September Salads

Salads these days are a mix of chopped pattypan squash, carrots, tomatoes and maybe a cucumber. Add some cut up "ribbons" of chard, a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar, plus herbs and garden grown garlic. Stir well. I have no zucchini this year, and these pattypans will be back in the garden next year (but haven't decided about zucchini yet).
These salads feel loaded enough to carry over some vegetable serving "credit" through January.

March Salad!

I have been a bit negligent of my "covered wagon" cloche. Can you believe it did pay off a little anyway? This was our salad last night!

The chard has lots of fresh leaves and so does the red lettuce. There is no chard or lettuce outside of the cloche right now. The green lettuce I started out with in Oct. turned to mush by the end of Dec. The chives and parsley are doing about the same inside & outside the cloche.

The winds we've had often blow open the ends. I will find a better way to close it up in the future. But, it is still more warm and dry inside than anywhere else in the garden. See the Cloche label for more information about it.

I will plant the lettuce and chard seedlings from my winter sown milk jugs in the cloche soon.

This Just In...

Not bad for November 18th. Surely there are some stay-healthy vitamins in there. New crops of parsley are popping up throughout the garden, too. Some of this lettuce and chard came from the covered wagon cloche, some from out in the open.

I think it is Red Sails leaf lettuce that has been a star this summer and now. It doesn't get the bitter flavor some do. In the green, is Valmaine, I think. I've mixed together assorted seed mixes so it is a little of a guessing game. I think I'll try specific varieties next year. There are some beets in there too.

It has been an exciting garden blogger day, today! Stay tuned and you'll find out why.

Delicata Harvest

The squirrels can be seen stashing away anything they can carry (I'm starting to think it will be a cold winter). Guess I am too. The freezer is full of summer harvests, now I have delicata squash and pumpkins in the garage.

This is my first year to grow delicata squash. It's said to have a sweet nutty flavor with hints of brown sugar and butter. Can't beat that in a squash! It also was quite a happy grower. I only have cooked one and that was an early one that broke off the plant. I think it wasn't quite ready to be eaten, though. I'll report back on these soon.

Smell the Pie?

No, I haven't been able to cut it yet. A little time to age will make it all the better. This is one of the Rouge vif d'Etampes pumpkins. Six have been harvested (some shared around already) and others are still on the vine working on their rougeness. It will be interesting to see the amount of pumpkin that comes from it. It's quite heavy as DH pointed out for every second it took for the photo.

My neighbor gave me seeds and Anita sent me seeds from her Easter drawing. Both are growing but I cannot tell them apart any more. Quite different than my Snackjack harvest last year (I only have 2 of them this year and they are still green). Click on the "pumpkin" label below to see more pumpkin postings. This RvdE has grown quite happily for us this year. I hope it cooks nicely, too, so I can keep growing it.

Snap Peas Blues

Do your peas hide well?
Do they puff up in their shell?
Do they grow to be great big?
Can you ring them like a bell?
Can you search for ‘em every day
Yet find gigantic ones this way?
Do your peas hide well?

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Spent the morning blanching and freezing young peas and broccoli. I also picked every last giant pea pod that has been hiding out, in hopes of continuing the harvest of new peas a little longer. Some of the vines are starting to show signs of the warming summer, but others are still flowering.

Next came more beet harvest. Cooked & pickled some for the week. Added the young greens to the salad and prepared the medium sized greens for cooking tomorrow night. The largest and slightly yellowing leaves went to the compost.

Finally, rhubarb! I was starting to have second thoughts about it. How could I tell if it was ready? I understand it doesn't all turn red as a signal. Would it need so much sweetening that it wasn't worth messing with? Would it be too tough? But, I already had strawberries so next came the strawberry rhubarb cobbler. Not bad at all! I'll be having some more here soon.

It actually reminds me of the tart cherry sauce I was hooked on last year. See the post about it here. Since there are only a few cherries this year, I wonder how rhubarb might substitute? (I have more cherry liqueur from Germany now too!)

So now my question is ...how long can I keep harvesting it?

Beet Treats

When I returned on Sunday, I noticed some beets pushing themselves out of the ground. This must mean they are ready to eat so I pulled one tonight. Ummm... tastes like they are ready to eat too!

I have a few more that look ready and then some that are not quite as far along. As DH doesn't think he likes them, and Nikko only wants them if they are fish flavored (see THIS post about this comment), harvesting about one every few nights should be just fine.

You can see them on April 22 here. This is my first time to grow beets.