Harvest Monday - May 19, 2013

This past week was a great week for salad greens. I harvested endive, romaine lettuce and arugula. I really like fresh salad but I am sad to say that I'm not sure I love home grown romaine lettuce. I've gotten accustomed to store bought which always is much more crunchy and juicy - and the taste is not as intense - meaning not as earthy - as the ones I have at home. Maybe I'm not growing them right or I don't have the right variety. I still like them, but I prefer to mix it with some store bought romaine lettuce.

I also thinned the cilantro, but the "thinned" plants were big enough to eat. Was very fresh tasting and delicious. I think I'll start a second container so that I'll have more. I just love cilantro!

I'm also getting small, but steady harvest of snow peas. I'm hoping I'll get more before the weather gets too warm. My oldest container of snow peas are starting to yellow at the base.

I'm joining harvest Monday at Daphne's dandelions. Happy gardening everyone!

Harvest Monday - May 13 2013 Snow peas!

I have been continually harvesting arugula to give a little spice to my salads but I have also started to harvest some snow peas. Still a little slow - and I'm worried the the hot weather will come soon and it will die before I get real harvests. But I will just have to see how it all goes. I really love the snow peas...I thought I'd miss the sugar snap peas, but I think I prefer the snow peas. Next year, I might decide to do both but for now I am glad I tried snow peas this year.

Snow peas

Very small harvest but delicious. I probably should have let some of them mature a little bit more but it was nice and tender. I made soboro-don which (my version) is flavored minced meat (soy sauce), scrambled eggs and snow peas over rice. It was really yummy. Next time I would love to have more greens!

Soboro-don - the star of the dish of course are the snow peas!

I am joining Daphne's Harvest Monday with my humble yet delicious harvest from last week! Happy gardening!

First Harvest Monday of 2013 - May 6th, 2013

The first real harvest from the garden is always so exciting! Everything is growing beautifully in the balcony garden. Last year, I grew wild arugula that was just way too peppery for me, so this year I planted the rocket salad arugula. It still has the great flavor of arugula that I just adore, but with less bite. I prefer to eat it with other salad green.

18 gallon with arugula, fava beans and jerusalem artichoke

My container of green and red romaine lettuce and bok choy is also doing well. I harvest a couple of the outer leaves from the romaine lettuce.

Long container with romaine lettuce (both red and green) and bok choy

I was able to harvest enough greens for two salads - it was delicious. I think this is going to be a good year!

Arugula harvest 1

Arugula and romaine harvest

2013 Salad Number 1!

I'm really happy to join Daphne for her harvest Monday posts. I hope the first of many to come for this year.

Potatoes in bags update

The yukon and purple potatoes growing in compost bags are doing really well. In fact, they are growing so fast I've run out of soil to top them off. I'll have to get one extra bag of compost - this works out well for me because some of my other pots needs more soil.

From the left: garlic, purple potatoes, and yukon gold potatoes

I'm not sure if I should be thinning out the foliage so there will be space for the potatoes to grow. I started with 2 yukon gold potatoes so there is lots stems/leaves. I think I may just leave it as is and keep adding soil.

Using every inch of space on my property

I've finished potting up all my plants. Last year I had some baby tomatoes destroyed by birds so I started extra plants as back up. This year, the birds are leaving my tomato seedlings alone (so far) so it looks like I will have to trash my backup plants. This is difficult for me to get rid of the seedlings that I babied...so I'm trying to think if I can create more space for them. Maybe I can get a couple of small containers....

My extra vegetable seedlings...hope to find space for them