Garden Therapy» lettuce

First Harvest of September

Stevie — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:49:21 +0000

It’s harvest season. There are piles of produce filling my fridge, tabletop, counters, bootroom and basement. I have bags and bowls and boxes of fresh food overtaking the house, overflowing the allotted foodstuff spaces, making it so I need to step over it all to just get through a doorway. It’s definitely harvest season.

Here is what I’ve harvested from my community garden and home gardens. While I don’t grow a lot of any one thing, I grow a few of a lot of things. Over 100 varieties of edibles making this definitive season of plenty.

From my community garden plot:

Potatoes: Red Chief, mystery white variety

Tomatoes: Black Russian and La Roma
Beans: Kentucky Wonder Brown, Kentucky Wonder Wax, Fortex Filet, Orca, and Purple Peacock
Grapes

Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Peas (the last of them this week due to powdery mildew taking over)
Beets: Detroit Supreme, Red Ace, Chioggia, and Golden
Squash: Small Wonder spaghetti, yellow spaghetti, Little October pumpkins

From my home garden:

Tomatoes: Siletz, La Roma, Green Zebra, Red Zebra, Sungold Cherry, Sweetheart Grape, Isis Candy, Gold Nugget, Patio, and Moneymaker. I recently saw a recipe for roasting them in a dutch oven and now I have one on my kitchen gadget wish list along with a food strainer for making roasted tomato sauce.

Green onions
Italian Prune Plums
Beets: Detroit Supreme, Red Ace, Chioggia, and Golden

Fairy Tale eggplant
Basil: Organic Sweet Basil, Thai Basil
Peppers: Filius Blue, Thai Dragon, and Garden Salsa
Aunt Molly’s ground cherries

Wild arugula and lettuce
Rainbow chard
Soybeans

I took some time this week to reflect on this abundance and the colder months to come. While the days are long and busy now, I’m growing as tired as my plants are from a healthy growing season. But the glut of produce is available now to enjoy. The rainbow of colours and fresh flavours will soon be a fond memory so I best savour this season. With these thoughts I planted my winter seeds and regained my energy for picking and packing away summer’s bounty.

thanks to Daphne’s Dandelions for hosting another wonderful Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday No. 1

Stevie — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:17:18 +0000

Again this year I’ve planted wayyy too many vegetables, fruits, herbs, and other edibles in my wee garden. Those who pop by for a visit get something to take away and many times it’s something they haven’t tried before. What drives this lunacy?

Biological curiosity? Yep.

Culinary experimentation? Check.

And maybe a little bit of an addiction?

Ahem, well, “Harvest Monday” seems to be a good time to begin cataloging the craziness so here we go with what I’m harvesting now in my urban yards, container gardens and community garden plots. The links will lead to more information, whether it be a project I’ve been working on or the seeds that I used (almost always from West Coast Seeds):

June-bearing strawberries

Shiitake Mushrooms

Rouge d’Hiver Lettuce

Rouge d'Hiver Lettuce in Wine Barrel

Super Gourmet Salad Blend

Cascadia snap peas

Sugar Daddy snap peas

Mammoth Melting Sugar snow peas

Wild Arugula

Wild Arugula or Rocket / Roquette

Green Onions

Egyptian Walking Onions