Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The kale in the greenhouse is flowering but I’m still getting nice harvests from it. I cut all the rapini I could find, plus small leaves from both varieties I have growing in there (Western Front and True Siberian). I sauteed these briefly along with some mushrooms for a side dish.
kale and rapini
The salad boxes are still growing strong as well. I have started cutting whole plants instead of plucking individual leaves, since I have lots of lettuce growing in the cold frames that should be ready for harvest soon. I plant a mix of things in the boxes, without labeling them, but I can tell it’s mostly Radichetta in the below photo. That lettuce was destined for some tepary bean tostadas I fixed for lunch one day.
harvest of lettuce from salad box
I also cut a butterhead lettuce called Winter Marvel last week. This one was overwintered in one of the cold frame beds. It’s a hardy variety for sure, and it made a big head with buttery smooth leaves that gave us a jump on the spring planted lettuce. This one wound up starring in a taco salad my wife made yesterday.
Winter Marvel lettuce
Asparagus continues to be the star of our spring harvests. I used some of it raw in a black lentil salad. The salad had a few of our dried tomatoes in it too (rehydrated), along with some of the lacto-fermented giardiniera I made a couple of weeks ago. I added some avocado at the last and served it up on leaves of Simpson Elite lettuce, along with fresh baked cracked wheat rolls. I didn’t take any photos of the asparagus harvests, since they all tend to look about the same! We did cut right at 5 pounds of it last week, bringing the yearly total to 16 pounds.
black lentil salad with fresh asparagus
I harvested a nice bit of arugula from one of the salad boxes in the greenhouse. It’s mostly Speedy with a little Apollo thrown in. It’s bolting already and the aphids seem to like eating it almost as much as I do!
arugula
It all went on a pizza I made last week. The pizza also featured our dried tomatoes, plus some of the C. baccatum peppers I pickled last fall (Malawi Piccante and Kaleidoscope). I spread some thick, homemade tomato sauce on the whole wheat crust before adding the other ingredients. It is so nice to have a well stocked freezer and pantry with lots of goodies from past harvests.
homemade pizza
I’ll close with something from the future harvest department. The thornless blackberries are starting to bloom. The one in the below photo is Natchez, and you can see a small blackberry forming by my finger. Go blackberries! There are blueberries, currants and gooseberries setting on as well, plus cherries in the orchard area. Now if we can just keep the critters away from them, which sometimes feels like a full-time job!
blooms on Natchez blackberries
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!
Your lettuces are doing amazingly well and that pizza looks delicious. Ah, blooming blackberries a definite sign of good things to come.
All my planting plans have been stymied by the torrential rain. I’m aching to get the tomatoes and broccoli.
Still no harvest to report here. April was a really cold month, and nothing seems to have grown at all – it’s all on Hold. I keep looking at my Radishes and thinking “Next week…”! We have been using tomato sauce from the freezer, but it doesn’t make good photos.
We are only harvesting salad leaves and only small quantities as we need them so like Mark we have nothing to report,
Amazing asparagus harvest already, wow 16 pounds! And the lettuce look great (and the dishes you made with them sound great). I do love arugula on pizza.
Such pretty blackberry flowers, is that a thornless variety? Mine is not even budding hopefully soon. Having a greenhouse and cold frames sure make a huge difference.
Reread your post and answered my own question re: thornless blackberry. Mine is also thornless but I do not remember the variety.
I only have thornless varieties planted Norma. I have grown the thorny ones in the past, but I just like not having to deal with the thorns! The raspberries and gooseberries are prickly enough for me.
The Winter Marvel lettuce looks like a keeper if it survived the winter in a cold frame. Hope it’s tasty. Looks beautiful.
It was tasty and I will be growing it again for sure!
Your lettuces are beautiful! I’ve had a bit of a lettuce gap as the winter ones are done and the spring ones are just sizing up. Arugula on pizza is one of my favorite things. Do you ever put asparagus on pizza? That’s one of my favorite pizza toppings. The blackberries have very pretty flowers, more frilly than I would expect.
I love asparagus on pizza and had planned on grilling some for this one, but it was raining and I wimped out on grilling!
I definitely want to expand my lettuces and other salad greens. Yours look so beautiful and delicious. And how exciting for blackberries to be on the horizon!
Yum yum – that black lentil salad looks amazing! It’s funny but I would never have thought to eat asparagus raw until you mentioned it. I have a feeling that’s because I have only ever eaten store bought asparagus & I doubt they would be anywhere near as tender as freshly picked stalks.
Those blackberry flowers are huge! I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before but hopefully, I’ll be seeing a lot of them on the canes that I planted last year (they are starting to bud out – so exciting!)
The raw asparagus is not only tender, but has a lovely flavor to it as well. I think the flavor is mostly missing from the store-bought spears, but then I think that is true with most of the so called ‘fresh’ vegetables from the grocery. By the time they get to us here from way far away, they aren’t really fresh anymore!
If my lettuces end up looking half as good as yours I will be very pleased.
I need to sow some arugula too (called rocket over here). Mmm.
The cutting lettuce was displayed to put the nicest leaves on top, and to hide the aphids on some of the undersides!
Are the blackberries contained somehow? In our part of the country they’re one of the the most invasive things going.
That’s a beautiful head of lettuce.
These thornless blackberries do not sucker and spread like most thorny ones do. They spread gradually, and sometimes long canes may tip root, but they are easy to control, easier than raspberries even.