Harvest Monday, August 18, 2014 + A Few Frist + Maximizing Garden Space

Harvested all 5 purple kohlrabi from the window box (click on link and scroll down).

Purple Kohlrabi
Each weights about 6 ounces

Could have waited a few more days to harvest but I needed the window box to sow my spinach seeds.

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All the items below except the fig, are first of the season harvest.

I harvest one fig in early June. This was unusually early and I was totally taken by surprise. Popped it in my mouth to see what it tasted like (it was sweet as honey) so of course there is no photo and I neglected to note the date so no accurate record, bummer.

No sign of another ripe fig until yesterday. This one was sweet also. Many starting to turn brown so more will be coming in soon.

Top to Bottom, Left to right:
Broccoli Side Shoots, Chinese Long Beans,  Fingerling Potato, Blue Potato,
Fig, Tohya Soy Beans & Black Pearl Cherry Tomatoes

Was going to discard the lower portion of the broccoli stems, but decided to peel them and discovered the whole stem was tender.

Chinese long beans are also known as yardlong beans, asparagus beans, noodles and snake beans. The red noodles should be ready in a day or 2. To learn more and recipe click here.

Love the flavor of the Black Pearl Cherry Tomato, this is a keeper. Lost the first few as I thought it would be black and was waiting for it to get darker.

Dave, Our Happy Acres, sent me the seeds last year. You would enjoy perusing Dave’s blog, he is not only a gardener he also does all sorts of other neat things, I will let you go find out for yourself.

Got the blue potato and Tohya soy beans from Mary, Mary’s Veggie Garden. Do check out her blog. She is an organized gardener and a planner. Keeps meticulous records. Hoping some of her skills and discipline will rob off on me.

About 2½ years ago I bought different blue and red potatoes from the Rhinebeck’s Winter Farmers Market for planting and made sure I saved some of the year’s harvest for planting the following year. Last year I ate them all (forgot to save). Had no seed potatoes to plant this year. But Mary came to the rescue and gave me 2 blues and 1 red. Wondered if they are from the ones I shared with her previously?

My black soy beans should be ready need to find time this week to harvest. Both the Tohya and black soy beans are harvested while the pods are still at the green stage and known as green soy beans and edamame. To learn more about green soy beans/edamame click here and here.

The tohya soy beans went into a ground pork dish. Unfortunately I forgot to take note and have no recipe to share.

This is what I did: Parboiled the soy beans for about 5 minutes (to make shelling easy). Sautéed lean coarse ground pork (I make my own ground pork) with garlic, chopped onion and grated ginger. Seasoned with dark soy sauce, salt, pepper and honey. Add broth and soy beans and simmered for 15 minutes, stirred in 1½ tablespoons red miso, thickened with cornstarch and water mixture and served over rice.

Left to Right: Cross Sections of
Purple Kohlrabi, Blue Potato, Fingerling Potato & Black Pearl Cherry Tomato

After peeling, the purple kohlrabi is the same color as the green one but they look pretty in the garden that’s why I plant both.

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Maximizing garden space

Left: Spring planted Swiss Chard
Right: Newly Transplanted Seedlings

The Swiss chard on the left is getting leggy and will get leggier as the season progresses and I continue to harvest the outer leaves. Before long I will need to stake the plant to prevent it from toppling over. As you can see from the photo it is already leaning.

All my Swiss chards in the garden are doing exceptionally well this year so decided to do an experiment with some of the plants.

The seedlings I started some weeks ago needed to be transplanted, but instead of putting them in a newly prepared bed, decided to interplant them between a portion of the spring planted chards. Now that the seedlings are established I will pull the spring planted chards to give the new seedlings room to grow. Will continue to harvest from the other spring planted chards until the new seedlings mature.

Once the fall seedlings reach harvesting stage, I will pull the remaining spring planted chards and transplant my beet seedlings. Not sure if there is sufficient time for the beets to form but I can always use the beet greens. Did the same interplanting with my collard and kale.

By doing the above I am able to get more mileage out of the same amount of garden space, will need to do some tweaking with the timing for starting the fall seeds.

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The week’s harvest included more chards, tomatoes, Ping Tung eggplant, Chinese chives, okra and lettuce.

Made a veggie medley stir-fry with the broccoli, long beans, onion and one of the kohlrabi. Should have stopped there but last minute decided to added a Ping Tung eggplant as well and that was a mistake, did not like the result, I learnt.

…   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …   …  …   … Copyright © by Norma Chang. All Rights Reserved. Do not use/repost any photos and/or articles without permission.

Visit Daphne’s Dandelions http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/ for more Harvest Mondays