Harvest Monday, May 26, 2014 – Window Box Lettuce Salad + Taking a Break

The weather in the Hudson Valley for today, Memorial Day, promises to be dry and warm.
A beautiful day to honor all those who died while serving in the armed forces.

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Winter damage renovation is finally going to start this week.

Barring any unexpected surprises (I am having nightmares) when the kitchen ceiling and walls are opened up, the job should be completed in 3 weeks. Followed by putting my kitchen and house back to normal. Oh I forgot to mention the dreaded cleaning and dusting.

During the reno I will most likely be spending my time away from the computer so will not be posting for a while.

Had a very small harvest – Swiss chards and lettuces from the window boxes and Italian red rib dandelions from the garden.

Did harvested a bunch of garlic green to take to a friend but forgot to take photo.

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Swiss Chard from Window Box
Not a huge amount so I combined all the above with garlic greens from the garden.
Made a simple stir-fry with a bit of oil, S&P, delicious!

Because the chards transplanted to the garden are still quite small and not yet ready for harvest I decided to cut just the outer leaves of each plant in the window box (instead of pulling up the whole plant as I had originally intended) to assure future harvests.

Fertilized with fish emulsion fertilizer after harvesting and should get another meal may be 2 in a few days. Will pull all the plants then and put the window box to rest until fall.

The outer leaves of chards in the garden should be ready for harvest in a week or so.

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Window Box Lettuce Before Harvest

Window Box Lettuce After Harvesting Outer Leaves

Harvested the outer leaves of my window box lettuces, there was enough to make 2 good size salads.

Fertilized after harvesting and will continue to harvest the outer leaves as needed. As with the chards, once the outer leaves of the garden lettuces are ready for harvest, I will pull all the lettuce plants in the window box and put the box to rest until fall.

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Italian Red Rib Dandelions

Like dandelions on the lawn, Italian red rib dandelions are very winter hardy and come back year after year. By a happy accident, I planted my Italian red rib dandelions (few years ago) in an area of the garden where it can remain permanently. Now all I have to do is harvest as needed.

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Made a salad of:
• Lettuce
• Red rib dandelions
• Carrots (overwintered in the garden)
• Frozen pomegranate seeds (see NOTE)
• Sliced avocado
• Roasted pumpkin seeds

∗ Dressed simply with balsamic vinegar, EVOO and S&P to taste. (I like to dress my spring salads minimally to maintain the garden fresh tastes.)

NOTE: Bought a pomegranate but used only a small portion. Not wanting the remainder to go to waste decided to de-seed the whole fruit and freeze the seeds. Use as needed straight from the freezer. Happy with the results.

As you can see from the above photo, the thawed seeds maintained their bright red color and their crunch too.

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See you in a few weeks.

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