Harvest Monday

It's yet another "Better Late than Never" Harvest Monday. The garden is slowing down, but everything else in our lives has picked up, so we're late. We're not just late with Harvest Monday but other things too. I really, really, really need to get our cold frames built. We have seedlings growing in the basement that are counting on me!

This week we had a nice harvest of leeks on Tuesday, tomatoes on Wednesday, romaine lettuce on Thursday, (nothing on Friday), more romaine lettuce on Saturday and lots of jalepenos and beans on Sunday.

This year we planted cover crop. It's our first time ever, and I've got to say we're really enjoying its potential. Planting cover crop has for us been like starting a compost bin. It's a really good thing to do for organic gardening.

Here are a few pictures of our harvest and a couple dishes we made with our fall vegetables.

What to do with leeks? See the next picture!

Cooked and frozen leeks with other vegetables for winter kale soup.

Romaine Lettuce, Beans and a few Jalapeno Peppers

Winter Rye Cover Crop

Chinese Chicken Salad with romaine lettuce.

 
Chinese Chicken Salad allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 2 teaspoons brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon hot chile paste
• 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
• 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• 16 (3.5 inch square) wonton wrappers, shredded
• 4 cups romaine lettuce - torn, washed and dried
• 2 cups shredded carrots
• 1 bunch green onions, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions

1. To prepare the dressing, whisk together the hoisin sauce, peanut butter, brown sugar, chili paste, ginger, vinegar and sesame oil.
2. Grill or broil chicken until cooked, cool and slice.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C). Spray a large shallow pan with nonstick vegetable spray, arrange shredded wontons in a single layer and bake 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool.
4. In a large bowl, combine the chicken, wontons, lettuce, carrots, green onions and cilantro. Toss with dressing and serve.
5. Mmmm good the boys totally love the crisp won tons and sweet dressing!

Garden Totals

beans 1 lb

jalapenos 1 lb 10 oz

leeks 6 lb

romaine lettuce 2 lb 15 oz

Tomatoes 13 lb              

Total: 23 lb 9 oz 

Stop by  Daphe's Dandelions and see what gardeners worldwide are harvesting.

Fall Romaine Lettuce

This evening after dinner we enjoyed the unseasonably cool weather in the garden. We pulled our pickling cucumber plants. It was kind of hard to let them go. They've been such great producers, but we needed the space to plant our fall romaine.

We seeded the romaine indoors on June 30th. The plants are healthy, despite the fact that we almost killed them by accidentally unplugging the light and leaving them in darkness for 3 days. We didn't harden them either. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

We did a soil test with a simple color coded kit that you can get at any lawn and garden store. We really don't know for sure, but we think it told us our soil's pH is too high. After doing a little research we discovered some ways to bring the pH down. We amended the row with bark and food grade sulfur from Fertrell. I'd really like to send soil samples to a lab. We've read other bloggers describe doing it, but it's a stretch for us.

Anyway, we planted around 30 plants. The romaine was a great producer in the spring. We're  hoping for a big harvest this fall.