Eating From the Garden in February!

Amazingly, it'sFebruary, and we're are still eating meals occasionally that include some form of garden produce from last summer. For example, last night we had beef and barley stew made with homegrown potatoes, onions, garlic, and thyme. With starting up my new job mid-summer, I really didn't have time to do as much canning and preserving as I would normally do. However, I actually got to teach a class called 'Preserving The Harvest' in August last year. I did a little canning, drying, and freezing so I would have demos and food to taste for the class.

I still have a crate of these banana fingerling potatoes in the basement. As well as a crate of the largest 'Yukon Gold' potatoes I've ever seen. My potato harvest was huge (a.k.a. scary huge) last year!

I dehydrated tons of Principe Borghese tomatoes last summer so I could make a sun-dried tomato dip for my preserving class. I've barely made a dent in them!

I grew lots and lots of soybeans last year and froze several gallon size bags of edamame. These are so good boiled and salted!

Some of my onions have gotten mushy in storage (I should really put them down in the basement instead of in the kitchen), but many are still nice and firm. I grew heading onions for the first time last year. I've only ever planted onions sets and harvested them as green onions. Last year I grew 'Ailsa Craig' and was pleased to get nice large bulbs that seem to hold up fairly well in storage. This year I'm going to grow 'Copra' because they are known for their storage.

I still have about a dozen heads of garlic left, probably not enough to last me until next harvest. I braided them and they're hanging in my kitchen. The braids look so pretty that it's hard to start cutting heads off of them. I probably also didn't plant enough garlic last year, so I'll run out again next winter. I seem to do that every year. This fall I should just plant what seems like a ridiculous amount and then it will end up being just enough!

Winter Blues Cure: Crates of Vegetables

I always love photos of crates full of veggies. Here a few photos from last summer than I never got the opportunity to share.

Mixed heirloom tomatoes

Banana fingerling potatoes

A week's worth of veggies harvested from the MSU Horticulture Garden's  that were donated to a local food bank.

Baby Veggies

Trying to keep track of developing fruits can be difficult, especially with the squashes where a giant fruit can develop seemingly over night.

Here's a 'Waltham' butternut squash. It's already the size of my thumb, and it hasn't even flowered yet.

'Cinderella' Pumpkin

I was really surprised by how large these 'Costata Romanesco' zucchinis got prior to even flowering! 

 I've yet to let any of these 'Yellow Crookneck' squashes get much larger than this. They're so cute at this size.

This is a teeny tiny mexican sour gherkin. The plants are just covered in them!

This 'Corsican' gourd flowered really early this year, so this particular fruit should get fairly sizable by the end of the summer.

I'm assuming this is a 'Tepehuan Canteen' gourd. I've never grown it before, so I'm not entirely sure what they look like.

These tomatoey looking things are actually potato fruits. You can plant potatoes from their true seeds, but most people use what are called "seed potatoes", which are actually small tubers.

I'm pretty sure this is 'Cream of Saskatchewan' watermelon. I'm also growing 'Blacktail Mountain', which has much darker skin

Harvests

I've been doing a little harvesting every day lately. I'm getting tons of cucumbers, a few zucchinis (those that haven't succumbed to drought-induced yellowy wrinkle disease), basil, and potatoes. I can almost taste the tomatoes, but I've still only gotten one ripe one.

This is the first broccoli crown I've ever grown (not due to a lack of trying). Unfortunately, it's only about 3 inches across.

Fava beans, West Indian Gherkin, Suyo Long cucumber, White Wonder cucumber, and Lemon cucumber. Most of these went into the slowly evolving pickle bowl in the fridge.

Any suggestions on what to do with these West Indian Gherkins? They are painful to the touch and I can't quite figure out how you are supposed to eat the without peeling them. They're so small that there wouldn't be much left after peeling. I guess I could lob them my enemies! 

I finally got around to digging all of my Red Norland potatoes. The plants have long since died, but the potatoes happily waited for me all cozy in the ground.

First Potatoes of the Year

I harvested the first 'Red Norland' potatoes from my garden recently. I think my days of planting grocery store potatoes is over, because these guys were absolutely perfect. I guess there is an advantage of starting with certified seed potatoes. The grocery store ones weren't that bad, but these are great!

I have only harvested a few so far (I want to let the rest size up a bit), but they were very tasty and creamy.

Peekaboo Potatoes

The 'Red Norland' potatoes I planted this spring are starting to form tubers. I happened to see a little red poking out of the soil after our last rainstorm. The plants just recently started to flower, so I'll wait a little longer before digging any of the potatoes.

Peas and Potatoes: Alu Mutter Garden

The sprouts on my potatoes were pretty big to begin with, but I'm still surprised by how quickly they started poking out of the ground.

Hopefully my straw mulch tactic will keep the potato bed neat and tidy.

My drunken peas can't walk a straight line, but they'll taste just the same.

Seriously! What was I on when I planted these?

Planting Potatoes

I'm trying 'Red Norland' potatoes this year and I'm actually using certified seed potatoes rather than grocery store potatoes. While the grocery store potato technique worked just fine two years ago, last year my 'All Blues' were really scabby and inedible (even when grown in a brand new bed that had never seed a potato before). Hopefully this year will be better. I know I"m still spacing they way to close together, but that's just how I tend to do everything.

Double row of potatoes

'Red Norland' seed potato

Are you growing potatoes this year? What kind?