Harvest Monday - March 26th, 2018

This week's Harvest Monday is part of the series at Our Happy Acres and is just some more of the same.

More tomatoes.

More Batavian lettuce. More unpictured chard and kale.

More carrots. More scallions. More herbs.

Loquats! Finally! Loquats are, in my opinion, one of the most under appreciated fruit trees in Los Angeles. (Runner up: the Jujubee tree)

Also, this carrot is a sashaying little fat belly with little chubby thighs.

These guys.

Still going strong.

Harvest Monday - March 19th, 2018

Renee's scallion seed mix. I'm not sure those red scallions taste significantly different, but they look pretty.

I've been experimenting with blanching them. Top is one I grew, bottom is store bought. 

Gratuitous rain shots. Renee's Blush Batavia.

Side shoots! Batavian Broccoli. 

More Batavia Blush. Radichio is not suited to my climate, but it was still tasty, if a little sad looking. These went into a really killer salad with sliced apples, feta, toasted walnuts, and a vinaigrette.

Harvest Monday - March 12th, 2018

This post is part of the Harvest Monday series over at Our Happy Acres. 

Potatoes! This feels like a magic trick. I put one potato...sprout? in the ground and now I have many. 

Side shoots! Still collected fistfuls of these every few days. I grew other winter flowers, but these. I mean...look at this.

First of my second succession carrots. I'm pretty sure this is the Baker Creek free seed Cosmic Purple. I hosed it off and ate it on the spot. It's good! It's less sweet and more "carroty."

Ocean State Job Lots Discount Seed Variety Collards going strong.  Last of this years Arugula.

Succession planting fail. Drowning in Mikado turnips.

 Spinach.

ONE LAST ONE:

*sigh*

Harvest Monday - March 5th, 2018

 

Not to brag, but the fruit tree varieties at this property are very underwhelming. 

This post is part of Harvest Monday at Our Happy Acres. We finally got a week of winter here so my garden had a rest while I dealt with the 50lbs of kumquats that even the critters aren't interested in eating.

My first marmalade attempt a few weeks ago was both visually disgusting and texturally repulsive.  (Shout out to NYT Cooking for leaving a gap in their paywall so I could access their article on making jam. It was very helpful when I was sending SOS messages into my google search bar.)

Not for human consumption.

The second time around I made some adjustments - like if you smell sugar caramelizing it's a sign that you've cooked it for five minutes too long, not a sign that you need to cook it for 20 more minutes. 

Better.

Acceptable for humans to eat. 

I used this recipe as a rough template and then used a hot water bath at the end. I also threw in a few Criolla Sella peppers. They have an extremely disappointing taste (I got them in a seed swap from someone who had never grown them) but have a fruity, tropical smell that I was into at the moment.

The oranges are sweet, but have poor eating quality, so those were squeezed into yard juice and also sliced really thin for a breakfast salad made with Renee's mesclun mix.

The grapefruit tree produces fruit that smell better than they taste, but it's become an integral component of my Old Fashioned recipe that I originally ripped off from a fantastic bar in Silver Lake and have been perfecting over the years. I sliced them and threw them in the oven on a wire rack for 10-12 hours.

Harvest Monday - February 19th 2018

For this week's Harvest Monday, I got an overlarge, but still tender Batavia Blush lettuce. Also a rainbow stock, which is a cheat to include, but I am feeling extraordinarily vain about it.

I cannot remember what variety this is. Mom-care-package-mystery-variety. 

The only Vogerlsalat I got this winter because of the heat / bad planning. I made a vinaigrette and ate it with my fingers while standing over the sink. I know this green has a million names, but I think the most appropriate is definitely Vogerlsalat. Next fall I'm going to grow these in containers instead of raised beds so I can start them earlier, but still find ways to protect them from the heat.

Fordhook chard, Batavia broccoli, miracles.

I only had two chard plants this winter because the f$@&#^* raccoons kept pulling my many many chard seedlings out and dropping them an inch from where I'd planted them. 

A largish bunch of Rapini that was saved by a week or so of cooling temperatures and some mikado turnips - both Renee's seeds.

One more because I'm smitten.

Harvest Monday - February 12, 2018

Because I am a beginner gardener in an urban desert it seems unlikely that I'll participate in Harvest Monday more than once in a while. But it turns out I couldn't be trusted with instagram on my phone, so here we are!

I noticed the front yard radishes had made a break for it, so I went ahead and cleared out everything but the garlic. These raised beds I put in in August aren't getting enough light to produce anything substantial anyway and they'll need to be moved.

Sowed August 21st in 100 degree heat. 

Mostly Scarlet Nantes - a variety I'm over the moon for. They seem determined to live which is necessary in my garden. I also got a few purple carrots. I think these are Renee's Purple Sun, but who knows. These were extraordinarily tasty and I'm sorry I didn't get more of them. 

I also cut a head of Renee's Blush Batavians lettuce, which has had truly shocking bolt resistance despite a few 85 degree days. Especially compared to my Joker lettuce, which bolted immediately and my Red Sails lettuce which is looking at me sideways. Everything went into a "things I have around" chicken Cesar salad.

This house has ugly brown counters, an ugly brown dining room table, and a roommate who has recently taken up pottery so now we also eat off of ugly 10 pound brown slabs.

I pulled out an old tomato plant that bit the dust and it confirmed my ugly suspicion that I have nematodes.

They all also have bad spider mites, which seem indifferent to my various treatments. I've decided to recalibrate my thinking from "Why do I never get tomatoes?" to "Each tomato is a miracle." 

 

Mites. Miracles.

 I immediately ordered a 50lb bag of Neptune's Harvest with chitin and something called "Saponins of Quillaja Saponaria" which cannot be shipped to half the states in the union, but can somehow be shipped to California. I also stopped by OSH for a dozen packets of french marigold seeds which threw by the handful everywhere there was space. I'll turn it in like a cover crop when things need to go into the ground. Gardening is so relaxing!