Monday Harvest – 9th Jan 2012

It has been an excellent harvesting week – a great variety of things and everything has been delicious which helps no end.  What also helps is: much milder temperatures and the occasional ripe tomato.  The kids and I harvested quite a few this week , most of which were cherry size but there was the occasional larger one.  Eaten sliced on toast – my favourite breakfast.                           

This was also the week of the great shallot harvest (well 8 plants anyway).  These are the large red ones with a few small brown ones through in for good measure.

 Then there were the bigger brown shallots:

I have been hugely pleased with the shallots, the large brown shallots produced 1.5kg or 81 from just 3 bulbs and the purple ones produced 2.9kg or 61 shallots from 3 bulbs.  The smaller brown shallots produced about 250g from 2 bulbs but I planted them too deeply so I think they would have done better if it weren’t for that.  All in all I have a lot of spice paste and crispy fried shallots to make in the weeks ahead – YAY.

We also had a few more potatoes, some Kipflers from a volunteer plant in a very shady side bed and some Cranberry Reds from a 40cm pot.

The capsicum here was an accidental harvest as I much prefer them red.

I was most pleased with the Cranberry Reds – 7 excellent sized potatoes and a couple of little ones weighing about 1.5kg in all.  I have put the little ones back in the tub and I look forward to a second harvest

In the basket below, next to the cranberry red potatoes are the rest of my onion harvest – they may be small but they are eating beautifully in salads.  Also in the basket are some more beans, including the first of the Royal Burgandy.

The cucumbers are producing well at the moment, we are getting about 3-4 per week and I think this will increase markedly over the next couple of weeks.  This week we had four and I used 3 of them to make Bread & Butter Cucumbers which I will post about on Thursday.

The greens are producing all the time at the moment, although I have had issues with some of 5 coloured silverbeet either bolting or developing what looks like a mildew on its leaves.  The perpetual spinach is growing well as are most of the white stalked plants from the 5 colour batch.  The silverbeet I ate with a lemon & sage chicken dish, and this Kale was used in Caldo Verde, a soup that both my partner & I love but unfortunately the kids are nonplussed about.

Still on the green front (from a colour perspective anyway) I picked the first of the Beanette beans, lots of mizuna, basil, lettuce, dill and mint.

I also used some sage and thyme in my chicken dish mentioned above:

And how could I (almost) forget – my first red cayenne chilli of the year from an overwintered plant – I ate it tonight in Gado Gado – good level of heat from an early fruit.

All in all its been a great week in the garden – the only veg I’ve bought has been carrots (I have just sown some more where the garlic used to be) and a couple of red capsicum, the rest I grew which makes me very happy indeed.

To find out what the rest of the world is doing harvestwise all you have to do is click on Daphne’s name.