What are you eating from your garden 2020!?

[rainbowgardener]

Yay!! Celebrated the New Year by going out with my picking bowl. Came back with a whole bowl of chickweed, purple dead nettle, parsley, baby lettuce, cabbage, and broccoli leaves, tiny baby onions, and leaves of garlic. All of it will get chopped into tonight's salad.

[applestar]

Nice! I had a few greens from my Garage V8 winter garden — lettuce and Tokyo Bekana (a kind of Chinese cabbage) leaves — in a cold sandwich, and added some Dwarf Moringa leaves from the Green Room winter garden in hot sandwich.

[lakngulf]

Gonna pick some collards and turnip roots soon. I want to wait until our next cold spell.
Got some teeny, tiny tomato plants poking out. Trying for early crop this year

[Gary350]

Today we turned 1 quart jar of homemade garden Bread & Butter pickles into relish to make ham salad sandwiches. After doing a taste test I made a small sandwich with a few potato chips.

[Gary350]

Dinner is, garden green beans & meatloaf. Pantry is still full. I ate a whole pint jar of beans, wife ate macaroni & cheese.

[imafan26]

Right now, I cannot keep up with the cucumbers. I have eaten three, and I gave a couple of them away. I have 4 more in the frig and three more on the vine which I will have to pick before they get too fat. I harvested calamondin (most of them are given away.) Meyer lemons for lemon meringue pie. I have bilimbi on the tree now. Green onions for omelettes, Hot peppers (super chile and Kung pao), a few outer leaves of butterhead lettuce for egg salad, Beets ( I pulled them out accidentaly while weeding). Bush beans (green crop), rosemary and thyme for my roast. Harvested some of the ginger, peeled and stored in the frig in sherry. Harvested araimo for nishime for NY. Eggplant and a lot of super chilies.

[imafan26]

I picked two more giant soarer cucumbers, I will have to seed them first. I had a handful of snow peas and beans, green onions and chili peppers.

[rainbowgardener]

I have a bunch of garden veggies in the freezer. The big freezer for extra stuff is in the garage and I tend to forget stuff in there. Time to use them up before the new ones start coming!!

[Gary350]

This is how I like to eat, 3 times more vegetables than meat & a slice of bread. Night before last dinner was, chicken & garden corn. I ate 2 big helpings of corn. Last night we mixed left over garden corn & green beans & peas & had it with pork roast. I would love to eat all vegetables but my body does not do right with no protein it gets my blood sugar all screwed up.

[SQWIB]

Bok Choy

[imafan26]

The rain and wind finally stopped for a day. It is still overcast and looks like it will rain again soon. I finally did get outside today. I picked some snow peas, bush beans, harvested hon tsai tai (2), a handful of currants and a few stalks of green onions. The birds had feasted on a few of those too.

For dinner I made yaki soba with pork and yaki soba from the freezer. Onions and garlic were from the store. Ginger, hon tsai tai, green onions, beans, snow peas, and even the tomatoes were stir fried. I used oyster sauce and some soy sauce for flavoring. They are very salty so I did not need to add any more salt. I have enough for 3 meals.

[applestar]

I was thinking about Rainbowgardener today as I clipped as big a bunch of chickweed as I could hold in my left hand from the container it is "sharing" with an overwintering pepper plant.

I put it in a stew to cook after finely chopping ... with a couple of tablespoons of already chopped parsley from the freezer (harvested last week). Nice thing about these Winter Indoor Garden herbs and greens is that they are practically completely pest free and super tender. I mostly harvest as needed or only to keep them from touching the lights and getting burned.

