Harvest Monday May 23

There was not much harvesting going on in my garden this week. These radish pods, which went into another bento, were from last week. Still yummy, though. Cooking takes the heat out of them. The hot weather lately has made the pods really spicy!


This did come from my garden, though. The first garlic bulb I've harvested this year (other than green garlic). I didn't wait for it to cure, just cleaned it, quartered it, and tossed it into a pot with some rosemary and my two farmers market artichokes. I will have those for dinner tonight. It smells divine in the kitchen right now.



This was the most exciting harvest of the week. Our awesome neighbors let us come over and pick cherries from their tree. Some were gobbled up immediately. Some I gave to my mom. The rest (about 13 lbs) got mashed up and are in the process of becoming wine.

The most exciting news of the week: Babs kindled today, while I was at work. Before I left in the morning, she was carrying around a mouthful of hay obsessively. While I was gone, she finished up her nest, lined it masterfully with fur, and had her babies. I counted at least three, but she seemed kind of upset with me, so I didn't dig around any further. She seems to be doing just fine as a mommy, but I'll keep a close eye on her.

This week's totals:

13 lbs cherries from neighborhood tree

2.5 oz garlic

Harvest Monday

Friday through Sunday of last week were gardening days. We're finally getting the side yard squared away, with the four grape vines set up in their trellises, the blackberry and raspberry, and the two fruit trees. We are almost done mulching everything with city compost, but then it started to rain. I'll post pictures when we're through.

Out of the vegetable garden, I got 4 oz of greens (mostly bright lights chard), 5.5 oz of radish pods, and 3 oz of peas. Of the three varieties I'm growing, Avalanche snow pea is by far the best. The pods and peas are flavorful and the pods stay fiberless even when the peas are large (at that point, though, it does develop a string, but the pod itself is still tender). I will be growing these again for sure.

The veggies above were chopped and sauteed with a little soy sauce and balsamic vinegar and eaten over noodles. Very good. The remainder of the peas and pods were taken to work as snacks for my breaks.

I also made a stencil and decorated my garden/recipe book. I would like to put the ninja onto a shirt some day as well.


To date, my totals are:

39 oz greens

60 lb oranges (picked from my sister's tree)

13.5 oz kumquats (from my mother's tree, preserved according to this recipe)

12.5 oz radish pods

8 oz peas

Not bad for a beginning gardener.

Harvest Monday May 2

It is pretty much too hot by now for leafy greens. My mustard-types (bok choy, chinese cabbage, giant red mustard, and kale) have long since bolted. Endive is sending up shoots, though it hasn't put out flowers yet.

My tomatoes are in the ground, but I had to restart with more chile pepper seeds after my lighting set up collapsed and crushed the earlier seedlings, so they're not ready to plant out yet. Of course, it will be a long while yet before I have any solanum crops to harvest. My bean plants are just starting to come up (and be devoured by the slugs. I don't hold out much hope for beans this year).

Right now is the time for the crispy, crunchy delight of snap and snow peas. And my personal favorite: radish pods. I don't grow a special variety of podding radish, since they all have edible pods. I planted a bunch of white icicle radish seeds early this year. I ate a lot of them for roots, and left some to bloom. Of those, I will harvest most of the pods to eat fresh or cooked, like snap peas. Some pods will be left for next year's seed.

Here is a bento featuring my garden radish pods and peas, stirfried briefly in teriyaki sauce, alongside some katsu chicken and rice-quinoa onigiri.

Fresh, radish pods have a pleasing crunch and a "green" flavor somewhat like snap peas, but less sweet, and some radish heat. Cooking reduces the heat without losing the radish flavor and seems to make them taste a little sweeter.

I imagine the level of heat has something to do with the variety, but I think it mostly depends on care. Some of the plants this year were in my garden proper, and got regular water and care like the rest of the vegetables. Others sprouted from spilled seed in the sideyard and were left to fend for themselves. They grew right up against an eastern facing wall, and the reflected heat, along with the general lack of water, made the pods very, very hot. The variety is the same as the garden pods, collected from the same plants last year, so only the level of care was different. If you like milder pods, coddle your radish plants.

