6/13 Harvest - Greens and Peas

It's been almost a week since our return back home, and I'm still not as organized as I would like to be in the garden, at home and with married life in general.  This last name changing business is even more tedious than I had thought!  And going back to work this week means going back to my weekly commute to Texas, which means even less time at home to get things done.  But I couldn't miss yet another Harvest Monday, so here are some pictures of our harvest from last week. 

This was Sunday's harvest, consisting of a bowlful of china choy (seeds shared by Ottawa Gardener), some green onions, a handful of sugar snap and snow peas (some seeds shared by Prairie Cat), and some red romaine lettuce.

Here's a closeup of one of the red romaine lettuce leaves.  It's not quite as productive as some of the other lettuces in the garden, and it doesn't seem to tolerate heat very well, but I do like it for the color variety it adds to the sea of greens in the garden at the moment.

This was my first sizable pea harvest (both sugar snap peas and snow peas) this season, harvested last Tuesday evening.  I had such a hard time growing peas last year, both in the spring and fall, so I'm really glad to have better luck with peas this spring.  Finally, I can harvest fresh peas right off the vines and enjoy them raw or stir-fried just minutes later in the kitchen.  I was amazed that most of these pea vines survived the brutal heat wave over the last few weeks.  I'm not sure how much longer they will survive, though, as the lower half of most of the vines are starting to look brown and dry.  But I will certainly keep enjoying these homegrown peas for as long as they last.

 

I also harvested some chard - Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard and Ruby Red Chard.  The red ones are growing much slower than the white ones, and both will probably grow bigger with time, but I was impatient and wanted to try some last week.  I'm glad I harvested some of these young chard, because they made for a very tasty wilted chard salad!

I have a lot of onions growing in the garden and I harvest some as green onions whenever I want to use them for cooking.  It's little conveniences like this that keeps me gardening!  This year, I planted red, white and yellow onions, and I think the red ones look so pretty harvested as green onions.  I know that if I just snip these off above ground and leave the roots in the soil, they will probably sprout more green onions, but I really like seeing the red part and there are plenty more still growing in the garden, so I harvest most of these red ones whole.  Ahh, little luxuries.

I also snipped some flat leaf parsley to toss in salads and pasta.  These were grown from seeds saved from last year's parsley.  The cilantro that I planted in spring have all bolted during our long absence, but parsley seems to be holding up okay.  Like green onions, I really like being able to snip a bit of parsley here and there as needed, instead of having to buy a big bundle from the grocery store and feeling rushed to use them all before they wilt in the fridge.

One of several new vegetables for me this year is mizuna.  According to the seed packet, they are supposed to grow up to 12 inches tall, but I harvested my first batch at maybe half that size just to try out the flavor.  But things don't always go as planned, and these are still sitting in the fridge because we've just had too much greens to eat this week, and I figured these will probably last longer than lettuce in the fridge. 

Finally, here is another harvest picture from sometime last week.  I harvested a colander full of lettuce, another full of swiss chard, sugar snap peas, snow peas, turnip greens, and a bit more mizuna.  This might just be the largest single day harvest we've had yet from our garden!

I probably missed a few harvest pictures, but all in all, we harvested the following from the garden last week:

• Lettuce Mix 1.38 lbs
• Swiss Chard 0.32 lbs
• Asian Greens 2.39 lbs
• Turnips 0.22 lbs
• Radish 1.0 oz
• Green Onions 0.67 lbs
• Peas (sugar snap and snow) 1.93 lbs
• Parsley 1.0 oz
• Weekly Total 7.03 lbs

While this seems like a lot of harvest for one week, I have to remember that this is what we got after three weeks of not harvesting anything during our absence.  But for now, looking at these numbers and just knowing how much fresh homegrown vegetables we were able to enjoy this week makes me downright giddy!