This looks and feels like a winter harvest post to me, unsurprisingly really given we are currently smack bang in the middle of the coolest part of the year. This week I seem to harvested lots of green, the occasional splash of colour and loads of rainbow chard:
I pulled quite a few chard plants this week to continuing preparing the tomato bed. This lot went into some chard cakes made from a recipe in Ottolenghi’s book Plenty. I enjoyed them but I think they would work even better with some tweaks which I’ll make and hopefully one day post a recipe. Incidently while I’m on the subject of chard I had a question from a reader: Are some chard (or silver beet) varieties more nutritious than others – I had no idea, any one know?
Chard cakes were to have a sorrel sauce served with them – the recipe is also in the book. I picked this sorrel:
and made the sauce, but it was incredibly bitter – inedibly so. A time of year thing perhaps or maybe the idea was ill-conceived. Which ever it was this basket load ended up down the sink.
More successful was a lime & coconut cake I made (with the help of Miss 5) with these limes, the last of the current crop:
Incidentally don’t let the summer dress and sunshine fool you it is still both cold and wintery here, albeit beautifully sunny of late.
As you may have noticed in the first photo and now in this one I have started bandicooting my potato crop. Mark keeps posting his and I was getting really jealous… These are Dutch Creams and hopefully there are many more still in the pot these came from.
My final photo this week (I harvested loads of herbs but seem to have missed snapping them) is of broccoli with a chilli backdrop. I’m really enjoying have fresh broccoli at the moment. This harvest went into a version of this pasta dish but made with spaghetti.
And that’s it for me this week, but there are many more harvests to be had over at Daphne’s Dandelions.
Such a beautiful broccoli and chilli photo. I understand the cold yet sunny days, we are having the same. Thank goodness for splendid sunshine!
Thankyou re: the photo – it was cold here today but at least the sun was shining.
Are you still harvesting chillies? I agree with Louise – that photo is pretty 🙂
Oh, and did you get my email about the chilli seeds?
Yeah I am still harvesting chillies. One of my scotch bonnet plants was significantly later to crop than the other and my long cayenne set a huge 2nd crop and both are ripening now.
The chard looks beautiful, as does everything else! Maybe I missed something but what is bandicooting?
Woops sorry about the Australianism – bandicooting is digging around for potatoes before you harvest the main crop. Bandicoots are an Australian animal which does a fair amount of digging hence the term.
Looking forward to reading your chard cake recipe. Too bad about the bitter sorrel sauce.
Ah well I always think you learn most from the failures.
Your photography of the harvests is really beautiful. That basket of chard and potatoes is particularly appealing. Got to love chard, such a work horse in the garden and if you grow the colored variations (which I do too) they add visual interest to the garden as well. No idea if one variety is more nutritious than another, but they are all nutritional power houses, standing down just below spinach and kale in the order of most nutritious greens.
I didn’t realise Kale was so high up nutrients wise – I should grow more of it especially as I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve grown this year.
Beautiful harvest! I agree, that shot of green over red chilli is gorgeous! And I’m jealous of your lemons 🙂
I am very proud of them too – they are limes though – the Tahitian ones are yellow in colour hence the confusion. Their flesh is still green though.
Wonderful harvest for smack in the middle of winter! Great question about chard; I imagine that the colored varieties offer some slightly different nutritional advantages, but only if you include the stems in the dish…
A very good point about the stems which I have to admit I usually cut out….
what really nice potatoes you have! Can’t wait for my blue and yellow ones to be ready, crossing my fingers they give a good yield for the space and water they’ve taken up! Great mid-winter harvests!
I am really pleased with these as they are grown a little outside what is our traditional potato growing season. I have been experimenting with planting times – and some are definitely more successful than others.
Really nice winter harvest. Looking forward to the chard recipe, can always use another recipe for chard given its abundance this year. As far as nutrition, chard is full of vitamins A and K from the green leaves. They tell you to eat the rainbow, so I suspect that the colored varieties add a lot of antioxidants to the nutritional mix.
I like your vitamin reasoning – shame I tend to cut out the stalks – I will have to make mroe of an effort to eat them in future.
I had to google “bandicooting”! Your harvests look great.
Sorry about that – I forget that some things might be Australian terms…
Great harvest for depths of winter Liz. Different coloured veg are suppose to have different nutritional qualities see this link which is why we are advised to eat a mixture of colours.
Thanks for the link Sue, hopefully the reader will also pick up on it. It also reminded my that I do need to mix it up a bit more with veg – particularly at this time of the year when things all tend to be a bit green.
Great potatoes – and a lovely, colorful harvest!
That first harvest basket just looks so pretty. Chard has to be one of the most beautiful crops. I’m only growing a white variety and it just isn’t as pretty. I love the orange color. I keep growing the white though as it is so productive and tasty, but I might just try for some mixed colors too.
I have to say I go from only growing the green and white stemmed varieties as as you say they are more productive but then I miss the colours and out comes the rainbow seed packet again.
Great harvest! I love the variety, really great for winter!! Sorry the sorrel sauce didn’t work out. We like sorrel and probably would have tried it too.
I normally love sorrel but I’m really not sure what happened with that lot.
The lime and coconut cake sounds delicious! Looks like you have nice winter harvests.. especially that broccoli. I wish broccoli could grow year round, it’s one of my favorite veggies.
I’m with you on broccoli but sadly in a month or ttwo the aphids will descend and there’s only so much protein I like in my vegetables…
Your chard always looks so gorgeous! I really hope to harvest some rainbow chard later this summer and throughout the fall…so far all I’ve gotten is white, white and more white…
I do find the more boring colours grow better than the vibrant ones, perhaps they think they have to do more to earn their keep.
Apparently purple carrots are more nutritious than orange so I guess the same would hold for the rainbow silverbeet. I grew some purple carrots this year and I was disappointed to find they are purple SKINNED, not purple throughout. False advertising, I say!!
Looking at those limes (congratulations!) makes me feel guilty that I still haven’t turned those 70 odd limes I was given into chutney. Fortunately, they still look fine, turning very slowly from green to yellow in the crisper and more rapidly so in a bowl on the kitchen table. They give off a lovely lime fragrance, still. I’m determined to start the processing this weekend. I think.
Your chillies are still ripening, I see. I’m thrilled that those I’ve planted against the bricks at the back of the house are doing similarly. Those planted elsewhere have chucked in the towel. I think that eventually that little narrow garden under the eaves will be home exclusively to chillis and capsicums. They seem to enjoy the micro-climate of the retained heat from the bricks. Do you (and/or your readers) think this will be okay? Do you have to move chillies around like you do tomatoes/potatoes etc because of disease build up?
He he re: false advertising. Yes do the processing! Mr 2 picked a whole load of cumquats at my uncles and unfortunately they decayed on the bench top before I got round to doing anything with them – I felt very bad!
Lime and coconut cake now that would certainly brighten up any cold winters day.
It was demolished all too quickly too.
I can realize your good job when seeing your photos. Lime are awesome to see. can i get procedure of broccoli harvest?
The broccoli I grow produces a small central head and then many smaller side shoots. I cut both the central heads and the side shoots as soon as they look ready – ie when the buds show as good sized and slightly seperate but before they’ve opened.