Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The harvests now are all pretty much different shades of green, with a little red thrown in too. The Simpson Elite lettuce is all green, and went into a wilted lettuce salad my wife made one night. The thin, tender leaves make it a good candidate for wilting, though we enjoy it other ways as well.
Simpson Elite lettuce
Red Sails lettuce is reddish green in color, and it too went into a wilted lettuce salad along with the Simpson Elite. This big head weighed around 12 ounces, and overwintered in one of the cold frame beds. Red Sails may not be the reddest lettuce around, but it has been a dependable performer for me for many years now. And how many years have I grown it? Well, it was a 1985 AAS Winner and I’ve pretty well been growing it ever since then. It is slow to bolt in spring, and hardy in fall and winter plantings. I did a Variety Spotlight on it back in 2015.
Red Sails lettuce
A more recent introduction to our lettuce lineup is Pele, a 2016 Wild Garden Seeds introduction. I first grew Pele last year and immediately fell in love with its color and texture. It’s no slouch in the kitchen either, with crunchy and mild tasting leaves. The one in the below photo overwintered in the cold frame bed right next to the Red Sails from the above photo. Presumably named after the Hawaiian Goddess of Fire, it made a fiery red addition to our salads last week. This one weighed in at a bit over 11 ounces.
Pele Lettuce
We’ve hit the 21 pound mark on asparagus this year. I don’t know if we will get the 30 pounds we got last year, but with a couple of weeks to go we should wind up close to that. Last week I forgot to show any asparagus pics. I don’t want to be guilty of neglecting this important spring veggie, so I went out to the patch and apologized to the plants. My wife steamed a nice bunch of spears for Asparagus Mimosa, which we feasted on one day for lunch. It’s a simple treatment, just steamed asparagus, hard cooked egg, a few capers and a drizzle of good olive oil. We usually have this dish several times during asparagus season, and I can see me fixing it next week as we cut the last spears of 2017.
Asparagus Mimosa
I also started another jar of fermented asparagus pickles. This is the third jar I’ve made this spring, and I made it like the first one (which is long gone) with a few cloves of smashed garlic and a couple of dried Aji Angelo peppers. For the second jar I added garlic and dill weed, aiming for a dill pickle taste. Though tasty, I think it would have been better adding dill seed instead of fresh dill weed, which is how I prefer to make my cucumber pickles. This third jar fermented quickly, and I put in the refrigerator after three days of fermenting. It’s a good way to use up those smaller spears, which ferment quicker than the bigger ones but still stay crunchy. More of the asparagus went into a frittata yesterday, and we have given some away to friends.
jar of fermented asparagus pickles
Also in the green category, I cut the small head off the buttoning broccoli plant. It weighed barely 2 ounces, and hardly made an appetizer. The other plants are not showing any signs of making heads yet, so it will be our last taste of homegrown broccoli for a bit.
small head of broccoli
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!
It will be a while before we have any broccoli but our salads are coming on stream now.
Your lettuce looking wonderful as usual, mine is looking great this year also, I think it is the extended cool weather. like Susan Garrett, it will be a while before I have broccoli.
That is some good looking lettuce you have there. I should start some lettuce along with the fall brassicas like Brussels sprouts and broccoli.
I love the look of the asparagus mimosa, such a simple recipe. I will have to remember it when our asparagus season kicks off in spring later this year.
Once again I’m amazed at your asparagus harvests. My patch is in its 4th year and it gave me about two pounds this year, and I’m happy for that. If I ever get a decent harvest I will definitely try making asparagus pickles.
Beautiful, perfect-looking lettuce! And I really want to try the Asparagus Mimosa recipe.
Loving the lettuce – I’m waiting, and waiting, and waiting for lettuce this year – with all the cool temps over the last while, it is taking forever to size up, as is everything else.
It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who talks to my plants. 🙂 I always try to thank them as I’m cutting down the old exhausted plants….
I love this time of year for lettuces, the spring harvests always seem to be the sweetest. That Pele lettuce sure is a pretty one.
The Pele Lettuce is a beauty. I am not growing any fancy lettuces this year, I just want to get back into the flow of growing first, and then maybe next year I will start being a bit more experimental in the garden and confident again. My husband would love your asparagus, I am not sure how he would feel about fermented asparagus, but I am sure it cannot be that unusual. We still have a jar of white asparagus from our trip to Brittany a few years back.
Yum. I have some gherkin plants on the go to try making more pickles. I got rid of my failed asparagus patch this spring though (too infested with couch grass), so no fermented asparagus for us.
Beautiful lettuce harvests this week!! Mine have been aphid-tizer. I’m trying to battle with them but so far I’m losing! =/ Happy Harvest!
Oh my that Pele lettuce looks so amazing!!!
Your harvest looks so amazing and delicious and healthy too!
I am harvesting Spring kale and lettuce in Md DC outter burbs.
I harvested a Romaine head (Paris Island COS, American Seeds) and a loose leafy head (Grand Rapids, American Seeds). I get American seed packets from my local dollar store, 4 for a dollar; but I started these from last years seeds so I consider them free. We have a curly leaf dwarf kale (American Seeds) and a lacinto (dinosaur) kale (from old seeds from High Mowing that I am harvesting too.
I wanted to attach a picture, but could not see how to do it.
Looking forward to more fresh Spring veggies,
Elaine