Monday 1 June 2015

Harvest Monday - 1st June 2015

This week I harvested the first potatoes of the year. These are "Annabelle", a First Early variety.


It may not be a lot (218 grams), but what these potatoes lack in terms of mass they make up for in terms of texture and flavour. Potatoes are probably the most satisfying of all home-grown veg. There is something special about having to wait until the plant is dug up to see what the yield is going to be like! Actually, the plant from which these potatoes were picked had several more tiny tubers, so I have packed it back into its pot, and it may well go on to produce a small second crop.

Guess what? More radishes! (We like radishes, fortunately). Actually I have harvested even more radishes than I have photographed, because they do look pretty much the same each time.


These round red ones this time are "Cherry Belle", probably my favourite radish, and one which is very reliable.


This is "Flamboyant 5", a French Breakfast type.


I generally try to pick somewhere between a dozen and twenty Radishes each time, because that is about how many we want to eat. We tend not to do anything fancy with them, but just dip them in salt and eat them as a pre-dinner nibble. We do occasionally use Radishes in a proper recipe, but not normally when the Radishes are home-grown - they are too good to mess about with!


We also ate the first mature Lettuce from the garden, a "Devin" one. It wasn't convenient to photograph it as I harvested it, but here it is made into a salad with some of the leaves from the Cutting Salad patch.


There was also a bit more Asparagus - enough for a two-person serving:




This week I also harvested a load more Parsley. The plants I have been growing since last Autumn are going Great Guns still, and threatening to swamp the brassicas which are in the same bed:


Some of them are bolting now, so they won't last much longer. It's "Use it or lose it" time.


I picked a washing-up bowlful of it.


It's now in a plastic bag in the fridge, where it will keep for at least a fortnight, and will be used as and when required.


I am linking this post to Harvest Monday, hosted by Daphne's Dandelions.

10 comments:

  1. That is some nice parsley. I planed six plants and am wondering if it is enough or not. I'm thinking of planting more. With the Persian food I'm trying, I've found it uses a lot of parsley.

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  2. That's a lovely harvest. Your potatoes seem very early, it will be quite some time before my first lot are harvested but worth the wait. You seem to have a nice steady supply of asparagus, it makes it seem all the more special when you're not inundated with one particular thing.

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  3. Those are early potatoes. There is something special about homegrown carrots and homegrown peas and homegrown ....

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  4. Wow, potatoes already. The asparagus looks perfect.

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  5. I can't believe you are already harvesting potatoes! I'm just starting to hill mine up. And beautiful radishes. You really do like radishes - we usually only eat 5 or 6 at a time, usually thinly sliced and lightly dressed with an olive oil/lemon juice vinaigrette as an accompaniment to (or incorporated into) a salad.

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  6. Nice potatoes. And I too like my radishes dipped in salt, on occasion sliced into a salad. As a kid, we used to eat scallions the same way, raw and dipped into salt.

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  7. I'm envious of your potatoes - can't wait for mine! Also of your asparagus - I am only in year 3 of my new asparagus patch so did not harvest past the second week. Great to see you still getting so much.

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  8. We like radishes too, and I didn't bother to grow them for the longest time, until I was inspired by your beautiful harvests and now the garden is rarely without them.

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  9. Nice post, things explained in details. Thank You.

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  10. Lovely crop of potatoes and radishes. As well as herbs, I have harvested the first of my strawberries. I hope to participate next week in Harvest Monday. Your radishes look lovely too, i love dipping them in a mix of chilli-salt

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