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

10/4/10 First Harvest of Fall Crops

The night time lows dropped to high 30s this weekend.  In California, this would be considered winter.  In Indiana, as in the most of the rest of the country, I guess this is fall. 

I harvested my first small batch of fall vegetables, consisting of some baby Red Russian Kale and a sampling of baby asian greens including bok choy, china choi (seeds shared by Ottawa Gardener), and tatsoi.  I'm having a lot of trouble keeping these plants alive due to serious damage by cabbage worms, aphids, and possibly slugs (the only one I haven't visually confirmed yet).  You can see a little bit of the damage to the surviving leaves in the picture above, but this is nothing compared to the damage to the non-surviving plants.

Since I didn't have any prior experience handling these hardy greens, either as a gardener or a consumer (except when they are included in a prepared dish), I wasn't sure how big I should let them grow.  I harvested these leaves fairly small because I was curious about their flavor and also because I don't trust the pests to allow them to grow to a decent size.  I've already lost almost half of my crops to the stinky pests that munch on them leaf by leaf, leading to total destruction.  I did finally sprinkle some Sluggo out there today, so if there are any invisible slugs out there, hopefully Sluggo can start controlling the problem.

By the way, these greens were delicious as a quick stir-fry.  Between Keith and me, there was barely enough to have three or four bites each.  These cook down a lot, just like spinach.  Inspired by our first tasting of these tasty hardy greens, Keith and I sowed more seeds in our indoor grow box today.  We're hoping to grow this new batch to maturity entirely in the grow box to avoid the pest problems in the garden.  I'm not sure how much room the full-sized versions of these vegetables will require, so this will be yet another grow box experiment for us.  Next year, I'll grow them all under row covers outside.

I also harvested the first three sugar snap peas from my remaining three plants that survived the cutworm attack.  They were still too small and did not taste very sweet.

The outdoor Jelly Bean tomato plants are still pumping out tomatoes, although they are very slow to ripen.  I picked a handful that had any hint of blush, so that they can finish up the ripening process indoors.  Only one Jelly Bean tomato has ripened in the indoor grow box so far.  But since we don't have to worry about the impending first frost in the grow box, I'll just let them take their time to ripen on the vine.

This post is part of Daphne's Harvest Monday.

Fall Planting 2010

I hemmed and hawed about what vegetables to plant for my fall crops.  I ended up deciding against most common brassicas like head cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, because I was worried that they might take up too much room in my square foot gardening boxes.  Maybe I'll try them next year, when we expand our garden with more raised beds in the ground.

Below is a list of fall vegetable seeds sown so far in our garden and their planting dates.  I'm trying out successive planting with some of them.  I would have sown them earlier, but it's just been so hot all of July and August, and I didn't think that these seeds would germinate all that well when day time highs have been consistently in the low to mid 90s.  Our Indianapolis garden is in USDA zone 5b with the average first frost date of around October 20.  I'm curious to see if this year's first frost would be later than this average date, considering how hot it's been so far.

• Crimson Giant Radish – 7/31/10 (probably sowed too early, as they are not growing very well)
• Ruby Queen Beets – 7/31/10 (same as radish, not growing well past initial germination)
• Sugar snap peas (aka butt peas) – 8/1/10
• Carrots (I still have dreams of growing girthy carrots in Indiana) – 8/8/10
• China Choi (seeds shared by Ottawa Gardener) – 8/16/10, 8/28/10
• Pak Choi Cabbage – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Tatsoi Cabbage (rosette bok choy) – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Ruby Red Chard – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Fordhook Giant Chard – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Red Russian Kale – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Little Gem Lettuce – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Ruby Lettuce – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Red Romaine Lettuce – 8/22/10, 8/28/10
• Daikon Radish – 8/22/10

All of these, except for sugar snap peas and carrots, are new vegetables in the garden for me, so I'm really looking forward to watching the plants grow and hopefully eating them.  I know you’re supposed to grow vegetables that you like to eat, but I confess that neither Keith nor I have much prior experience eating a lot of these new vegetables.  Well, Keith already knows that he doesn’t really like radishes and hates beets, and I’m somewhat neutral to both of them, but I’m growing them anyway.

If any of these fall vegetables grow well for us, then I’m going to have to find new recipes to work them into meals.  I figure lettuce is lettuce regardless of the variety, and I can use them in salads.  But what to do with all these new hardy greens like chard, kale, and various chinese cabbages?  This fall is going to be an interesting time for us both in the garden and in the kitchen!

Below are some pictures of germinated seedlings.  I noticed that all of the seeds sprouted more than one seedling.  With very small seeds like Pak Choi, it's possible that I sowed more than one seed in the middle of the square, but with bigger seeds like chards, I know I only sowed one seed in each spot.  Are some of these seeds supposed to germinate more than one seedling from a single seed?  Should I thin these out so there's only one seeding growing in each spot, or should I just  leave them alone?  Can I try to separate out the seedlings and transplant them farther apart without damaging the roots?  Hmm, questions and more questions...

Fordhook Giant Chard

Ruby Red Chard

Red Russian Kale

Pak Choi Cabbage

This post is linked to Tuesday Garden Party.