Category Archives: Harvest Basket

Today’s Harvest Basket

Zucchini and cucumbers, plus fresh dill

The July zucchini explosion is here

Three kinds of zucchini - I know - what was I thinking?

Three kinds of zucchini – I know – what was I thinking?

At last, I picked cucumbers today, three long, thin-skinned English cucumbers. They are my favorites English Cucumber, “Chelsea Prize”, which is an exclusive from Renee’s Garden Seed.

Cucumber season is never long enough. When the little cucumbers finally arrive in a couple of weeks, I’ll make a few pickles. But, these slender, sweet fleshed Chelsea Prize cukes are best for fresh eating.

Visit Zucchini Everything on Pinterest or try this simple cake to use up a big zucchini.

One recipe makes three cakes zucchini, carrot or apple  Yes,  the recipe really calls for 4 cups of zucchini (!), carrots, or apples. It is a beautiful cake with flecks of both zucchini and carrots.

While I have plenty of zucchini and carrots, I’ll make a couple of these cakes to freeze.

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Today’s Harvest Basket

Saturn or donut peaches

Today's harvest basket 6/30
It’s been a race to get my share of the peaches. There is a ruthless gang of squirrels who snag the peaches. I just wish they would leave a few more in my reach. This years heavy crop of peaches are about 2-21/2″ in diameter.

Also called flat peach,  it has a mild, sweet flavor. I’d call them lunchbox peaches or pocket peaches. Seems like kids would love these as much as they do the little Clementines or zipper oranges.

This little tasty peach originates from China circa 1869, and was  introduced by Rutgers and Stark Bro’s in the 1990s. Disease-resistant to bacterial leafspot. Self-pollinating.

My favorite peach preserve recipe:

Peaches and champagne preserves

 

Today’s Harvest Basket

Early summer harvest

Red and white onions, hard neck garlic, two varieties of zucchini, Chinese cabbage.
6/22

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Napa or Nappa cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis or Brassica rapa Pekinensis Group) is a type of Chinese cabbage. In the kitchen, cabbage becomes Kim Chi, slaw, stir-fries and Chinese chicken salad.

I pulled up the garlic today. It is probably half the harvest of last year and the bulbs are a lot smaller. My guess is that the garlic bulbs just didn’t get enough water. It is Chesnok Red Hardneck Garlic.IMG_0717

How to grow and harvest organic garlic

Chesnok Red is the best baking garlic. Not a hot garlic, Chesnok is easy peel and will keep for about 6 months.  To stretch the harvest, I roast garlic and freeze it in little cubes. Also, I pickle small jars of peeled bulbs to use later in the year.

The big bonus to growing your own garlic, is that I have plenty of garlic on hand for salsa, spaghetti sauce, dill pickles, soup and pesto.

pickled garlic

How to store and use homegrown garlic and onions

Today’s Harvest Basket

Early garden harvests

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Green beans, baby carrots, garlic scapes. lettuce, radishes and radish flowers.

Garlic scapes are used in pesto and pickled.

Garlic scapes are green stems and unopened flower buds of hard-neck garlic varieties.

Scapes have a mild garlic flavor and a slight sweetness, which makes them a prized addition in the kitchen. You can find them in the early summer at farmers’ markets. If you grow your own garlic, trim the scapes off before their flowers open.

This forces the plant to focus on bulb.

6/6

Today’s Harvest basket

First basket 6/1

Today’s Harvest Basket

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Sugar snap peas, pak choi, turnips, lettuce, radish, green onions. Salads and stir-frys are the blue plate specials at our house this week.

Don’t like turnips?

The little white turnips in the corner of the basket may change your mind about turnips. These Japanese Baby Turnips, “Mikado” are from Renee’s Garden  I grow them in the spring and in the fall.

These white, mild turnips grow as big as walnuts. They are good raw or cooked with the greens.

 

Todays harvest basket 7/9/15

Todays harvest basket

July 9, 2015

zucchini, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, green beans

zucchini, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, green beans

Zucchini is coming on daily. So far, picking squash when it is 6 or 7″ long, is working. I see a chocolate zucchini cake in our future…

Green beans  are in a small patch we must collect a few pickings for a meal. In a couple of days, cucumber production will explode. For now, there are enough cucumbers for fresh eating.

There are plenty of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes for salad every day. The few red slicer tomatoes from My Garden Post were used for the first BLT of the season.

Summer harvest of onions and garlic.

Summer harvest of onions and garlic.

Read about the garlic and onions curing in the shade on the porch. Its garlic season

Best tomato plants for containers

is all about the first juicy red tomatoes of the season. Those early  full-sized tomatoes were grown on two foot tall plants!

Bush 506. First full size tomato to ripen, 5-oz.

Bush 506. First full size tomato to ripen, 5-oz.

 

 

Today’s harvest basket – Salad greens

Today’s harvest basket,  May 25, 2015

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Thinning lettuce from My Garden Post (MGP)*

I’ve been snipping lettuce leaves and pulling radish and onions a few, each day, for a couple of weeks. But today I got a basket full. So, let this be 2015’s first harvest basket of the season.

 

There is enough lettuce for a sandwich or to add to store-bought lettuce. Radish and onion from our garden make it close to perfect.

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This little bunny, maybe the third generation so for this spring, is “hiding” by the kitchen door. I can only hope this one does not like green beans.

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I mix lettuces together when sowing. This allows for a beautiful variety when thinning and harvesting.

Slow to bolt and rarely bitter, Green Ice leaf-type lettuce, it’s wavy, fringed leaves are a dark green color and crisp.