Seedlings in hot climates

Here in California's central valley, we will probably not see much in the way of rain until fall. Our climate is very dry, and very hot. Additionally, my front yard is fairly windy from the canyon-like effect of the street we live on. So it is particularly hard to plant seedlings past early March or so. Even with my clay soil, they tend to dry out too quickly, despite getting spot-watered before and after work.

So this is a trick I've learned to give seedlings a better chance. Maybe everyone knows it already, but I've never seen it mentioned in gardening books.

When I plant a seedling, I set it more or less level with the soil, but I make sure to completely cover the growing medium with native soil. The lovely free-draining nature of seed starting mix means that it works as a great wick for sucking moisture out of the soil if it is left uncovered, which creates a bone dry pocket around the seedling, even if the surrounding dirt is damp. Covering the mix with soil and then watering well helps to seal the moisture in. Of course, some sort of temporary shade shelter can also help.

This is an ornamental seedling that I am protecting with a thin layer of my clay soil.



Hopefully this will work on my late-started tomato and pepper seedlings. The earlier set was smashed by a fallen grow light.



On a brighter note, my oca have started to sprout. I was worried that they might have rotted, but no. Each tuber is now up with a little, clover-leaved sprout.

Bunny Tales

We decided to take out the big cypress bush that separates our property from our Santariano neighbors. Matt cut down the branches, and I was up this morning cutting them into more manageable pieces. I looked up from my work to see Babs come around the corner of our back fence.

How in the world did Babs get out? So I followed her, offering her favorite foods - the thick stems of barnyard grass, the flower buds of arugula. She sniffed them, but didn't eat, didn't allow me to get close enough to pick her up. Still, she wasn't afraid of me, just led me at a leisurely hop from the neighbor's yard to their parked truck back under the tree at the property line, into our yard and back, in a little pingpong route. I could see where she'd dug the dirt up under the fence right on the other side of where her hutch is in the garden, but it didn't look like there was a hole all the way through. How on Earth did she get out?

Finally, she gave up and let me catch her. I brought her back to our backyard to put her in her hutch, but she was already there! This was another bunny, the same size, with the same black and white markings, lacking only the kiss on her forehead that the real Babs has.

So right now she is enjoying hay and water in Mya's dog crate. I kind of wish I had some emergency pellets on hand. Now we just have to find her owner.

Harvest Monday March 7

This week we harvested more of the bok choy. Matt made appetizers stuffed with bok choy, mushrooms and rice. Very yummy, but who thought of taking pictures?

I also thinned the greens in the side yard and tossed the tender little leaves with some pasta and sliced chicken. It was good, too, but not very pretty and also didn't get a picture.

This week's harvest brings my total up to 30 oz of greens for 2011. Pretty much all of it comes from a 3'x4' patch planted in November, when we first got the garden fence up. Not bad, I think. That will be the last for that particular patch, though, since I'm saving the rest of the plants for seed.

In more exciting news, my first SSE order came today, with the long-awaited oca. My phone camera does not do it justice. This is Red Bolivian, and I will plant it as soon as I can.

Harvest Monday Feb 21st

My Tai Sai cabbage is starting to bolt, unfortunately. In its defense, we have had some days up to 70 degrees. These are the fastest bolters, 5.5 oz of them (along with some green garlic). I'm keeping the slower ones for seed.


The Tai Sai went into my bento, stir fried with some pickled peppers from last summer's garden. On top is soba noodles and chicken. The sauce is for the noodles.



The exciting news of the day... We went to Westurf on a whim, since we'd been cooped up in the house all weekend. They were having a sale on their bare root fruit trees, so we came home with 11 different varieties of fruit: 2 grape vines and 2 grafted trees. The grapes are Thompson seedless and Autumn Royal seedless. The apple tree has Jonagold, Mutsu, Gala, and Fuji. The stone fruit tree has Santa Rosa plum, Fantasia nectarine, Blenheim apricot, and a yellow and white peach, whose names I'm too lazy to look up.

Fruit salad in the side yard!