[imafan26]

Chickweed. I have wild bitter melon growing in the yard. It gives meaning to the term "eat the weeds". There are definitely perks to gardening indoors. The butterflies and in particular, one cabbage white butterfly has found my kale and collards. I don't see caterpillars but they have to be there, the holes are relatively new and plentiful. The geckos are not doing their job very well. There are also monarchs and some orange butterfly (a pair of them actually) out and about this morning. They have left the komatsuna alone, so I guess they don't really like it. I am going to have to find a longer butterfly net and some Bt. The monarchs are probably feeding on the neighbors' crown flower but getting nectar from the honeysuckles. The cabbage white is definitely unwelcome.

[applestar]

Today I made an omelette for breakfast made with some of the greens from the Garage V8 — Tokyo Bekana, Senposai, Sharaku mustard spinach, onion greens, etc. and had a couple of fresh Shimofuri tomatoes on the side.

[imafan26]

I picked a couple of pounds of calamandin and gave it to friends at work. I finally ate the last Soarer cucumber for dinner. There are still 4 Suyo cucumbers getting bigger on the vines.

[imafan26]

I picked about 10 eggplant and snow peas today. I cooked the snow peas with bacon, garlic, soy, and a little sugar. I made pork and eggplant but since I used soy for the snow peas. I used oyster sauce, 1/2 of a bouillon cube, and sweet chili sauce for the flavoring. I had that with some left over yaki soba with snow peas for dinner.

I had a lot of eggplant and it absorbed mos the sauce and the salt, so it was not very salty so that was good.

[applestar]

wow you can harvest eggplant in January? I try not to buy vegetables that are out of season here since they are often/usually imported, but I can’t help getting this eggplant appetizer at our fave Japanese restaurant — just had some last week YUM! — it’s fried 3 inch diameter x 1 inch thick slab of eggplant topped with ground pork and miso meat sauce. It arrives at the table sizzling hot enough to burn your mouth. So rich that I can only eat half. One of my guilty pleasures.

[imafan26]

Eggplant are not seasonal here. I have 2 UH eggplants in the vegetable garden and I harvested 8 from both so I had a lot of eggplant. I prefer the long green eggplant since it remains softer on the bush longer. I have another eggplant at home, but it is not in good soil, so I will have to replace it. Two plants will give me about 8 eggplant every 10 days or so. Eggplant will live 5 years or more, but the production decreases, so I usually only keep them a couple of years.

The weather has been relatively mild (night temp low 60's) so the eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers are continuing to flower even now. Usually when it gets below 50 degrees, the fruit will mature but they will not flower.

Eggplant is a very common ingredient in many different cuisines. The Black Beauty (round eggplant) is the one that is least favored because of the bitterness. I have Thai Tiger seeds, only one person actually likes it because his wife is Thai and she likes the bitterness of the small seedy eggplant. Most people prefer the long purple or black eggplant. Thinner and smaller ones are preferred since they will need fewer cuts = less cut surface = less bitterness. Eggplant should be soft and have shiny skin. If the fruit is hard and the skin is dull, it will be seedy and more bitter. When you cut an older eggplant the seeds will be brown. A young eggplant, you won't notice the seeds. Green eggplant will be softer longer and are less seedy to start with, but some people don't like the green color.

You can get rid of some of the eggplant bitterness with salt, but I prefer to soak the eggplant immediately in water. If the cut surface can be prevented from browining, it won't be bitter. Eggplant gives up a lot of water in cooking and it takes on the flavor of whatever it is cooked in.

I like spicy eggplant, pork with eggplant, tortang talong (Filipino eggplant omelette), pinkakbet, eggplant caponata, eggplant with soy sauce, eggplant with garlic sauce, Thai grilled eggplant, Ma Po Tofu with eggplant, Evil Jungle Prince with Chicken and mixed vegetables. The one thing I don't like is Eggplant parmesan. It is too salty for me and I am not a fan of anything smothered in cheese.

