Harvest Monday February 15, 2016

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I have been battling a nasty cold the past week, a coughing and hacking sort of bug that has had me mostly out of action. I did have one fresh harvest for the week, which was a cutting of some mizspoona from the greenhouse that went into a frittata my wife whipped up for lunch one day. Mizspoona Salad Select is a mizuna/tatzoi cross that Adaptive Seeds says “resembles a dark green monster Mizuna more than Tatsoi.” It is good both raw and cooked, and it certainly added some green to the frittata (which apparently was camera shy).

mizspoona harvest foir frittata

mizspoona harvest for frittata

One thing I did before I got sick was cook the last neck pumpkin (aka Penn. Dutch Crookneck Squash). I should say I cooked the only one, since one is all I harvested last year. It was a terrible year for winter squash here, and the neck pumpkin made the worst showing since I began growing it back in 2010. Still, it did give us one fruit, which is more than I can say for a lot of squash varieties I grew last year. The neck was starting to shrivel a little and I wanted to use it before it started to rot.

baking neck pumpkin

baking neck pumpkin

We use this moschata type squash the same as we do butternut squash. According to Amy Goldman in her book The Compleat Squash, the neck pumpkins were the forerunners of the butternuts, whose more compact shape made them better suited for shipping. After baking this one, I pureed the flesh and used it to make a sauce for a batch of Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagna Rolls. I used some of our frozen spinach to make the stuffing. This recipe makes a lot, and we freeze leftovers which make for an easy meal when a side veggie is added.

lasagna rolls using neck pumpkin

lasagna rolls using neck pumpkin

I’m going to follow Michelle’s lead and start scheduling my HM posts earlier, right after midnight CST. I generally have the post wrapped up by Sunday evening, so there’s no reason not to get it posted so folks can start linking up.

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!


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Seeing Green, White and Ginger

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Around this time of year I am anxious to see any signs of new life. I found some under the grow lights in the basement, where the seeds I started last week are sprouting and showing green. The arugula, lettuce, kale and mizspoona are all coming up, while the parsley is no doubt slowly thinking about sprouting. All these plants are destined for either the greenhouse or cold frame beds, where they will be protected from the harsh winter weather.

seeds coming up under grow lights

seeds coming up under grow lights

And speaking of winter, we got another small snow yesterday. It was just enough to cover the ground and make the roads slick. When it snows I often show a photo of the greenhouse. I mainly do that because I can stick the camera out the back door and not have to go out in the cold!

snow on the greenhouse and cold frames

snow on the greenhouse and cold frames

Will at Eight Gate Farm asked about how I pruned back my overwintered pepper plants. I’m fairly new to the process, and definitely still learning. I pruned back an Aji Golden plant last fall after I brought it in and plucked the peppers from it. It has responded with some new growth, though basically it’s still in a holding pattern. I keep the plants in the basement under fluorescent plant lights, and the cool temps (around 60°F) don’t encourage much growth in the peppers.

Aji Golden pepper plant

Aji Golden pepper plant

I was waiting on the Aji Panca plant to ripen its peppers, so I just recently pruned it back. I wound up cutting it further back since it didn’t have a lot of growth up higher on the plant. Hopefully it will respond with new growth in a few weeks. It is my third year overwintering peppers and I have to say they seem to be pretty resilient. They generally take right off growing once the temperatures warm up and they get out in the sunlight. Though I have to say the one in the below photo looks pretty sorry at the moment!

Aji Panca pepper plant

Aji Panca pepper plant

In other unrelated news, I made my first batch of ginger beer a couple of weeks ago and it was so tasty I wound up making more! For the last batch I experimented with adding more ginger root and less sugar. It was ready to strain and bottle in Grolsch type flip-top bottles after a couple of days of fermenting in a half gallon jar. While I am mostly following the instructions in The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz, you can also find a similar recipe online called Natural Ginger Ale.

homemade ginger beer

homemade ginger beer

I hope you have enjoyed this update, and I’ll be back soon with more happenings from HA!

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Harvest Monday February 8, 2016

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. Fresh harvests are always lean for us this time of year. The only thing still growing in the main garden (other than garlic) is kale, and much of it looks pretty sad after several smallish snowfalls and lots of sub-freezing weather that got down to 5°F on one occasion in January and 6°F on two others. One variety though, White Russian, had enough edible leaves to give us a welcome harvest last week.

harvest of White Russian kale

harvest of White Russian kale

I love pairing kale with potatoes, so I made a batch of Kale and Potato Hash to go with  baked fish I cooked for dinner one night. Our stores of potatoes are dwindling, so the hash had lots of kale and not so many potatoes. That was fine, because the kale stole the show anyway. Last year was my first time growing the White Russian kale, but the flavor quickly won me over. Now it also seems to be quite tolerant of our winters, which is another big plus.

