Harvest Monday May 21, 2012

This week marks the first harvest of the season! Though we've harvested a few chives, a bit of sage, and one horseradish root already it was all harvested while we were in the process of cleaning and planting for this season so this weekend was our first harvest from what we've planted this season, as well as chives - the gift that keeps on giving! 

Saturday we arrived at the garden ready to plant our warm weather crops and some more herbs, but first we had a little bit of harvesting and thinning to take care of.

Our first harvest of the season

Thought it wasn't a huge harvest it was a tangible one. We took home:
Radish 5.25 oz
Chives 6 oz
Arugula 12 oz
Total harvest this week: 23.25 oz / 1.453 lbs
Total harvest this season: 34.65 oz / 2.166 lbs
It's been a hectic few weeks which has kept us away from the garden for the most part, so it was nice to  have something delicious to bring home when we finally did make it there!
Hopefully this harvest will be the first of many!!
If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Opening Day & First Harvest

I couldn't take it any longer! After an unreasonably warm winter I was finally ready to get back to the Garden. This past Sunday morning I brought most of my tools to the plot and opened up for the season! I saw at least 8 or 10 other gardeners, most of them knew members of the Fenway Victor Gardens, hard at work!
I cleared up some straw I insulated some of the garden with. The garlic looks fantastic I counted 48 garlic plants about 3-4 inches tall each! I can't wait to harvest all that garlic later this summer. We planted a few walking onions and it looks as if 1 of about a dozen managed to grow. I am hoping some of the rest will emerge soon. Much to my delight I found a volunteer leek growing under a pile of straw in the back corner of the garden. I managed to put some additional Leek as well as some Kale seeds in the ground before the afternoon was up!
I even managed a small harvest, with a big effort! I left one horseradish plant to overwinter, and it was time to dig it up as Passover is this coming weekendand homemade horseradish is in great demand!! After some serious grunting and digging I managed to uproot 7.35 oz of Horseradish! Not bad at all.

Still a lot of tidying and additional work to do, but it felt great to be outside and see some real signs of spring! Next trip down to the plot I will bring a camera to show off some of the great looking garlic!

Much more to come...we're just getting started!

First Harvest Monday of the season 5/30/11 & garden update

Gail and I enjoyed our first very small harvest of the growing season late last week.
With my job transition followed by tons of rain we were a little behind on the gardening front but we did our best catching up routine this week as well. Our garlic is really taking off and looks great and some of the walking onions have started forming bulbs on their tops:

We've also got a variety of herbs and greens that are doing great including some kale, volunteer chives, flat leaf and & parsley, garlic chives, and even the tiny sage is starting to show signs of life, as are some radishes and bush beans! Here is a nice shot of the volunteer chives and kale as seen from a distance:

We planted our tomato (3 Cherokee purple & 3 speckled roman) and pepper (4 'Golden Summer' bell peppers,23 cubanelle's, 2 jalapeños & 1 that was unlabeled but I think is a cubanelle.) We also planted all the marigolds, and the 3 bush bay mini zucchini!

On to the harvest!!!
We harvest a small mix of herbs & greens this week. The chives started to blossom so we took some home with us to put in our dinner and in some of the cheese we made(more on that later this week). We also got some parsley and a small bunch of arugula, both of which found their way into our dinner!
Here is what we harvested:

.25oz/7.08g Parsley
.80oz/22.68g Chives
2.45 oz/69.46g Arugula

Total for the week: 3.50 oz/92.22 g

Not a huge harvest but I'm really happy now that we are pretty much caught up with getting the garden fully going! Here's to the first of many wonderful harvests & garden updates of the season!

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

First Harvest! & (mostly) local dinner!

I'm extremely excited and proud to show off my first harvest!!!

4 oz/113.39 g off delicious Mesclun greens! Here's a great shot of Gail showing off the fruits(greens?) of our labor:

Meanwhile, I can barely resist the urge to chomp away:

In anticipation of our first harvest Gail stopped at the Dewey Square/South Station Farmer's Market for some produce to add to our greens. She brought home some delicious baby tomatoes & asparagus from Kimball Farm(both of which were pan roasted), then we added some chive blossom's which were snipped at the garden last week, as well as cucumbers and carrots from our final Boston Organics box, and a delicious feta cheese for an excellent, mostly local and delicious salad:

Along with produce Gail also picked up some Metch from Seta's Mediterranean Foods, a new vendor at the market! The Metch was outstanding! This picture doesn't do it justice:

What is Metch exactly? Known as Metch or more commonly Eetch, is a dish made primarily of bulgur with parsley, and pureed tomatoes, which gives it the red hue. The ingredient list on the metch was quite simple(and very identifiable): Bulghur, Tomatoes, Parsley, Scallions, Lemon Juice, Olive Oil, & Kosher Salt! It really was delicious and I can't wait to try some more of Seta's great food!

All in all I am extremely full and satisfied with my delicious dinner of Metch & Salad and extremely proud of my first harvest!

Hopefully it is the first of many!!!