[pepperhead212]

I am still getting greens from that covered bed, though some are starting to go downhill (I took a few out already, to compost.
Covered bed, uncovered on 2-3-20 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

And, amazingly, I had something last night from my 2018 garden - a butternut squash! I check those every couple weeks, and one (still had 3 from 2018) had a bad spot starting, so I used it - only a small spot wasted. That polaris variety is the longest storing variety of butternut I have grown! Some varieties have started going bad after just a two or three months. Seminole pumpkin I had last 2 years one time, just to see.

[applestar]

Ha nothing like yours @pepperhead, but we had some baby/small lettuce leaves in our hamburger sandwiches for lunch. DD and I also put halved Shimofuri cocktail size tomatoes in ours (though we had to eat them de-seeded )

[imafan26]

My lettuce bolted. I got another handful of snow peas. The top of the vines are getting hard to reach. I am picking off some of the red currant tomatoes for snacking. Harvested more calamondin and I had that with pancit. Something took a big bite out of my komatsuna. There is a huge hole at the base and the leaves on that side are MIA. Harvested hot peppers: Bhut Jolokia, Super Chili, Kung Pao, and a couple of Jalapenos. The Cascabella are also red, but I have not harvested them yet. Tonight for dinner, I used the leftover Costco chicken carcass to make Jook. Topped it with oyster sauce and garnished with green onions. I don't have cilantro ready just yet. It was nice to have a hot porridge on a cold and windy night.

[imafan26]

Today, the sun was out and I got out in the garden and cleaned up the garden. For Lunch I made lettuce wraps with ma po tofu filling. However, I got tired of doing that, it all ends up in the same place anyway. I deconstructed the lettuce wrap and made a salad instead. I used red romaine lettuce, and a soarer cucumber from the garden and I made the ma po tofu with Tokyo long negi from the garden. I layered the torn lettuce in a bowl and sliced the cucumber on top. I like Ban Ban Ji dressing (soy ginger dressing) on top of the salad and the salad topped off with the ma po tofu. It was less messy to eat, and gone in half the time.

[digitS']

We have had kale and collards over the last couple of months. The chives grew and we had those several times with scrambled eggs.

The temporary hoop house went over 2 garden beds in mid-March. There were several bok choy plants that had survived the winter. They began to look healthy and grew. (Usually, bok choy is so damaged by the winter cold that it dies or is badly scarred. This was a very mild January - more so than I have ever experienced here.) We had several meals of bok choy as the plants began to bolt.

Seed was planted in those beds and today, we had the first of that bok choy.

In from the Hoophouse and In for a Rinse

Steve

[applestar]

Nice! I was going to try that season extension in the early spring but didn’t get around to it this year (well,... again).

Am still relying on winter indoor garden — lettuce, parsley, strawberries, and now starting to harvest tomatoes and will have peppers soon (overwintered Aji Dulce Amarillo and DK Snacker, as well as some of the hot peppers including Fish and Goldfish)

[2-Acres-NorthWest]

We've been eating overwintered Swiss Chard, Collard Greens, and Egyptian Walking Onions. Yesterday I thinned out mesclun, ate the baby plants. Very tender and mild.

[Phebe]

Nice! I was going to try that season extension in the early spring but didn’t get around to it this year (well,... again).

Am still relying on winter indoor garden — lettuce, parsley, strawberries, and now starting to harvest tomatoes and will have peppers soon (overwintered Aji Dulce Amarillo and DK Snacker, as well as some of the hot peppers including Fish and Goldfish)

For the first time my greenhouse tomatoes didn't do well, as yours did: some sort of withering disease. Huh. I gave up in March and put them on the compost heap. Interesting that you overwintered peppers: I never thought of doing that.

It's been quite warm (generally) here in Maryland and I overwintered A LOT, so we are eating salad in variety daily, and also mixed vegs in sauces (I haven't quite got the sauces down yet...). I put lots of mesclun and mixed cole types in big 14" pots, even some radishes in pots Jan./Feb., and that really has worked out well, no aphids or anything and I put the pots outside April 1. We had overwintered many vegs under greenhouse plastic frames and a low hoophouse, and wow, did the hoophouse vegs. I planted from seeds or little seedlings Feb. 23 come up happily! We are eating them daily -- celery, lettuce, spinach.

