Winter Greens

I harvested some of our winter greens on an as-needed basis last week. First up was some komatsuna that has been growing in one of the cold frame beds since October. These plants have been frozen and thawed on an almost daily basis for more than a month. You’d never know it to look at the leaves.

I usually harvest the whole komatuna plant to make room for something else. But since these plants are so hardy, I decided to harvest individual leaves and let the plants continue to grow. They should give us more to harvest later on when conditions are favorable for regrowth.

There was about a pound of the komatsuna leaves. I stir fried them briefly, along with sliced garlic and some fresh black mushrooms I picked up at the Asian market. I really like the taste of the mushrooms with these greens.

I also harvested more salad greens from the greenhouse, and a bowl of arugula. Like the komatsuna, the arugula has been frozen and thawed repeatedly in the greenhouse during the last month or so. It was actually frozen the night before harvest, but I waited to harvest it until temps warmed up above freezing in the greenhouse.

Most of the arugula went on pita pizzas we had for lunch. I was too hungry to take any photos of the pizzas! We add the torn arugula to the hot pizzas as they come out of the oven, wilting it ever so slightly.

Winter seems to have its icy grip on us here in Southern Indiana, with below normal temps again forecast for the coming week along with more snow. But our hardy greens are snug in the cold frames and greenhouse, giving us fresh food and promises of spring. That sounds like a good thing to me!