Summer Fruits and Vegetables Update

Bulgarian Carrot Pepper

As you know, Megan and I planted fifteen pepper plants; four Shepherd, five Bulgarian Carrot, and six Jimmy Nardello. They have all grown and developed leaves and some are even producing their first blossoms! Surprisingly though, it is our Bulgarian Peppers starting with the blossoms. I thought it would be the Shepherds that produced blossoms first because they were store bought and much more developed than the Bulgarian Carrots or Jimmy Nardellos that we started from seed. The blossoms are not visible in the pictures yet though.

Yellow Pear Tomato

Tomato-wise, things have changed a lot, as they have certainly doubled in size, maybe even tripled! Megan and I have noticed little blossoms starting on these too, although they are not entirely visible yet. I'm hoping to see some tomatoes form on these soon. They must be loving this hot weather!

Musquee de Provence

I love the looks of our pumpkins! Megan put a few more seeds in the mounds along with the plants we started indoors, because last year some of our plants mysteriously disappeared. Maybe we can get more than two pumpkins this year.

Cherokee Trail of Tears Bean

 Our Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans are growing so large that I think the bamboo stakes we placed beside them won't be enough to hold them. We'll have to remedy this issue soon, maybe with some wire.

Jennifer

Root Vegetable Update

Mixture of Radishes

 For our second installment of updates, I would like to tell you about our root vegetables, which are almost all late-summer veggies. The exception is a combination of easter egg, cherry belle, and mixed radishes which we planted in two rows at two different times. We harvested many beautiful radishes from the first row, mostly of the easter egg and cherry belle varieties, but the majority of our mixed radish pack went to seed before they developed their roots. I think the varieties in the mixed pack, like white icicle, were too large to develop in our short cold season so we might stick with smaller varieties like french breakfast, cherry belle, and easter egg for the fall and next year.

Our second row of radishes are on their way, so I hope the heat doesn't negatively affect them or make them go to seed, before they can develop roots and be harvested.

Chioggia Beets

 Our Chioggia Beets are looking beautiful with their robust leaves, however, we realized the space we planted them in could take a lot more plantings, so we purchased two packs of Detroit Red Beets to fill in some gaps. None of them are up yet, but soon they should be. The amount of beets we'll have this year will be more than last year, which should allow us to try a lot of recipes like soup, salads, or pickles.

Four Carrot Pots

Our four pots of carrots are doing wonderfully with exceptionally healthy looking tops. One pot is Nantes, one is a mixed pack, and the other two are Little Finger carrots. Just two weeks or so ago, Megan and I planted two more pots of carrots on top of that, one of which is Little Finger carrots, the other Nantes. We planted quite a few more carrots this year than last year too, so we hope to get a few meals out of them.

Jennifer

Leafy Greens Update

The weather has warmed up and things in our garden are moving fast, so this is a good time to do an update on all of our fruits and veggies. In this post, I will specifically talk about our green leafy vegetables.

Firstly, our first lettuce plantings have now gone to seed, so we're taking a break from eating lots of lettuce. Our second lettuce plantings are coming along though and I expect we'll be able to cut them anytime now. Unfortunately we've run out of our mixed lettuce seeds that we collected last year, so we purchased some endive frisee seeds, or chicory seeds as it is called in the US, and I planted a row of those. I am really happy to see the little seedlings poking out of the ground.

Second Lettuce Plantings

 To help fill in some more space, we purchased six radicchio which is an Italian head lettuce. It is very bitter when eaten, so it's best in combination with other lettuces. I don't have a picture of any of it, because it was eaten down by something; probably a rabbit or some deer.

Arugula

 The growth of our arugula has increased immensely so we are cutting a lot of that. We might even have to give some away to friends who live nearby. I love the peppery bite of this green! Thus far we've been eating it a lot as a salad, but it would be fun to try it with a homemade pasta, and maybe some lemon and Parmesan. We'll see.

Tatsoi

We cut the first of our tatsoi mustard green, which is an Asian green. I've read that it is supposed to have a spicy flavour, but when I tasted it fresh I found it to be more reminiscent of the bitterness and sweetness of eating fresh peas with the pod straight out of the garden.

Unfortunately, we noticed some of this green going to seed already due to the humid hot weather we've been having here in southern Ontario, so we chose to cut some whole bunches of the tatsoi out of the garden and left some of the younger ones in. Hopefully we'll be able to harvest more of this before they all go to seed. You can eat the leaves fresh as a salad, but we wilted them with a dressing of sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and sesame seeds which tasted very good.

Lucullus Swiss Chard

Our Lucullus Swiss Chard is well on its way to being of a size to harvest and we're hoping we will get a lot more of it than we did last year. Swiss chard is so delicious sauteed with some olive oil and onions as a healthy side dish and we've even added it to lasagna and pasta too.

Jennifer

The Season's First Arugula and Radishes

Our radishes have been coming along really well over the last few weeks, and last week was the first time we were able to pick a few radishes. The picture above shows some lovely Easter Egg radishes and a French Breakfast radish. We used them in an arugula salad with our first big batch of arugula straight from the garden.

Jennifer and I have never grown arugula, but it truly is very easy to grow. The arugula in our lettuce pot grew small like the baby arugula you can sometimes buy in salad mixes from the grocery store, but the arugula sown directly in the garden grew large leaves; I cut a bit of both for our salad, and I found there really wasn't much of a difference in texture and taste between the larger and smaller arugula leaves.

Upon mentioning to people that Jennifer and I have been growing arugula this season, we've received a lot of questions about what arugula is. I'm quickly realizing that although we're quite familiar with it, there are many who don't know about it, so it's only fitting that in our first post about harvesting arugula from the garden, we discuss some of the history of arugula and what exactly it is.

