Yes! I had lots of harvests this week. The first was some overwintered carrots and bunching onions that I had to pick to clear out the bed for the fava beans. Most weren't huge carrots. Some I even had to toss as too small to be worthwhile, but I got a lot. I also still had some carrots saved from last fall in the fridge. I did a taste test on them both. The fall carrots were a tad bitter but still good. They were full of flavor. The spring carrots were very sweet but a little insipid. They didn't have the rich home grown carrot flavor. They didn't even have the supermarket flavor. Now don't get me wrong they were still good, just a bit bland. All in all neither of them won the taste off. It was too much like comparing apples and oranges.
The kale is fine staying in its bed for quite some time, but the weird hot weather was starting to make them bolt. Not to mention the cabbage butterflies made an appearance. So they won't last whatever happens. I pulled out the bolting ones, which was pretty much all the kale except the Red Russian and some unknown green variety that looks like Red Russian.
The other harvest in the basket was cilantro. I have three beds of cilantro. This is one of them, the only one that gets to stay in perpetuity. I'm thinking of having the main cilantro bed be in the strip along the wall. In the back will be a row of sunflowers and in the front some sweet alyssum or other low growing flower. I would like a permanent bed for it since it reseeds itself so well. And maybe by the rock wall it will over winter like it has done here. I cut back about half of the cilantro. I cut back a strip along the back where I'll seed the sunflowers and along the side where I'll eventually rip the roots out and stir the soil. I think a later crop will start growing if I do that. There are still a lot of seeds in that soil. I'll never get a summer crop here. It is hot along the wall. But I'm OK with that as summer crops are impossible anyway. I think the over wintered crop will go to seed early and maybe I'll get a fall crop again. I'm hoping. The huge harvest was mostly frozen for summer use.
- Bunching Onions 0.53 lbs
- Carrots 5.46 lbs
- Kale 2.44 lbs
- Cilantro 1.54 lbs
- Weekly total 9.96 lbs
- Yearly total 13.18 lbs
- Tally -$523.42
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.
Wow that is a lot of cilantro at once! How do you use it after it's frozen?
ReplyDeleteI use it in salads a lot, or cooked dishes. I love cilantro in soup. And anything with beans. I've got a photo for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard that will show what I did with it yesterday.
DeleteA beautiful basket Daphne! I can only dream of harvesting that much coriander - it just doesn't grow well here.
ReplyDeleteThis week I harvested my monster edamame soybean crop and pulled out the last of my summer plantings. Towards winter we go...
That coriander is so impressive - mine is still going straight to bolting at the moment, hopefully some will grow soon. I often find my homegrown carrots don't taste as good as supermarket ones - its the only crop I find that with.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you are right into the swing of spring gardening. Our spring caught a severe cold. To be 17 tonight so am spending my nights watching the heat in the greenhouses. I have never had it dip that cold after I have put them up. One was only 34 this morning so will be doing some adjusting on heaters for tonight. Will run 2 in there to be sure they stay above freezing. My electric company will love me with 3 heaters running.
ReplyDeleteThat is a nice haul of carrots! Even if the flavor is lower quality than the peak season harvest, I would still enjoy them because we don't have an over wintered patch of carrots this year - lost the crops to carrot fly maggot infestation and there was nothing worth overwintering left. Going straight to insect barrier fabric this year as a result. The kale and cilantro look great too.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what makes the carrots lose their flavor? I'm growing them for the first time ever. I used the Burpee seed tape and they have germinated already! With raised beds the soil is nice and loose, perfect for the carrots. My snow peas are 3 in tall. Everything else growing nicely including the volunteers: pumpkins and tomatoes!
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing harvest! I am a bit jealous of those carrots! We are going to have a hard freeze tonight. I hope it doesn't get as cold as they are expecting.
ReplyDeleteMan, that kale is beautiful! I am sorry to hear that the carrots don't taste as well as store bought ones.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful harvest, I am missing my garden so much right now.
ReplyDeleteWow! What an amazing harvest! I pulled a couple of carrots this week to see if they're ready...they're not! That basket you have there sure looks yummy, though!
ReplyDeleteEverything looks really good. I find cilantro a good winter weed also. And the flowers make good habitat for beneficial insects so I seed it all over the place, plus get volunteers. You do know you can eat the whole plant, right? Even the flowers? and I recently read that some ethnic groups also eat the roots, so I just might try that some time.
ReplyDeleteYes I know you can eat the roots. In fact some of the time you find them with the roots in the markets. Supposedly they use it in Mexican cooking, but I've never seen a recipe for them. They don't look particularly appetizing. So I'd probably throw them in soups if I felt I needed more. Not likely this spring.
DeleteWonderful harvest! Do you freeze the cilantro? Wondering how that works...we need an option for ours, and I never really thought to freeze it!
