Harvest Monday June 4, 2018

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. We got over 4 inches of rain last week, some from storm Alberto and more from a system that came through right behind it. That has delayed garden work yet again, and brings our yearly rainfall total to over 31 inches. To put that in perspective, last year we got 40 inches total all year long. To say that 2018 has been a wet year would be a major understatement! With splitting from all that rain a real possibility, I pulled many of the early planted kohlrabi that had sized up. It’s the purple skinned Kolibri in the below photo.

I’m growing the green skinned Kordial for the first time. It’s from the same breeders that gave us Konan, Kolibri and Kossak (Bejo Seeds), and my first impression is quite positive. You can see by the photos it was raining the morning I pulled the kohlrabi.

There was a bit over six pounds of kohlrabi in all, and I wasted no time in getting some of it fermented. I started two jars of kohlrabi ‘pickles’ and one jar of kohl-kraut. I’ll leave all to sit and ferment for about two weeks before refrigerating.

There was still enough kohlrabi left over to enjoy eating fresh, plus I roasted one batch in a cast iron skillet. I tossed it in olive oil and sprinkled with salt before roasting in a 400°F oven for 20-25 minutes in the pre-heated skillet. Roasting gives it a nice flavor I think, like it does for many vegetables.  Kohlrabi is one of our favorite veggies, and I grow a lot of it for that reason.

I cut the first head of napa cabbage last week. This one is Little Jade, and this ‘little’ cabbage weighed over four pounds! After trimming it up there was plenty to make a batch of kimchi, with enough left to make an unstuffed cabbage roll recipe I want to try later in the week. For the kimchi, I cut up the cabbage yesterday and soaked it in a brine solution overnight. Today I will drain it and add the other ingredients. I am loosely following a recipe for Everyday Baechu Kimchi from Ferment Your Vegetables by Amanda Feifer.

Other harvests included more broccolini, this time both Apollo and Artwork. These are the main heads, plus one side shoot that was on Apollo. This gave us another taste of broccoli, with more hopefully to come in the weeks ahead.

I also got a decent harvest of gooseberries. The deer and other critters don’t seem to have found them, since I never got around to putting netting over them. There was enough to make a cobbler and freeze three small bags for later on. It’s a mix of ripe, partly ripe, and green ones which is how I like them.

The asparagus harvests are winding down. We’ve had a good run, 23 pounds so far, and we’re going to cut it this week and then let it grow out. That will be eight weeks of harvesting, about how long we usually go on these mature beds.

I also found time to bake a couple of loaves of bread last week. I made a no-knead sourdough loaf using 33% freshly milled sprouted red wheat berries, the rest of the flour being KA bread flour. It turned out well, and we’ve enjoyed a few of the slices grilled and then slathered up with a bit of garlic scape pesto.

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 of any size or shape you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And please be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!