Harvest Monday April 18, 2022

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. Lettuce is still our biggest crop now, and we are enjoying it on a regular basis. Starfighter is a green leaf lettuce that makes fairly large heads, and this one weighed in at over a pound. Sea of Red continues to give us plenty of leaves to add color to our salads too. They kept us well supplied last week.

Starfighter lettuce

Sea of Red lettuce

I have cilantro growing in containers in the greenhouse, where it does quite well until it starts to bolt. I snip a few leaves as needed, and don’t usually get photos of them. This time I did and I got a few leaves of flatleaf chives to go with the cilantro.

cilantro and chives

Parsley is another herb I have growing in the greenhouse that gets used here quite often. For this batch I got a few of the I’itoi perennial onions to add to a tabouli salad I made last week. The taboili went well with my wife’s curried chicken salad, and a thinly sliced piece  of toasted sourdough bread completed our lunchtime meal. We like our tabouli with lots of parsley and this time I cut plenty of it.

parsley and I’itoi onions

tabouli with curried chicken salad

And I cut what will surely be the last of the purple sprouting broccoli from the plants in the greenhouse. It wasn’t a great year for it, but we got enough to enjoy it for several meals. I used a mix of the PSB and the collard rapini from last week to make a skillet pasta dish we enjoyed for dinner one night. I sautéed them in olive until crisp tender, then added to cooked farro fusilli along with lemon juice, garlic and grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.

purple sprouting broccoli

rapini with pasta dish

In other news, I am trying something new (for me) this year: starting radishes indoors in trays. I plan to interplant these with kohlrabi in a week or so. I have another container out in the greenhouse that I sowed with radish seed to see how they do for me that way.

radishes sprouting

And in the good news department, mama bluebird has done a stellar job of tending to her eggs in our colder than usual spring weather. I found three babies when I checked the PVC nest box last week. Only the female incubates the eggs, since she has a featherless spot on her abdomen called a brood patch which allows her to use her body heat to warm the eggs. I have been hosting bluebirds for almost 40 years now, and I never cease to be delighted when a new brood hatches. The ones in the photo are about a week old, and at 17-18 days of age they typically leave the nest.

bluebird babies

Things are beginning to bloom now in the perennial border. Our Korean Spice viburnum has gotten quite large, and is in full bloom right now. The fragrance is heavenly, and perfumes the air all around it.

Korean Spice viburnum

viburnum blooms

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!