Harvest Monday April 1, 2019

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. It’s hard to believe it is April already, and that’s no fooling! Our March this year was windy, cloudy, and rainy and I have to say I won’t miss it much. April brings much promise in the garden, including the first asparagus spears poking up from the ground. And it brings the hopes of baby bluebirds, since we have a nesting pair that has already started laying eggs.

We’re still waiting on the asparagus to arrive, but meanwhile we have plenty of greens to eat. My wife got a pic of me harvesting lettuce in the greenhouse one day. Much of that batch wound up in a salad we had for lunch a couple of hours later. You can’t beat that for freshness! I cut more later in the week that wound up in fish tacos. We love fish tacos, and I pan cooked a piece of grouper and made homemade corn tortillas for the occasion. I added fresh mango salsa, mashed avocado and homegrown lettuce, and it made for a tasty and healthy meal.

I also cut more kale from the greenhouse and cold frame plantings. In the greenhouse, the curly Winterbor has starting putting out rapini. I was quick to cut a few and we enjoyed them one day as a side dish along with a few of the young leaves from the bolting plant. I blanched the rapini for about two minutes then drained. I sauteed the leaves in olive oil along with a little garlic, and added the rapini at the end. Next time I’ll blanch the rapini for just one minute since they were really tender enough to eat raw.

I made another small cutting from the purple sprouting broccoli. Santee has done very well for me overwintering in the greenhouse. I’m trying one called Burgundy this spring, a non-heading purple broccoli that is supposed to produce lots of side shoots and also have good heat tolerance. Our spring weather here usually gets hot quickly, and it can make growing broccoli a challenge. So we will see how Burgundy does. I’m also growing Piracicaba again, which is a broccolini type that was bred in Brazil to withstand the heat. I’m not sure why I stopped growing it, but we will see how it does this year. The broccolini (or baby broccoli) types seem to do better for me here, so I am planting more of them. Apollo and Artwork are two longtime favorites that do quite well for me.

I made another  cutting from microgreens last week, and this time it was mizuna. These are mild tasting greens and work well on salads, sandwiches and in soup. I’ve also got seedlings of several red leaf mizunas I’m growing this spring, including Miz America and Red Kingdom. I’ll be planting these outside soon. And I’m growing Mizspoona Salad Select, which is a mizuna/tatsoi cross that resembles mizuna more than tatsoi.

I baked a loaf of No-Knead Sourdough Bread last week. We used some of this loaf for a tuna melt sandwich one day for lunch, and I sliced and froze the rest for later use.  I make the four ingredient tuna melt topping from tuna, avocado, a dab of mayonnaise and a slice of sharp cheddar cheese on top. The crusty bread holds up well to the tuna mix.

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!