Greetings from the Garden! This week's box contains lettuce, Romaine cutting lettuce, red cabbage, kohlrabi, cucumbers, summer squash, green onions, basil, parsley, and the start of tomatoes, apples, Brussels sprouts, and corn.
Field Notes. Ken has been grateful - each time he has said, "If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I will need to irrigate.." we get rain! This year with the rain, weeds are really growing well. Ken has been focusing on cultivating and pulling weeds - harvesting the volunteer green manure he calls it. Here is a photo of Ken mowing the fence line.
From the Kitchen. New vegetables this week and fruit. These early apples are wonderful quartered, cored and poached in water or apple with a little cinnamon. We grow several varieties of apples - ones for apple sauce, ones for poaching, ones for storage and so forth. Some years one or some or all varieties do well.
Brussels sprouts are another member of the brassica family like cabbage or broccoli. I like Brussels sprouts steamed lightly with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Last year a friend pickled some, and that was delicious! Kohlrabi, another member of the brassica family was bred for its swollen stem. Kohlrabi always look rather foreign - like a space ship, but the stem is great peeled, sliced and salted. The green tops can be used in any cabbage or greens recipe. The brassicas are also called crucifers as their early leaves make a cross. They are all known to be great anti-oxidants.
These tomatoes have hairline cracks as a result of the latest downpour. The skin split. Just rinse and cut any soft spots. Rose, a popular variety, seems particularly prone to splitting this year. I like to make tomato salad by cutting tomatoes into wedges, adding some minced onion or garlic, thinly sliced basil and parsley, and add balsamic vinegar and olive oil as a dressing. Last week I also tried homemade mayonnaise, and that was delicious.
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