Harvest Monday November 30, 2020

It’s time for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. It is still salad season here, and with mild weather so far the greenhouse lettuce is plentiful. I think the winter lettuce is often the best of all, with tender and mild flavored leaves. I made several cuttings of lettuce last week, plus other salad greens like sorrel, mizuna and baby kale. The Central Red mizuna has purple stems and a mild flavor I really like both raw and cooked. I’ve got it growing in a container in the greenhouse and in one of the cold frame beds outside.

lettuce for salads

greens for salads

I didn’t plant much broccoli out in the main vegetable garden this fall, though I did set out a few plants. I got a few side shoots of the green Artwork and two main heads of the purple sprouting broccoli Burgundy. I roasted all of this for a side dish one day. I have 10 PSB plants in the greenhouse which should give us broccoli in the January to March time frame when harvests are few.

Artwork and Burgundy broccoli

I also didn’t plant much kohlrabi this fall. It has been a great year for kohlrabi here though, and these two big Kossak kohlrabis weighed a bit over a pound each. That makes 38 pounds of kohlrabi for 2020, and obviously we love it here which is why I plant so much of it. These two will get grated and turned into kohlrabi kraut, and should make a quart jar of it. I still have a couple of the smaller kohlrabis in the refrigerator for fresh use.

Kossak kohlrabi

Collards are still going strong. I took two leaves of the Yellow Cabbage and used them as wrappers for bean enchiladas. First I blanched the leaves in boiling water for about 5 minutes, then cooled and dried them. Next I filled the leaves with refried beans and a bit of cheese, and rolled them up around the filling. Then I topped with some homemade and homegrown tomato sauce and baked for 30 minutes or so. I added a bit of grated local cheddar cheese on top, and it made for a tasty lunch one day last week. I think a bean and rice filling would also be tasty with this treatment.

Yellow Cabbage collard leaves

collard and bean enchiladas

I made a bigger cutting of Hen Peck collards I cooked up for a side dish, and we ate on those for a couple of nights. I only set out two plants of Hen Peck, and there was a big difference in the leaves of the two. The one on the right is a bit more “frilly” and not quite as large, though both have the characteristic notches on the leaf margins which led to the name.

Hen Peck collards

At Happy Acres though, collards are not just for eating! My wife selected a few leaves to use in her art studio for leaf printing. These are best used fresh for this purpose, and once printed they may wind up in any number of art projects in the future.

collard leaf printing

removing collard leaf

I think one of the finished pieces is really stunning, and pretty amazing that something like a humble collard leaf could be used to make art!

collard leaf art

She also put her artistic talents to use in baking up a pumpkin pie last week for Thanksgiving. I baked one of the mature Centercut neck pumpkins and made into pumpkin puree, and she used that for the pie. I have quite a few of the Centercut and Turkeyneck pumpkins in storage, and with any luck they should last us throughout most of the winter. We use a lot of them in fruit smoothies, and I also use some for baking into breads and rolls in addition to the occasional pie.

pumpkin pie

Once again I’ve decided it makes sense to take a break from the Harvest Monday posts until February. Harvests are few and far between for many, and I always enjoy taking a bit of downtime from gardening this time of year, as do many other gardeners. I’ll be back with Harvest Monday on February 1st. I will post about other garden news as it happens though, and you can always follow my Facebook page for harvests and other garden news.

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!