6/20 Harvest - Not so Grand Debut of Turnip Greens

We spent a large part of this weekend building our tomato trellis structure with 10-foot electrical conduits, and spent half that time waiting for the rain and lightning to pass so we could actually work outside.  It took a lot of time, effort and muscles (more Keith's than mine), but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  I'll post some pictures of it later this week, but for now, it's Harvest Monday time!

 

Our cayenne pepper plant that we overwintered indoors last winter is still growing happily indoors.  It's basically a self-sufficient houseplant at this point and it continues to produce a few peppers every month or so.  Since I actually remembered to harvest them this weekend, I even took a few green ones.

Swiss chard, Red Russian kale, and one red onion harvested as green onion

Mammoth Melting snow peas.  These and sugar snap peas have been my favorite spring vegetables so far.  They are super delicious just lightly stir-fried.  For Sunday lunch, I put them in the same cast iron griddle with some mahi mahi filets, and they cooked up beautifully on the hot griddle without even stirring.  Unfortunately, the pea vines are looking even worse now than they did last week.  I'm afraid they won't last much longer in the heat.

This is our first year growing and tasting turnip, and quite possibly our last year.  Since the roots are still very small, there wasn't much to eat of them, but I steamed the green tops after finding out that they are edible.  Well, "edible" may be a subjective term, because Keith made the most pathetic "I'm never eating this again" face.  I didn't think it tasted good, but it also wasn't all that bad. Okay, maybe medium-bad.  But it's probably not something that I would choose to buy to cook for myself.  So it goes into the category of "I'm only eating this because I grew it."

Sadly, our lettuce is starting to get bitter.  I harvested some Prizehead, Red Romaine, and Quattro Stagioni (seeds shared by Robin).  Although he rejected the turnip greens, Keith did eat two large salads made with this semi-bitter lettuce, so all was not lost with the harvesting of greens this weekend.

• Lettuce Mix 13.0 oz
• Swiss Chard 6.5 oz
• Red Russian Kale 1.5 oz
• Turnips 9.0 oz
• Green Onions 1.6 oz
• Peas (sugar snap and snow) 5.1 oz
• Hot Peppers 0.65 oz
• Weekly Total 37.35 oz, or 2.34 lbs
• 2011 Total 9.37 lbs