Harvest Time!

Clean Up

Lots of things to do even in our tiny raised beds.  Since room is at a premium, it's always wise to trim and thin where we can.  Most of these are brussel sprout leaves, those plants are trying to take over. The leaves are gigantic and shade everything else out. I highly recommend putting them in a place where you are not trying to grow other things because they get big...and tall...and wide...and bushy.  Who knew?  

The yellow spalsh of color is a broccoil head that flowered from the heat we've been having.  The flowers are actually edible and I saw online that they are considered a delicacy, as in expensive to buy.  And here I am throwing it away!  We definately eat the brocc that has a few flowers on it but Hubbie is not too interested in all flowers like the one here, so out it goes.  

Chinese Broccoli - Kai Lan - Gai Lan

We planted some Chinese broccoli which is also called Kai Lan and Gai Lan.   Chinese broccoli is a more delicate version of regular broccoli.  The stalk is very thin with a small broccoli head and soft leaves.   It's close in appearance to broccoli rabe but not in flavor since broccoli rabe tastes super bitter to me. You typically harvest the small head with a few inches of stalk and the top most leaves. 

At restaurants it's steamed then sauted with 

garlic.  The leaves wilt down like spinich so you end up with this interesting dish that is like a few different veggies in one. It's wilted like spinich, has tiny heads like traditional broccoli and crunchy/tender stems too.     

These are pictures of baby Chinese broccoli coming up from seed.  Super easy to grow and came right up on their own without any fuss.  The leaf miners seemed to have found them but not a whole lot and most of the damage is on the older leaves that you wouldn't eat anyway.  The powdery mildew that has taken over the rest of the garden (more on that later) doesn't affect these guys. That's my kind of veg.   The down side is that you have to plant quite a few to get enough for a meal.

Improper Broccoli Harvesting

It's been a great treat to grow broccoli in the garden this time around. It's our very first time growing it and I had no idea what to expect. I'm not sure why, but Dad never grew broccoli from what I remember.  Probably because us bratty kids would never eat it.

Well, times sure do change because we eat ALOT of it in my house now. It's Hubbies favorite veggie, we eat it four times a week and I'm not even exaggerating.   Since we eat it so much, it was a no-brainer to plant it. I'm so happy we did!  Homegrown brocc is mild and a little......sweet!  You have to plant it if you have room.

Needless to say, as first timers, we made some mistakes.  The main one being at harvest time.  We sorta cut the brocc head straight across which resulted in a rotting pit of nasty.  I kept looking around for what smelled so bad....like a rotten fish in stagnent water.....and found that the plant above was the source of the stink.  So be warned, cut on an angle to avoid a rotting hole of stink. 

Making A Meal

We always joke that this is our snacking garden, that there isn't enough food at one time to make a meal.  Well, we were slow in getting there but we made it happen.  We just eat all of the greens together!  I can't believe that we didn't think of that sooner.

So, here are all of the veggies that we would cook together and add to our meal. There's broccoli, snow peas and Chinese broccoli.  They all go well together and you end up with a veggie medly.  We steam and then saute with garlic. YUM!  We were on a roll and didn't buy veggies from the store for a long while. It feels so rewarding to eat from your own garden.