March is really turning into the month of greens. I pulled all the early planted pac choi in the greenhouse beds as they were showing the start of flower buds. There were still plenty of edible greens though, and it didn’t affect the quality one bit. I made a batch of Green Choi Soup for our lunch Friday. And I harvested half the komatsuna plants, which I combined with pac choi for a stir fry. I replanted that area with seedlings of mizuna, tatsoi and Vitamin Green (a new tatsoi relative from Johnny’s).
komatsuna and pac choi
I also started harvesting the mature spinach leaves. I usually pinch off the larger outer leaves and let the rest of the plant keep growing. My notes say the overwintered spinach in the greenhouse started bolting on 4/3 last year, so the season will be short. I do have some that I planted this spring in the coldframe, and hopefully we will get a brief harvest from it too before it bolts. I cooked this batch of spinach, giving it a quick saute in olive oil along with some garlic and mushrooms.
spinach saute
It would be great if we have enough spinach to freeze some, but usually we eat it all. We already have a list of things to do with the fresh spinach, so it remains to be seen if any will make it to the freezer.
sifted compost
One other big thing I harvested this week was a lot of compost. I turned our two bins that had been slow-cooking all winter, moving from one bin to another and sifting what was finished. I got over 9 bushels of sifted compost. I didn’t really track how much we made last year, and my garden log has only vague entries like “sifted 5 wheelbarrow loads of compost” or “spread compost around fruit trees and berries”. This year I want to track the amount of compost we make, since it is a valuable commodity that feeds our gardens and ultimately feeds us.
So this weeks harvest tally is:
Asian greens(52 oz)
Spinach(9 oz)
Lettuce(6 oz)
Total Harvest 4.2 lbs
To see other gardeners’ harvests, or to add your own, visit Harvest Monday at Daphne’s Dandelions. And thanks to Daphne for hosting!