The vegetables of one's labor.
I popped over to our community garden yesterday to harvest some of our veggies in advance of our first frost of the year. I was SO annoyed at the thought of a first frost just because I'm really not ready for it to be winter yet, but then I remembered that much of the rest of the country has already seen snow and is almost definitely not gardening outside. I'll gladly take a light frost in December over snow, thanks.
Anyway, here's my haul from yesterday:
- two types of lettuce (and some napa cabbage that I mistakenly assumed was lettuce)
- random spicy greens (think mizuna was in there, not sure of the others)
- bok choy
- swiss chard (three varieties)
- green beans (and one lonely purple bean)
- basil (two varieties)
- cilantro
- green tomatoes (three varieties)
- zucchini
- carrots (three varieties)
The carrots were so very satisfying to take out of the ground - just grab the leafy plant at the base, give it a good pull, and then suddenly you have a carrot. Most of them looked like mutants since they were a bit over-crowded in soil that was not quite sandy enough, but I won't mind a bit when I chop them up and roast them with a little olive oil. I hope the remaining plants now have a bit more room to breathe and produce big, gorgeous carrots so I can yank those out of the ground next month.
The green beans were another pretty fantastic discovery. The plants themselves were pretty short, so I thought that there was no way that they would produce pods. But I looked closer and - hey, beans! Oodles of them! I collected enough full-grown beans for a pretty sizable meal, and there still looked to be quite a few juveniles left on the plants. Let's hope they don't freeze.
I took as many green tomatoes as I could fit in an already bulging bag (maybe 40 in all?), but I barely made a dent in the number still on the plants. I've heard that you can slowly ripen them off of the vine if you just lay them out on a towel and keep them from touching each other. I'll let you know how it goes. Poor tomatoes. They should have been able to fully ripen outside.
It took about four hours to sort, chop, wash, dry, and package all of the veggies I'd brought home. I mixed the lettuces, the napa cabbage, and the spicy greens together to make a ready-to-eat salad base, then immediately decided to give three huge bags of it away to co-workers because there's absolutely no way in hell that I am realistically going to eat that much salad. Our fridge is completely crammed with veggies - those three bags are not going to be missed.
This whole gardening experiment has been extremely gratifying. I can't wait until next harvest day.
Anyway, here's my haul from yesterday:
- two types of lettuce (and some napa cabbage that I mistakenly assumed was lettuce)
- random spicy greens (think mizuna was in there, not sure of the others)
- bok choy
- swiss chard (three varieties)
- green beans (and one lonely purple bean)
- basil (two varieties)
- cilantro
- green tomatoes (three varieties)
- zucchini
- carrots (three varieties)
The carrots were so very satisfying to take out of the ground - just grab the leafy plant at the base, give it a good pull, and then suddenly you have a carrot. Most of them looked like mutants since they were a bit over-crowded in soil that was not quite sandy enough, but I won't mind a bit when I chop them up and roast them with a little olive oil. I hope the remaining plants now have a bit more room to breathe and produce big, gorgeous carrots so I can yank those out of the ground next month.
The green beans were another pretty fantastic discovery. The plants themselves were pretty short, so I thought that there was no way that they would produce pods. But I looked closer and - hey, beans! Oodles of them! I collected enough full-grown beans for a pretty sizable meal, and there still looked to be quite a few juveniles left on the plants. Let's hope they don't freeze.
I took as many green tomatoes as I could fit in an already bulging bag (maybe 40 in all?), but I barely made a dent in the number still on the plants. I've heard that you can slowly ripen them off of the vine if you just lay them out on a towel and keep them from touching each other. I'll let you know how it goes. Poor tomatoes. They should have been able to fully ripen outside.
It took about four hours to sort, chop, wash, dry, and package all of the veggies I'd brought home. I mixed the lettuces, the napa cabbage, and the spicy greens together to make a ready-to-eat salad base, then immediately decided to give three huge bags of it away to co-workers because there's absolutely no way in hell that I am realistically going to eat that much salad. Our fridge is completely crammed with veggies - those three bags are not going to be missed.
This whole gardening experiment has been extremely gratifying. I can't wait until next harvest day.