Education, community, veggies
Collards’ 1st big harvest – June 19
We harvested just the outer leaves, leaving the inner leaves intact, with more room to grow.
With luck, we’ll get to enjoy greens from these collards all the way into October.
Swiss Chard harvest!
This is our second week of leaf harvest (day 57) on the swiss chard. Compared to the mammoth leaves in the supermarket, ours are younger, sweeter and more tender (basically, better in every way). They require very little cooking and the brightly-colored stems are particularly lovely in a stir fry.
A few of the transplanted and otherwise smaller plants are not quite ready for a leaf harvest. However, the discrepancies in size are lessening as the season progresses.
Blanching Cauliflower
A couple weeks ago, we decided to experiment on the cauliflower. No, no, we did not pour boiling water on them! Quoting from the Kansas State University Univesity horticulture report on cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower: "Blanching consists of pulling some of the larger leaves over the small head when they are 2 to 3 inches in diameter, and securing them with twine or rubber bands. Failure to blanch will result in discolored heads often wtih a bitter, disagreeable flavor." Gardeners were mixed about implementing blanching on the cauliflower. Some felt that tying leaves around the head would suppress head growth, leading to smaller heads. Others were skeptical about any difference in taste. So, as an experiment, we tied up two heads, and left the rest untied.
Two weeks later, we have some results. One of the cauliflower heads tied up is quite white; another whose tie fell off and needed to be retied is mostly white. By comparison, the head not tied at all is distinctly yellow. It is also the smallest of the three, but then (unfairly perhaps) the two tied up were larger then as well. One gardener still scoffed that there would be no taste difference. We shall see!
Peas 1st big harvest – June 19
The first snow peas were harvested on June 19 (59 days from planting). Peas will be coming fast and furious for the next two or three weeks. We also picked a few sugar snaps, but they won’t really come into their own for another week. The shell peas are probably 2 weeks from maturity. We could have planted peas earlier and harvested a week or two sooner, but we were too busy in March creating this garden from nothing.
Not everyone loves a radish…
