The green one here is "Cervanek" and the red one is "Marvel of Four Seasons".
Because I have plenty of Lettuces on the go, I am able to cut them when they are young and tender, and not wait until they are old and tough:
Isn't it odd how salads look so much more substantial when you photograph them indoors?
This week saw what was for me an unusual harvest - some Oriental Greens (I think they are Pak Choi and Komatsuna), which came from my patch of "Cutting Salad".
I had picked some of their leaves when they were tiny, to go into salads, but now the plants had grown quite big and the leaves would probably have been too tough to eat raw, so I pulled up the whole plants and prepped them for use as a cooked vegetable.
Jane is not very keen on this type of brassica, so I ate them, stir-fried and mixed in with some Chinese noodles.
At the weekend I harvested some more of the "Annabelle" potatoes.
This year I am deliberately harvesting the first potatoes while they are very young. This means that even when I get to the last plants to be harvested the potatoes will not have become over-mature. "New potatoes" are best when they are slightly immature. If you leave them to get too big they become floury and lose that soft creamy texture that we all love.
This year I am again growing my potatoes in containers filled mostly with composted stable manure, which retains moisture really well. This in turn improves the skin texture of the tubers and helps to prevent Scab, which is often caused or at least exacerbated by soil / compost that is too dry. These "Annabelle" ones have lovely smooth skins. (I'm beginning to sound like an advert for Oil of Olay...)
Of course the Asparagus is still continuing to deliver its spears, a few at a time.
I usually keep cropping it till about the end of June, after which I allow the spears to develop into fern.
I'm linking to Harvest Monday with this post, so please follow the link to Daphne's Dandelions and see what everyone else has been harvesting.
The potatoes look perfect,
ReplyDeleteThe harvests start getting a bit more interesting at this time of year. I like my lettuces while they're still young too, the leaves are much nicer eaten this way. I'm still envious of your potatoes, I've got a while to wait before I'll be harvesting any.
ReplyDeleteGood job on the potatoes, they look beautiful. And from the looks of your noodle and greens dish, your wife is missing out on a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThose lettuces look so perfect. Lovely. And the potatoes are flawless. They must be a joy to cook with in the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteLettuce look great ... and I love asparagus.
ReplyDeleteAll the best Jan
I'm hoping to move the SWC full of lettuce onto the new deck now that it's finished, where it will be in shade in the afternoon. Those potatoes look fantastic.
ReplyDeleteYou have really got new potatoes figured out, those are perfect. Absolutely beautiful. And everything else looks fabulous too. Veggies like that cannot be purchased.
ReplyDeleteOh, that lettuce is lovely! I'm still waiting for mine but it is finally starting to size up - hopefully I'll be picking some nice leaves in another week or two. And I agree with David - Chinese greens are my favourite type of green.
ReplyDeleteNice Harvest. Question - How many crowns did you plant in your asparagus bed?
ReplyDeleteHi David; I originally planted 10 crowns in the one bed - 1m x 2.4m - but a couple of them soon died. I think most of the useable spears come from about 5 or 6 plants, because some of them are pretty unproductive.
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