A Switch to Fall Crops

My summer crop harvests have been slowly disappearing. Yesterday I pulled up the first four peppers plants. They had no chance of more peppers so there was no reason to leave them in. I pulled all the bean plants but one. It has four pods left drying. Soon it will be pulled too. The tomatillos still give me a few, but a lot of husks are dropping now that aren't ready. The plant is yellow. Really only the cucumbers and the remaining 8 pepper plants have some life left in them and the cucumber doesn't have much time left. Then again it isn't summer anymore. It is fall and it is time for the fall plants to start being picked.

Once I started I went a bit wild picking them. The first to come up were the leeks. I had two small sections of leeks. I picked the ones over by the chard (which was mercifully spared my picking frenzy). The other one will be left for colder weather.

A few leeks were freaky. One looked red and slightly shriveled. It had some weird fluting around the edges. That one was escorted to the compost pile.

Another was trying to send off little babies from its roots. It wasn't succeeding well. The new shoots were compacted into the outer layer of the mama leek. Above is what it looked like once taken apart. It was usable after a few sections were cut out.

A third succeeded in acting like a multiplier onion. It didn't have any large shoots, but some small ones around the slightly bigger shoot. I've never had leeks act so strange before. I put them in the ground very, very early. Maybe they are doing strange things because it was too early? Next year I'm going to wait to put in my alliums until April.

The leeks were promptly made into leek and potato soup. Yum!

Then I thought that I still haven't tried kale yet. Not ever in my life. I wanted to taste it. So I went to the two plants I have and picked some leaves. Any recommendations on how to prepare it for my first time ever? I have to say the leaves don't really look edible. They seem more like plastic than food.

While I was over by the kale I noticed that my Chinese cabbage heads were firming up. I have five of them all planted on the same day. I thought it would be good to pick one a bit early and harvest them slowly over time. If I wait until they are all as big as they can get, I wouldn't be able to eat them fresh as they would go bad too quickly. So one head got picked. I picked it in the middle of the day, but still it was covered in slugs. I ripped off the outer leaves that were shredded and kept the nice inner leaves. There were a few slugs way in the middle, but very little damage. I did open the whole head up and washed each leaf really well.

Then I figured a few carrots would be a nice addition. I might put some of the Chinese cabbage into a stir fry and carrots would go well.

I probably should have picked one thing and used it before picking another, but I do tend to get carried away. I'm sure by the end of the week it will be all gone except for some of the leeks. This week I'm I'm dreaming of stir fry, oriental salad and potato and leek soup. Yum!