Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I’m happy to have a few fresh harvests from last week I can share. I’ve been prepping the cold frame beds for planting, which means I need to clear out whatever is growing in them now, ready or not. I pulled overwintered kale from one bed. This is Meadowlark, a curly leaf type I grew for the first time last year. The leaves are tender and tasty, but as my wife noted the curly types are harder to clean than some of the others I grow. I’ll factor that in for planning and planting this year. Thankfully it was relatively clean of aphids.
harvest of Meadowlark kale
Another cold frame bed had overwintered lettuce. It’s a mix of varieties, and I recognize Red Sails, Jester and Pele in there. It’s been nice having lettuce again for salads.
overwintered lettuce
And I pulled more kale plus a bit of green garlic from another bed. The green garlic volunteered from some I grew the year before, while the kale was from several plants that overwintered in that cold frame. These harvests cleared the way for me to replant two cold frame beds with kohlrabi and lettuce. Another bed will get kale and other greens once they are ready to plant. That leaves one more bed to plant and I haven’t yet decided what will go in it.
kale and green garlic
It’s not a harvest, but I baked up a loaf of naturally-leavened sourdough bread in the clay baker this week. It was a whole wheat loaf using fresh-ground Red Fife wheat, and we enjoyed it in a number of ways including crostini and toast. I want to make this bread in a loaf pan and see how it does that way. I mixed up the dough last night and I will bake it sometime this morning, and I will let you know how it turned out. I don’t yet have a good sourdough sandwich loaf recipe and I’m hoping this will be the one.
whole wheat sourdough loaf
And last but not least I want to share some news from nature. It appears we have a nesting pair of bluebirds using one of the PVC nest boxes. We’ve had bluebirds hanging around all winter, and we see them at the suet feeders fairly often. This pair is off to an early start on nesting, and I hope the weather stays favorable for the eggs to hatch. I’ll be keeping a close eye on them for sure!
bluebird nest with 5 eggs
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!
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