Flashy trout back lettuce, a European heirloom Forellenschluse (Austrian for speckled like a trout’s back) romaine is a prized lettuce varieties. Soft, tender, juicy.

And so, without further ado,

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Today’s harvest basket, May 28, 2015. Lettuce. onions, radish. PBH

 

 

 

 Get off your knees! MGP_Logo_2Color_356K

My Garden Post best dwarf tomatoes

Vertical Gardening with My Garden Post.

My Garden Post (MGP)* Cool Season Crops.

Grow a salad in a hanging basket

Less weeds and insect damage

Hanging Baskets for 3 seasons

  1.    Spring salad greens
  2.    Wave petunias, giant leafy ferns, tumbling begonias, cascading coleus.
  3.   Dwarf green beans and radishes, baby carrots or turnips.

Merlot lettuce. This rich dark Merlot colored lettuce holds a color all season.

Mix it up.

Brune D'Hiver Lettuce is tender, mild little lettuce that works best with other mixed lettuces. It's tender leaves and mild taste can not carry the salad by it's self.

Brune D’Hiver Lettuce is tender, mild little lettuce that works best with other mixed lettuces. It’s tender leaves and mild taste can not carry the salad by its self.

Mixed lettuces make the most colorful baskets.

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Mixed salad greens are simple. As radishes grow and are harvested, giving more room for the lettuces to grow. Slim and tender young green onions can be pulled at any time.

 

Lettuce and flowers.

Pansies and lettuce

Pansies and lettuce.

Pansy flowers are edible and a colorful addition to your salad bowl.

You might like Wilted Lettuce

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Today’s Harvest Basket 9/28/14

Today’s Harvest Basket September 28,1914

Tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, sage

Food is just coming in “dribs and drabs”, as grandmother would say.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.

Happy Birthday to our resident hole digger and full-time weeder. His birthday dinner will be all locally grown (in my garden or in the surrounding counties.)

Everything except for the pasta. It was a very bad year for macaroni in the garden. It doesn’t grow here in Southeast Missouri, USA

Jules is one of the unsung hero’s of the garden, chasing moles, resetting the stones in the walkway once the culprit is finally caught. Most of all, when we both stumble inside at the end of a long, hard day, I will say I forgot to turn off the water, bring in the tools, whatever.) Out he goes to solve the problem. Jules is the apple of my eye.

Cooler fall weather means apples are plentiful. Missouri has a bounty of apples.

 

Apples

Honey Crisp, big, juicy, crisp.

Honey Crisp, big, juicy, crisp.

Speaking of apples, they are here, every kind you can imagine. I had to take out a second mortgage to buy the first Honeycrisps that arrived in the area. They are big enough to share, crisp and sweet as any eating apple you ever tasted.

Because this young apple has quickly developed such a big following. The Grocer charges more than double the price of other apples.

It takes five to six years for Honeycrisp to produce fruit. They grow best in cold weather states, like Minnesota.

Honeycrisp apple is a cross between Macoun apple and Honey Gold apples. Developed by University of Minnesota.

It will not come true when grown from seed. Honeycrisp apple flowers must be pollinated by another apple variety. Even a crabapple will do.

They are pricey apples. But I love them for fresh eating. For making homemade applesauce, pies, fried apples, I choose a more affordable variety.

Applesauce or apple pie filling are a good idea to start home canning. The weather is cool, the work in your garden has slowed down, apples are plentiful most everywhere.

Apples as a first home canning project

This is a favorite apple pie recipe for a fall apple bounty.

Sausage and apple pie a fall favorite

Make it a brunch dish using good breakfast sausage. For dinner, I use sweet Italian sausage. Honestly, I don’t need a reason, the pie is one my fall favorites.

Today’s Harvest Basket 9/16/14

Today’s Harvest Basket, September 16, 2014.

Bunnies are always hiding in my garden. Today, I also discovered carrots.

Big long, straight carrots.

Big long, straight carrots.

I was planning a journal entry called “Garden Cleanup.” While I was tidying up the herb garden, I discovered these giant carrots. This is a new vegetable in my garden, it is only the second year to grow carrots. I was never inclined to grow carrots because I didn’t especially like them.

Carrots

Carrots was not a crop grown in Grandmother’s garden. Her Ozarks garden was red clay and very rocky, making it impossible to grow carrots. I had no idea where carrots came from.

The 10″ long carrots were masquerading as it’s cousins: parsley, cilantro, and chervil. All of these herbs are members of the carrot family. The flowers look like Queen Ann’s Lace.

Sitting behind the harvest basket are water-filled jars of parsley, cilantro, or chervil. The parsley will go into tabouleh. Cilantro will be frozen into a pesto-like condiment, ready to drop into bean dishes, chili, enchilada sauce or salsa.

Chervil on potato salad

Chervil on potato salad

Chervil has only been in the garden for a couple of years. I will use chervil in potato dishes like potato salad.

It is one of the herbs in the fines herbes blend. (pronounced “feen erb.”) 

Fines Herbes

My recipe for fresh fines herbes

• 3 Tablespoons chervil
• 3 Tablespoons chives
• 3 Tablespoons parsley
• 2 Tablespoons tarragon

Finely chop all these herbs and mix together. Use fresh or store in the refrigerator in a zip lock or small air tight container for a couple of days.

I have all these herbs growing in the garden now. Usually, chervil is available only in the cool season. I will mix fines herbes into an herb herb butter to freeze.

Lacy chervil in part shade.

Lacy chervil in part shade.

Try chervil or fines herbes:

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