Here in Canada, we know this Italian salad green as arugula, but to those in the UK you might know it as rocket. It's flavour is slightly peppery and strong, it makes an excellent salad green when mixed with other types of salad greens due to its strong flavour, but I also like it on its own.

I've referred to arugula as an Italian salad green, but what I should really say is that it's a Mediterranean green, considering it's also native to places like Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey. I've read that in these regions it consistently gets used as a sauteed green as well, although in North America we're more familiar with using it as a salad green or fresh on sandwiches.

I actually found that I've enjoyed growing the arugula, and I think it's much nicer than having to buy it at the store, as the arugula we've grown seems to have more flavour. It has a much more pronounced peppery flavour. Plus, we also get to cut the arugula a few times a week at its peak.

Megan

Beet Salad with Arugula, Goat Cheese, and Walnuts

Megan and I are having so much fun finding uses for our lettuces and arugula, especially since we have so much of them. In the last week, our garden arugula has become quite sizable so we cut that a few days ago in addition to some in our lettuce pot. Since we didn't have enough to make just an arugula salad, we decided to combine it with sliced red beets, goat cheese, and walnuts, and made a delicious vinaigrette to toss the salad in. The beets we used were not garden beets (we hope to have some soon!), but we can still hold some pride in the fact that the salad contained our own arugula and some fresh herbs from our herb garden. Here is the recipe:

Beet Salad with Arugula, Goat Cheese, and Walnuts

Ingredients:

6 small to medium size beets
2 to 3 cups arugula leaves, approximately
1/4 onion, cut into strips

1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp white vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 or 2 tbsp of fresh chopped herbs (I used oregano, chives, and mint)
A pinch of sugar

goat cheese, crumbled for garnish
walnuts, chopped for garnish

Directions:

1. Peel beets and boil them until just tender, but not falling apart
2. Cut beets into thin slices and mix them with the arugula and onion in a salad bowl
3. In a separate bowl, combine olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt and pepper, herbs, and sugar and emulsify
4. Dress salad with vinaigrette
5. Serve salad family style and allow everyone to garnish their own portion with goat cheese and walnuts

I really liked the end result of this, but if I really have to be critical of our creation I would say that I would like a little more texture. If I had a mandolin slicer to cut the beets really thin, I might have left them raw. Also some more sharpness in the vinaigrette could be good to hold up to the robust and sweet flavour of the beets. The oil to acid ratio is what I typically use for lettuce, which is more delicate in flavour than beets, so maybe there needs to be more acid to match up with the beets. Either way this was a delicious and refreshing salad to eat!

Jennifer

Herbs and How to Use Them in Food and Drinks

Boxwood Basil

 Basil is the herb Megan and I use the most in cooking. We love the flavour of italian basil in pasta or on pizza. Every summer, when tomatoes start coming in, we use basil in tomato salads or in bruschetta as well.  Another delicious way to use basil is in delicious homemade tomato soups.

Due to our love of this herb, we have some cinnamon basil growing in a pot outdoors and we also purchased boxwood basil from our local garden center. I think the boxwood basil is so pretty with how bushy it is and you really don't need to use a knife to cut the leaves, since the leaves are already so tiny.

Unfortunately, basil is an annual in our southern Ontario climate, so we might have to see if we can dig this up at the end of the summer to bring indoors.

Oregano

Like with basil, Megan and I consistently use oregano in pasta by just tossing our noodles with this herb before serving. It adds some earthiness to our pasta dishes. I also love to use this in vinaigrettes.

Lemon Thyme

I haven't used lemon thyme before as this is the first year that we've had it, but previously I've used regular thyme when roasting meats like chicken, or making beef stew. It is also excellent to stir through soups. Thyme is also a natural pairing when sauteing mushrooms. Yesterday, Megan came up with the most delicious mushroom filling with thyme for ravioli.

Sage

Sage is a lovely herb, that is attractive when it flowers, and has a minty flavour. You can use it to make a sage brown butter for pasta or in pumpkin dishes. Megan and I have tried in on a pizza before with squash and pancetta that tasted very good.

Mint

Mint grows like a weed and if it isn't managed, could take over your garden. We haven't found too many uses for it, but it is delicious to make a tea from by steeping it in hot water, and I've even found it is nice as a flavouring in iced green tea. Just make sure you remove the leaves after a few minutes or the tea could become bitter.

Pineapple Sage

Megan and I just bought this pineapple sage and we honestly don't know how we'll use it yet. The leaves smell like fresh pineapple though, so I imagine this would be delicious to enhance pineapple flavour in a salsa or fruit salad.

Jennifer

Second Lettuce Harvest and Salad

About a week ago the lettuce in our lettuce pots was looking much larger than when we cut it the previous week, and even our arugula was starting to get big enough to cut. We decided to cut the lettuce down for a salad again, and we even cut the first bit of arugula.

We steered in a slightly different direction with the salad this time by adding strawberries to the mix and also by making a strawberry vinaigrette from the fresh strawberries.

 The salad base was very basic, and we don't have specific amounts for the salad, but here's a list of the ingredients in the salad base.

 Salad Base
Mixed lettuce
Arugula
Onions
Cucumber
Strawberries

The strawberry vinaigrette was really delicious, and it's very easy to make. Jennifer made it by mixing together olive oil, white vinegar, pureed strawberries and raspberries, sugar, and salt and pepper.

Vinaigrette
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
A small mixture of pureed strawberries and raspberries
pinch of sugar
salt
pepper

Megan