Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The harvests were pretty thin here last week. I pulled a few of the Oasis and Hakurei turnips and cooked them up with the greens and roots together. The greens are starting to taste a little sweeter now that they have been frosted on several times. We got almost 4 inches of rain last Thursday and Friday so the roots were a bit muddy before I cleaned them up.
Oasis and Hakurei turnips
I also pulled a few radishes, mainly for making a couple of jars of kimchi. It’s the purple fleshed KN Bravo, the white Alpine and the green fleshed Green Luobo this batch. Some of these may also wind up in a stir fry this week. I have more radishes growing and sizing up in the garden that should keep us supplied for a while.
KN Bravo, Alpine and Green Luobo radishes
I did do quite a bit of garden work before the big rains came. I cleaned up a couple of beds where tomatoes and sweet potatoes were growing, and got them prepped for the next crop. I spread several cart loads of compost on the beds and worked it in, plus I added other amendments to one bed I need to plant this fall. That bed will be home to garlic and multiplier onions which I need to get planted ASAP when the ground dries a bit. The other bed will be home to the 2019 spring planted brassicas like broccoli, cabbage and kohlrabi. You can see in the below photo I still have a lot of work to do, including pulling all the pepper plants and the vining squash vines.
beds ready for planting
And speaking of vining squash, I found three more of the Turkeyneck squashes that appeared to have survived the frosts and freeze. I don’t know if they will mature fully indoors or not, but the rinds were hard and I brought them in anyway. These 3 weighed 26 pounds total, a bit over 8 pounds each. After being inside for a few days they are already starting to turn tan.
Turkeyneck squashes
And I baked a loaf of Kamut bread for sandwiches. This bread has 50% whole grain kamut flour and 50% ‘white’ kamut. The kamut/khorasan flour has a golden color and a sweet nutty flavor and makes a great sandwich bread. I’ve also used it to make a sturdy sourdough bread in the past.
Kamut bread
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, or wishing they were harvesting!
Interesting that your errant turkeyneck squashes are turning tan indoors. Nice to see the photos of your garden.
We seem to have been having a similar sort of week. I’m hoping to dig over our tomato bed this afternoon. It is definitely the season for root crops.
We ate at a restaurant last week and I got a lettuce salad that had roasted root veggies on it – carrots, beets and parsnips!
Yes, it is interesting that the squash turns tan indoors. Since the skins were already firm, I wonder if they would still have been good green. I’ve never thought of radishes in a stir-fry, were they the main ingredient. I asked my wife about Kamut flour, and she said she thought it made a dense bread. Is that your experience?
I think 100% whole grain Kamut would make a dense bread, but the 50/50 seems to be a good compromise and this bread is light. As a matter of fact, the original King Arthur recipe called for 50% unbleached wheat flour/50% whole grain Kamut, and I thought that was TOO soft.
We use the radishes with other stir-fried veggies . This week my wife is cooking and she plans to mix them with carrots and some of the remaining sweet peppers. The radishes add a bit of crunch.
Did you end up growing lettuce outside? I’m just wondering whether I should have let them grow up in the greenhouse instead of planting them in the ground.
Those are some large squashes, it’s great they were able to size up so late. I’ve seen the Green Luobo seeds around and have always been curious about that radish, especially since a few catalogues mention their sweetness and lack of pungency. And your bread loaf looks delicious.
I’m growing the lettuce inside the greenhouse this fall. It was so hot in September I delayed planting, and I figured it will hold up to cold weather better in there.
Four inches of rain would be wonderful to have here. We are guiltily enjoying some really lovely warm weather, but it’s so dry dry dry, some rain would be welcome. I bet those turnips and radishes are good now. Mine are nowhere near ready to harvest.
Surprise harvests are the best! I have to get my garlic planted asap as well. Unfortunately, I used up most of my compost in other beds and won’t have enough for the garlic bed – and I also don’t have the time to get a trailer full, like I normally do at this time of year. Sometimes you just have to make do with what you have and hope for the best!
That’s a coincidence — I just bought some Kamut flour to experiment with last week. Do you have any good tips/hints?
It seems the Kamut flour is super thirsty. I always have to add more water than I would for regular wheat.