Kale and Potato Hash

Kale and Potato Hash

I pickled some of the Malawi Piquante peppers last year, using a process I have used in the past for other peppers like Topepo Rossa. I make a sweet brine using vinegar, water, sugar and salt and then store in the refrigerator. The Malawi Piquante is a C. baccatum pepper said to be like those used to make the pricey Peppadew peppers you see on salad bars and in grocery stores. The Malawi peppers have a mild heat, and I like to use them on salads and pizzas. The ones in the below photo went into a red pepper aioli I made last week to dress up some salmon burgers.

pickled Malawi Piquante peppers

pickled Malawi Piquante peppers

And speaking of peppers, I got a small harvest from a container grown Aji Panca pepper that has been overwintering under lights in the basement. I’ve enjoyed using these mildly hot baccatum peppers in chili con carne and in enchilada sauce. I’ve used most of them dried and then ground into powder, and the ones in the below photo dried while still on the plant. They look almost black in the photo, but they are really more of a dark brown color after they dry. After harvesting the peppers I cut the plant back. I hope to plant it in the ground this spring and get a jump on the growing season that way, since the overwintered plants usually begin flowering and fruiting at least a month before the seed grown plants.

Aji Panca peppers

Aji Panca peppers

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!


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It’s Seed Starting Time Again

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Yesterday I kicked off the 2016 seed starting season. I sowed seeds for early plantings of arugula, lettuce, parsley, mizspoona and kale. I’ll be starting more seeds as soon as the new seed orders arrive, but yesterday I was able to use leftover seeds and get some things going.

128 cell plug flat filled with Pro-Mix

128 cell plug flat filled with Pro-Mix

I am a fan of using plug flats for most of my seed starting activities. I have them with several sizes of cells, and I have found they help me conserve space under the grow lights and let me grow a large number of young plants that way. Yesterday I used one with 128 cells which is a good size for salad greens and herbs. I got all my plug flats from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, and they usually last me for four or five seasons of heavy use before I have to replace them. I’m using Pro-Mix potting soil as the growing medium.

128 cell plug flat showing size

128 cell plug flat showing size

Since parsley usually takes a longer time to germinate (sometime up to two weeks), I sowed those seeds separately in 3.5 inch plastic pots. Then I covered with plastic film to help keep the soil moist until germination. I will remove it once the seeds are up and growing, and eventually transplant the seedlings into individual pots.

container for parsley seeds

container for parsley seeds

Back in 2013 I covered the basics of seed starting in my Seed Starting 101. And last year I shared a look at my indoor Seed Starting Setup. For the general timetable I follow every year check out my Seed Starting and Planting Schedule. I’ll be back with more updates on my seed starting activities as they happen.

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Harvest Monday February 1, 2016

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. And let me say thanks again to Michelle for hosting while I took a month off from HM. After a warm start to the year, winter finally arrived here with cold temperatures and a bit of snow. For me, cold weather is soup weather, and last week I made a batch of minestrone using some of our stores of veggies. Every year I freeze bags of mixed vegetables for use in soup. The contents vary, but usually always contain some form of summer squash and snap beans, along with added carrots, onions or cabbage. To the frozen veggie mix I added our frozen tomatoes and homemade tomato sauce, plus carrots and celery from the grocery. I also added some of our Jacob’s Cattle beans for protein, and a little homemade broth for a base.

minestrone soup with garden veggies

minestrone soup with garden veggies

People often ask what I do with frozen squash and soup is always one of my answers. In the above photo, I can tell by the color and stripes that it is Striata d’Italia, one zucchini that is usually prolific in my garden. It looks like a Gold Marie bean next to it. Of course, a bowl of soup almost begs to have good bread to go along with it. My go-to recipe these days is a sourdough bread inspired by the book 52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust by William Alexander. It makes for a tasty and crusty bread that my wife and I both enjoy eating.

Baguettes à l’Ancienne

Baguettes à l’Ancienne

I am happy to be getting a few fresh harvests this time of year. It might be small in weight, but the fall planted cilantro in the greenhouse is big on flavor. I made some cilantro pesto with it last week, adding a little of our Red Russian garlic plus olive oil and a few macadamia nuts.

fresh cilantro from the greenhouse

fresh cilantro from the greenhouse

Another fresh harvest was a mix of arugula and spinach from the cold frames and greenhouse. The spinach in the cold frame bed is oblivious to the cold weather, and while it isn’t growing much it isn’t hurting either. I have more planted in the greenhouse that isn’t quite ready to harvest yet.

spinach and arugula for pizza

spinach and arugula for pizza

The spinach and arugula went on a pizza I made one night last week. I made the crust from fresh milled White Sonora wheat flour, which is my current favorite for flat breads since it is so easy to roll out. The pizza also featured some of our dehydrated tomatoes, along with mushrooms and some pickled peppers.

pizza on homemade White Sonora crust

pizza on homemade White Sonora crust

We continue to enjoy the fermented veggies I made last fall from cabbage, kohlrabi and turnips. They keep for a long time in the refrigerator, at least until we eat them up! I baked up a loaf of Light Rye Sandwich Bread last week and made meatless Reuben sandwiches using some of the cabbage kraut and Muenster cheese. This is still one of my favorite ways to enjoy the homemade krauts.

meatless Reuben with homemade kraut

meatless Reuben with homemade kraut

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!


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