This weeks harvests are mostly about the salads which is ironic because the weather has been more suited to soup. A radish nestles inside this basket or mizuna, spring onions, and salad leaves.
And here is the radish closer up. Its a watermelon radish, my first and although its pretty I was expecting a bit more internal colour.
More salad ingredients came in the form of parsley. Bunches of it.
This week I did do a bit of general clearing of the garden and in the process I harvested these sweet potatoes. I have left one plant in the ground though which I am hopeful of getting through the winter.
My lemongrass was starting to look a bit soggy. Its been very wet and given the plant is dormant it wasn’t appreciating the extra water. I thought I’d try something suggested by Nina, one of my regular commenters, and harvest all the stalks leaving the base of the plant in the ground.
It will be interesting to see how the plant does when the weather warms up.
To return to the salad theme here’s another harvest, this time including mint which I used to make a mint yoghurt dressing for a beetroot salad.
Along with all the salads I also harvested these oranges and learnt that its a lot easier to photograph things in groups of 3 than in pairs.
The oranges tasted good though. Still on a photography theme I photographed this broccoli and pak choi(the carrots I bought) with the flash, as I prepared them for stir frying and discovered once again why I try to do all my photos in natural light. They look a bit weird don’t they?
To finish though it had to be a salad, this time to take to a friends for lunch. The herb on top is chervil which I always enjoy in a mixed salad.
For harvests, including some which may or may not heavily feature salad leaves then head over to Daphne’s Dandelions.
Lovely photos as always. What will you do with all that lemongrass?
I have been wondering that myself. Make some curry paste i guess, any other ideas?
A friend of mine freezes hers. I’ve never tried it personally.
Why I didn’t think of that I have no idea – I think spending too much time at home with sick children has addled my brain…
Hi Liz,
Love the parsley!!
Now envious of your oranges but my Meyer lemon has arrived-complete with little lemons already on it so I’ll keep to that with the citrus for the moment
The oranges although lovely were quite small. I don’t think they got quite enough sun. I will have to give the tree more care this year.
Beautiful photographs! I should get more creative with how I photograph my veggie harvests. You have an orange tree? The Wash. DC area isn’t tropical enough for citrus trees to survive here. I’d love to have lemons, limes, oranges. What will you do with the lemongrass?
Thankyou regarding the photos – my kids werre sick this week and we were home all week so I had a bit more time to think about and take the photos. I need some suggestions for the lemongrass. i’ll make some curry paste and use some in stir fry but i’m not sure what else.
What a lovely variety of things. Those oranges look so yummy!
Liz nice harvest
Salad soup maybe. Although if we only ate salad when it was warm and balmy we would never eat it this year. Luckily I can eat salad any time.
Me too. Lettuce soup, hmmmmm not sure I will google it and see if sounds inspiring.
You did have fun with photography this week, your photos are great! I do agree with you about flash, whoever invents a flash that doesn’t look so harsh will do photograpy a huge favor. Lemongrass is very good in herb tea. I wonder if it would make a good infused vinegar? Or, thinking of infusing, maybe a good panna cotta?
Ooooo dessert now that’s a good idea. Hopefully I will have some time soon to try a few things.
Like Michelle I use lemongrass for teas, but that only uses a couple of leaves at a time. I mix it with green tea, mint, etc to make my own blend. I generally drink it iced this time of year but it’s good hot too.
What a creative way to photograph two oranges! I might have to ‘borrow’ your idea, so if you see me with veggies in stacks you can smile a knowing smile! 😉
I will look out for them. That tea combination sounds lovely – I just need to get my mint growing again, its a bit cool for it to put on many leaves at the moment.
I wish I had salad makings in my garden right now, but it has been too hot for lettuce. I’m trying to start some more, but they really don’t want to germinate in the heat.
That is really annoying. Hope the heat has broken by now – without too many storms in its wake.
It’s nice to see your garden yielding fresh salad ingredients while I am mucking out all the bolted lettuce plants so my herbs can get some sun. It will be awhile before I see fresh lettuce again. Your photos are all great and I don’t see any thing weird in the broccoli photo.
I have to sow lettuce seeds every 3 weeks in summer if I want constant lettuce, I sow into seed trays and pot up before planting out so they don’t take up room in the beds while growing on. They just bolt so quickly in the heat I find.
Gorgeous photos! And a nice harvest too!!
Everything looks so delicious! Your photos are lovely.
Nice harvest, I understand the issue with picking saladings when soup is demanded. Perhaps lemon grass soup? (lol). But more seriously, some lovely Thai soups and curries to use your lemon grass would be nice.
Love that radish, very pretty.
I love Thai soup so I think that’s a great idea – I just need to convince the kids that they love them too…..
Very beautiful salads for you this week!
Despite it being cold I never get sick of salads, or salad dressing.
I too love your creative orange photo. I really need to put some thoughts into my photos. Lovely harvest.
I had them side by side and they looked a little silly. I was surprised the higher one didn’t fall off.
Very pretty harvests! I would love to have lemon grass…. maybe I can find some and grow it in a pot.
I grow it both in pots and in the ground and the pots work really well.
How wonderful to have oranges and sweet potatoes in the same week 🙂
Yeah I’m not sure how I managed that, if only I could have managed a carrot – then I would have had 3 orange harvests.
Lovely harvest, I’ve always enjoyed your creative and beautiful photography, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Mac – I think yours is wonderful too.
You always have great photographs Liz, though i know what you mean about the flash. This time of year is just so hard to get shots in good light. My photos are always done so quickly usually just before the harvest goes into the pot of the food gets demolished. Very little time to play with the camera. As for taking shots of groups of three, you’re spot on, it just works so much better for some reason. I once won a ‘still life’ photography competition (not a big one and for complete novices I might add) with a photo of three pears. Other than all of that, of course your harvest looks great.
Thankyou! Congratulations on your fabulous victory. Do you still have the photo? And might I add I think you’ve shown considerable restraint for not having mentioned the footy once..
Thanks for the credit, Liz, but ’tweren’t me that gave you that advice. I’m the one of the totally failed lemongrass, unfortunately.
Radish, radish, radish. I must, must, must grow more. All of mine (just your run-of-the-mill type) were pecked by the chooks at a very young age – so they ended up with chunks out of them but they kept on growing! They look weird but taste good.
A word of advice, if you are going to free range your chooks (which I expect you will want to, sometimes), you might want to cover your veggie patch. Alternatively, I have a 40cm (yep, only 40) cheap wire fence around my in-ground veggies and they hardly ever go over it. Though they love the above ground ones (like where my radishes are) as they can perch on the edge and jump in. Those I cover with netting.
The fencing was originally put there to keep my rotund cocker spaniel out but it seems to work for the girls, as well.
Woops wasn’t it? I thought it was someone without a blog and thus thought of you, now I feel not creditting the right source. So if the person who tolds me this reads this let me know and I’ll make amends. I do like my radishes I have to say – quick,easy and pretty, what more could you want. Good advice re: the chooks, if the shed is every ready I’ll put it into practice.
You take great pictures! And your harvest is lovely too! That lemon grass looks good, if you like it in tea, you can probably dry some and keep it for later. Sounds like you are going to let the plant regrow itself? We do that with green onions.
I’m hoping it will regrow – I haven’t tried chopping it down completely before – we shall see.