But the best of all is the overwintered lettuce, planted last October under those greenhouse-plastic frames. It WAS a warm winter --- whether they'd have done so well if it had been zero degrees here much I don't know, which it never was all winter, and NO snow (unusual for Maryland). The lettuce heads are huge butterheads and Little Gem sturdy heads, and we race to pick before they overgrow. Salad every day, desperately. Carrots grew extremely well over winter, and next year I am growing them again under the auxiliary greenhouses, because they like that even better than the open.

Oh, and bright red spring radishes, mild and sweet. I'm am eating them as fast as I can wash them, and just planted more. Rows better than throwing seeds in a patch, I've decided, so the seeds don't bunch up and the radishes each have some room. I can't get enough of those cheerful Soro and other good red radishes. Variety seems to matter: I am getting very picky about radishes.

[Vanisle_BC]

Eating now, late April:


Overwintered 'Palm Broccoli' (see photo) kale, chard, arugula and; Ta-Daa .... Asparagus: Yum!

[Nyan]

Just a few Allstar strawberries so far... Have some Dino Kale ready and overwintered carrots ready for the weekend when I have time to get them picked/dug.
Does last year's pesto count? I still have about a quart left, and I'm putting it in everything I can to get it used up. It is a surprisingly good addition to the peppery ham and black bean soup that I had yesterday!

[Gary350]

We ate home grown cilantro on tacos for dinner.

[imafan26]

I harvested carrots and bok choy from the garden. I made gun lo mein with vegetables. I used yaki soba instead of chow mein noodles. It was in my freezer and the first noodles I found. It came out good. But then, I was hungry. The only thing missing was the crispy gau gee.

[kayjay]

Nothing yet... but I clipped the basil twice and used it to make herb butter. (Just melted butter + the basil + dried oregano + garlic powder)

[Gary350]

We 8 home made Bread & Butter pickle relish on German sausage on the grill.

[TomatoNut95]

Mostly peppers, and some tomatoes. Had 2 scallops and a zucchini yesterday but I already blanched and froze them.

[imafan26]

I had some cucumbers and romaine lettuce. I also picked some super chile, calamondin, kale, chard, and komatsuna and give it to a friend.

[Vanisle_BC]

Garlic scape soup pretty soon

[imafan26]

I have papaya, cucumbers, Charger tomatoes, long shanked green onions, eggplant, super chile, pak choi, and bitter melon leaves.

Papaya in green papaya salad. Charger tomatoes and cucumber were in a salad. Eggplant in spicy eggplant with a little bit of chile pepper. Pak choi- steamed, and green onions used in an omelette and saimin.

[pepperhead212]

I just harvested about 3/4 of my garlic scapes yesterday, and today the first eggplant! A 9.1 oz ichiban, which is always my earliest. All of the plants have blossoms, which surprised me with rosa bianca, since I thought that was a late variety.
First eggplant on Ichiban, 6-21-20 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Garlic scapes 6-20 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

[Vanisle_BC]

Pepperhead, in your photo it looks as if you harvest only the heads of garlic scapes? We take the stem as well, chop & freeze it for use in cooking.

[pepperhead212]

@Vanisle - I read years ago that garlic stores better when the scapes are left on, but cutting them off makes them grow a little larger, funneling the energy to the roots. But they seem to grow a little longer, and store better if left on until the stem gets woody, before cutting it off, and sometimes that's what I do - no useable scapes, but better heads. Since it is the heads I want more, I'll do that with my Metechi, which is the longest storing one I grew.

[kayjay]

A couple of weeks ago, basil in isalata caprise (tomato was store bought, unfortunately) with prosciutto.



...and two days ago, plucked a jalapeno for an omelet with cheddar cheese.