first big spring salad!

[rainbowgardener]

This isn't exactly recipes, but it is food...

I'm just celebrating that I finally had the first big spring salad of the year, for dinner last night. It was a lot of spinach (right now I have more spinach than I can use, will probably freeze some), some chard, some leaf lettuce, a bunch of celery (mostly leaves), and then a whole bunch of herbs - some purple basil, some fennel, some dill, some lemon balm, some lemon grass, some parsley - and what I could gather of weeds - violet leaves, some creeping Charlie flowers for ornamentation, with a little bit of store bought iceberg for crunch. Add toppings of your choice (I like craisins and crumbled feta, with something crunchy, maybe tortilla strips or nuts) and presto a beautiful, colorful, FLAVORFUL, vitamin rich salad!.

Now we are in to the season where all the work pays off!

[Rairdog]

Is this the violet you eat?

And creeping charlie?


I have more of this than grass but never made a positive ID.

[rainbowgardener]

Yes and yes.

I have to say the creeping Charlie is edible, meaning it won't hurt you and it may have medicinal values, but having sampled it, I wouldn't choose it over the veggies in my garden. I just like to put flowers in things.

[applestar]

Beautiful! I like flowers in my salads too.

I've been eating smallish salads -- another week or so should get me bigger harvest. Rain clouds have been avoiding my garden (I swear I look at the radar and the clouds disperse and go AROUND) but it's raining now and is supposed to give us a good soaking all afternoon, so that should help.

[Rairdog]

I've been getting 6 to 10 good servings of salad a week from the GH aquaponics and it's still kicking it out. I pulled the kale. It was the first time I have grown it and we didn't care for it fresh or stir fried so I froze it for soup. My chard is very salty...is this normal? It is fairly new to us also. When I mix it in salads I don't notice it. The garden has a bunch of black seed, romaine and chard almost ready to harvest. The spinach is starting to bolt... My favorite has been the broccoli leaves, spinach and chard in stir fry but we are trying to learn how to balance the flavor with fresh greens.

On a side note...is it ok to cut off broccoli leaves that are shading out other plants before it heads?