ReplyDeleteYes I freeze cilantro. I just tear off the leaves and toss piles of them onto a cookie sheet. Then put them in a bag when frozen. You lose the texture, but the taste is still there.
DeleteWe have potatoes, beans and onions coming up nicely, the strawberries have green fruits, and our blueberry and blackberry bushes and apple trees are finally putting out. Hopefully a bountiful harvest this year!
ReplyDeleteHow do you freeze cilantro? I would never have enough to have too much. LOL... I'm jealous!!!
ReplyDeleteJust toss piles of leaves on a cookie sheet and when frozen put them in a bag.
DeleteI love your cilantro bed!
ReplyDeleteI had a really small harvest this week, but spring is finally here and I hope to have more interesting harvests in the next months.
Wow that's a pretty impressive total for this time of year!! The kale looks great, we sure love over wintered kale it is so much sweeter and milder this time of year!!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea to treat the cilantro like mint, and give it its own bed!
ReplyDeleteLovely harvest. Thats a lot of cilantro. What do you usually use it for other than salsa? can you dry cilantro?
ReplyDeleteI adore it in salads and often toss in leaves with it is fresh. I'm guessing I'll make a salad dressing with the frozen cilantro in the summer. And anything with beans is good with cilantro. Scrambled eggs. Stirfries. Yesterday I made Gallo Pinto, a Costa Rican Dish, which I hope to talk about for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard.
DeleteAnd no you can't dry cilantro. It loses its flavor when dried.
That's a lot of carrots, what are you going to do with them? Love the kale, mine did not overwinter well at all.
ReplyDeleteWell over half of them are gone already. I had a big birthday party for my husband on Saturday. They ended up on the veggies platter. I'm going to eat the rest raw probably as carrot sticks. I still have lots of frozen blanched carrots for cooking.
DeleteI'm looking forward to fresh carrots again. Just pulled some I shredded last fall out of the freezer to make bread or maybe a cake. Do you jar/pickle/freeze any carrots or just grow what you use up right away?
ReplyDeletewww.myalaskagarden.blogspot.com
I blanch and freeze carrots in the fall. Or I did last year. If I don't have too many I can bag them and save them in the fridge. I'll eat these without any preserving. Five pounds really isn't all that many. And they keep for months anyway.
Deletewow what a great harvest!
ReplyDeleteNice harvest, and gorgeous photo of the kales and cilantro!
ReplyDeleteLovely harvest Daphne, lots of carrots do you plant many varieties or do you have a favorite?
ReplyDeleteLast year I planted three. Mokum, which didn't overwinter well, but is a great very sweet carrot. SugarSnax is a good keeper as it gets really big, so great harvests and tastes good, but not as good as Mokum. Purple Haze was planted for fun. It was the best overwinterer, but didn't produce as well as the others and tended to be better for cooking than fresh eating.
DeleteWe finally have cilantro seeds sprout here as the weather cools down. Our summer too hot for the cilantro. They just bolt in the heat. That a really big harvest for winter weather still. A lot of carrot harvest they will keep you well-supplied until the next harvest.
ReplyDeleteWhat a nice early spring harvest! It is really odd that the supermarket carrots taste better, but regardless you got a nice carrot harvest. I really need to freeze my cilantro too. Does frozen cilantro work in salsa?
ReplyDeleteYes frozen cilantro works in salsa. It isn't as pretty though. It turns darker when defrosted. And the leaves are limp. But the flavor is there.
DeleteReally happy to find this linky. Enjoyed seeing everyone's harvest and even found some gardeners in my Zone. :-)
ReplyDeleteWow! Great harvest this week. The bunching onions look as large as leeks. Nice carrot harvest as well. I never thought to freeze cilantro. I usually have problems getting it to grow. It always seems to bolt prematurely on me. I guess the key is to seed heavily and allow it to go to seed.
ReplyDeleteI find cilantro a hard crop unless you just let it go to seed and self seed everywhere. That bed isn't technically self seeded. I harvested the coriander and then put the chaff in that bed as I knew that is where I wanted my cilantro to be. There were tons of seed in the chaff. I had so many seeds that I didn't really need to harvest them all.
DeleteLike the kale, cilantro is starting to bolt out here. Looks good.
ReplyDeleteI like harvesting the dandelions in my yard to make tea. It tastes pretty good!
ReplyDeleteI'm in Minnesota and we are at least a month ahead of normal. Just went out to the garden and harvested our first asparagus from the garden and scallions, chard and spinach from the high tunnel that my sweetie is making into an awesome omelet with local cheese and eggs from our chickens as I write this!
ReplyDeleteI wanted to give everyone my updated url so, I reposted. Hope that's okay?
ReplyDelete