Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week's CSA box has GREENS - lettuce, spinach, salad, cilantro, chives, parsnips, potatoes, onions, garlic, gobo and the last of the storage carrots, and a black radish.

Field Notes.  Rain.  Plants have popped!  Irrigating is just not the same as rain.  We had some unusually warm weather, but several crops just were just waiting for some rain.  The greens are thriving outside the heat of the tunnel, and the soil inside the new location is warming for tomatoes, peppers, etc. Now we are watching weather for late cool weather or frost.  If  - or when - this happens we will be running around covering heat loving seedlings that are hardening off.

Fall plantings are also jumping ahead - the garlic looks great.  In the field Ken's fall planted rye is taking off.  

And Ken has planted several of the early crops - the first potatoes and peas for example.  Soon the first beet crop thins will be harvested; these are a colorful, tasty green.  

From the Kitchen.  Each spring we have a couple of boxes filled with greens.  Although they are not heavy, they pack nutrition and spring cleansing qualities.  If you are not much of a salad person, try sauteing an onion and adding the greens just long enough to wilt them.  Then add what ever will compliment your meal - If we are having pasta with tomato sauce, I tend to serve greens with cream or yogurt.  If I am serving a main course with cheese, I add interesting vinegar and oil to the greens.  When the meal is Asian I add toasted sesame oil and seeds to the greens. 

I also  put chopped greens in a bowl and pour hot clear broth soups over them - this is a great warming start to a cool spring morning.  And in Asia, they often salt greens to back up the chlorophyll flavor and make the greens taste sweeter.  And I cook greens in egg dishes - spinach quiche or spinach omelettes.  We are still in prime egg season!

About this time I pull out the curried potato and parsnip soup recipe.  Saute onion with some curry, add broth and cook potatoes and parsnips.  Puree.  Add some yogurt or cream.  Serve with a dollop of yogurt and a sprig of green - cilantro or chives.

'Til Next Week, Judith