Monday, June 9, 2014

Harvest Monday 9 June 2014

The early seeded Asian greens were all starting to bolt so they had to be harvested. And the earliest planted turnips were harvested too. There are a lot more turnips in there than you can see.
Though nothing was happening to the early planted lettuces, I knew they were at the end of their time. If I waited much longer they would be bitter. Also above is one Fun Jen that was bolting. That is an Asian green that I use in salads. Luckily Asian greens taste good when they are bolting. And as an added bonus most of the flowers stalk are pretty tasty.

The last of the kale blossoms were picked. I still have them all in the fridge. There is so much food in there it is hard to choose what to eat.

I've been using my dehydrator a lot. This is a batch of dill, but I also harvested a lot of oregano. This week I'll keep it going with more oregano and maybe some tarragon and thyme.

And the huge patch of spinach was harvested and most of it frozen for the winter.

I decided it was summer and I've been using the grill more. Here my harvested turnips were grilled with some store bought onions. There is some cilantro and lime shrimp over quinoa, using my cilantro from the garden.

And for those that don't know about shrimp, shrimp is probably the most wasteful kind of seafood to buy. Shrimp are caught by trawling. It is estimated that about 80% of what is caught is bycatch though it varies a lot based on the technology used. This bycatch for the most part is tossed back over dead once the shrimp are sorted out, though some places in China use 100% of the bycatch, in the US it is closer to 0%. The most ecological way to buy shrimp is from inland farmed shrimp which is what I buy.

  • Alliums: 0.04 lbs
  • Greens: 9.78 lbs
  • Asian Greens: 2.21 lbs
  • Herbs: 0.54 lbs
  • Roots: 1.23 lbs
  • Weekly Total: 13.80 lbs
  • Yearly Total: 41.97 lbs
  • Yearly Tally: $-354.95

  • Fruit
  • Strawberries: 0.26 lbs
  • Yearly total: 2.46 lbs, $7.65

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.

23 comments:

  1. Gorgeous greens! I'm still jealous of all that spinach - we only got few leaves and it bolted. Will try for fall planting to see how it does.

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  2. Your grilled dinner looks divine! We really must start using our grill more :-)

    Thank you for the info about shrimp! I didn't know that stats and am horrified! We're in the middle of our Local Bite Challenge (eating only locally sourced foods for 100 days) so we are not eating any seafood right now, but I will keep this in mind when we're ready to start purchasing seafood again!

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  3. Isn't it amazing how we can go from dreaming about fresh greens to a glut of greens in a flash. :) It's a beautiful thing.

    Speaking of sustainable seafood, I hope you don't mind if I give a plug to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program. It's a great resource for those interested in making sustainable choices about seafood, it can be found at seafoodwatch.org. Full disclosure - I volunteer at the aquarium.

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    1. No I'm glad you did. I should have. I have their app on my phone. Though is there a way to ask them about something? Whole Foods claims a green ocean farmed salmon. But is it really? They don't distinguish between the different farming techniques. I'd trust an unbiased opinion over what Whole Foods says.

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    2. If you go to the seafoodwatch.org website there is a Contact Us page where you can submit questions, there's a link to get there from the app but the app doesn't seem to have it's own contact option. I think that would be a good place to start. There is actually one farmed salmon from Chile that is considered a "good alternative" by the aquarium, I wonder if that is the one Whole Foods is carrying. It may be a different one though. There are other seafood certification programs that approve other farmed salmon producers that the aquarium recommends to avoid. Whole Foods may be relying on those other certifications to justify selling those products.

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  4. What a great harvest of veg! Apart from Chinese people, I don't know anyone who can grow Asian Greens as well as you.

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  5. So nice to see you eating from your beautiful garden. Did I miss the final outcome of the elimination diet? Turnips grilled--how nice!

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  6. Your harvests are always so impressive! And I did not know that about shrimp - - thank you for sharing that information! I don't know if we have access to farmed inland shrimp in Idaho but I will be more mindful when buying shrimp from now on.

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  7. Great vegetables! Especially Asian green, they look fresh, health and tasty!

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  8. Beautiful greens, I lost my greens to grasshoppers infestation while on vacation :(

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  9. Amazing harvest - that is A LOT of food for one week!! I love the tatsoi; haven't grown it yet but it's high on the list simply because it looks so beautiful!

    I had no idea about the shrimp - I can't believe that, in this day & age, this type of practice is allowed to continue.

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  10. Great greens! I've never had grilled turnips. I'll have to try that next time.

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  11. Can't beat home grown greens.

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  12. Having too much to choose from is what we call a good problem! Where do you buy inland shrimp? And not sure how I got linked here twice this week...

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    1. Whole Foods. I don't know if they have them available all over the country though. And I'll fix your double linking problem.

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  13. Daphne, I’ve visited your blog periodically over the last year and a half and have enjoyed reading about your garden. I believe that I stumbled across your blog when I was learning about soil blocks, and this year I used your paper and paper-clip method for potting up my tomatoes (it worked great). You inspired me to start keeping track of my harvests, and now that I started a gardening blog, I hope to participate in more Harvest Mondays. Thank you for hosting. - Autumn

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  14. Great harvest as usual, Daphne! Unfortunately, my red sails lettuce is already turning bitter even though there's no sign of it bolting. I think I'm gonna stick to green lettuce from now on.

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  15. I thought I had a lot of greens to eat this week, but you win! 12 pounds is very impressive. I never thought of grilling turnip, how does it influence the flavor?

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    1. I think it influences the texture more than the flavor. These are salad turnips (or Japanese turnips). When sauteed they just melt in your mouth, but when grilled the outside has texture to it.

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  16. You certainly know how to grow a bunch of wonderful greens and how to harvest and care for them. Nice!! Nancy

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  17. That lettuce looks amazing! I grew the tatsoi last year, but bugs got more than I did!

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