as well.  We eat these raw out of the shell.  I keep thinking I'll have enough to freeze, but every day we end up eating all of the tasty, fat peas.

As for the snowpeas, they ended up in a tofu stir fry. Yum!

The strawberries seem to be on the end of their spring production.  This will probably be the last big harvest for the year.  It was delicious while it lasted and I'm pretty sure I made up my investment in building a bed and buying strawberry plants in the first year.

For the strawberries last hurrah, I made strawberry shortcakes.  They were delicious and also quite photogenic!

It has been raining almost all day and the week is looking very wet.  I need to take advantage of all the rain to do lots and lots of weeding and also get peanuts planted.

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.

More Strawberries!

This week has been filled with spring goodies.  The harvest basket below sums up what's been going on in the garden this week: 

I love the color combinations of red and green with a little pop of purple!  On the bottom of the basket is a pile of oregano.  My oregano has been growing and growing, so I trimmed it back before it started to flower.  I dried the oregano for using later.

I have never tried eating chive flowers, so that was a new culinary adventure this week.  I tried them in my breakfast with greens and eggs.  They definitely add a nice kick tasting somewhere between garlic and onions.  They also make my breakfast much prettier.  If you start the day eating flowers, it's going to be a good day!

The peas are producing a bit more now.  I do think the aphid population has decreased, so I'm going to claim victory for me, the ladybugs and dragonflies!  The peas that were covered with aphids are looking sickly, but the rest of the pea patch seems to be doing well.  We love to snack on raw peas, so I haven't made any dishes with them.

Of course the star harvest continues to be the strawberries.  This week brought in 6 1/2 lbs of strawberries!  Besides just popping them in our mouths while picking them, my snack of the week has been yogurt with strawberries.

I also dipped them in chocolate.  Delicious and very easy!

We've also been eating plenty of strawberries in smoothies.  I froze some of this week's strawberries to be used later in smoothies.  I've thought about making some strawberry jam, but it hasn't happened yet. Freezing strawberries it so much easier than breaking out the canning stuff!

Besides all the strawberries, I've had a bit of greens from the garden this week.  The spinach is beginning to bolt, so I harvested most of them.  I also thinned my Swiss chard seedlings.  This year I'm growing Perpetual Swiss Chard for the first time, so I'm hoping it does well.  Swiss Chard is usually my reliable year round green.  The mesclun mix salad has been cut this week, so we are eating salads daily.  We had a decent amount of rain and cooler temperatures this week, which has made the spring crops happy.  Unfortunately it has also made the weeds happy too!

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.

Strawberries, Peas and Greens

I had my first big strawberry harvest this week with 2 lbs, 12 oz of delicious berries!  We had a lot of rain last week, 3 1/2 inches over two days, so I was worried about my strawberries rotting, but most of them were fine.  The slugs and snails have definitely been snacking as well, but so far the damage hasn't been excessive.

With all the strawberries, I had to make a delicious spring desert: angel food cake with strawberry sauce and homemade whipped cream.  Yum!

If you can pry your eyes away from the strawberry shortcake, the rest of the garden is growing rapidly.  The peas are flowering profusely and look lovely.

But if you look closer you'll see lots of tiny problems, they are covered with aphids.

The good news is that I have some helpers.  I spotted some ladybugs having an aphid buffet.  I'm not confident that there are enough ladybugs to battle the amount of aphids.

I also spotted a dragonfly next to the peas.  Perhaps he is joining the aphid feast with the ladybugs.  I hope combined they can keep the aphid population under control.

I did harvest some fat pea pods, so at least I got some peas in case the aphids destroy them.  Unfortunately we ate them before they were photographed or weighed.

The rest of this week's harvests were forms of green: cabbage, Chinese cabbage, spinach, lettuce and Swiss chard.  I've religiously weighed everything for the past three years and as much as I love having all the data, it has become too tedious.  My goal was to grow 1,000 lbs of veggies and I reached that goal last year, so the motivation to weigh harvests has faded.  The harvests that I dislike weighing the most are greens.  2017 is the year of sporadic weighing.  I'm weighing things that strike my fancy, like strawberries.

We had a delicious garden stir fry with the cabbage, Chinese cabbage, carrots, and the first peas.  I've also been eating lots of spring salads and veggie wraps.  The garden is feeding me well right now.

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.