Harvest Monday – Transition

It’s now mid-May, and the harvests are slowly transitioning from the leafy greens of late winter and early spring to the more substantial fruits and vegetables of late spring and summer. Which means our diet is in transition as well.

We’re getting small harvests of strawberries every day, enough to have topping our breakfast yogurt, plus a few more to snack on. My wife confessed she had eaten some while on the way to pick asparagus, thus throwing off the totals. They’re hard to resist! I’ve eaten a few like that myself. It’s hard to think about counting when you’ve got juicy ripe strawberries just waiting to jump in your mouth!

I got the first big head of broccoli this week. It was the Packman variety, and weighed in at 12 oz. – rather large for a spring planting in my experience. Broccoli does much better here in the fall. I attribute that to the thick layer of compost I spread on that bed behind the greenhouse. The brassicas planted there have really responded.

I’ve also harvested enough of the small Apollo shoots to have a taste of it. That variety resembles broccolini in taste and appearance. We’re still waiting on the Piracicaba to start producing, but the plants are vigorous and healthy.

The asparagus harvest continues in full force. We harvested right at 3 pounds of it last week, bringing the season total to 13 pounds. We should be able to get at least another week or two of harvests. I used some of the spears in a Shrimp & Asparagus with Oyster Sauce stirfry.

The scallions are sizing up faster than we can eat them, so I picked quite a few and put them in the frig for later. Last year I let them get too big and the quality suffered. These varieties are true scallions and won’t bulb up, but they are better when younger in my opinion. I got about a pound of them this week, which is quite a few. I immediately replanted in their place with some more seedlings, this time a variety called White Spear that is supposed to be heat resistant.

I got a pretty big haul of kohlrabi this week too, over 3 pounds of it. And I harvested the last of the tatsoi and Yukina Savoy from the greenhouse for a stirfry. I’ll replant in there with some heat tolerant pac choi varieties like Black Summer and Shanghai. I’ve got a Frilled Leaf Chinese Cabbage I’m going to try also which is supposed to tolerate the heat.

I did harvest about 4 pounds of lettuce and take it to the soup kitchen. I’m trying to use the spring planted lettuce to make room for summer varieties. Last year I managed to harvest lettuce all summer long, and though the quality wasn’t as good as that grown in cooler temps, it was still tasty and gave us nice greens for summer salads and sandwiches.

Add in a few radishes and some arugula, and the week’s total was 16.5 pounds. For more gardener’s harvests, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and see what’s growing!