Summer Season Veggies

We trust you have enjoyed your Spring Season Veggies. Some of you will be happy and some of you will be sad about their disappearance. Whichever camp you fall into, remember the present is temporary and it will change tomorrow—just like the temperatures! Coming now are our early Summer Season Veggies.

Your next box will contain broccoli, cauliflower, broccoli florets, beets, and the  first of a variety of patty pan squash (see above), and zucchini which come in green, yellow and Italian varieties (see below). You will get only one squash or zucchini in this week’s box. Weather permitting, we shall have all you can possibly want as time progresses! There will also be an onion, green kale, and green and purple kohlrabi. We are harvesting the last of a wave of endive, escarole and romaine; therefore, these veggies will be random.

Our garden beet are red. Beets are closely related to Swiss chard. The colorful tops are sautéed as chard, spinach, and other greens. Beets may be eaten raw,  pickled for salads, or cooked whole–steamed, boiled or roasted, or tossed into a smoothie or onto a salad.

Fresh beet juice has a powerful red pigment which stains dish towels, wooden cutting boards and sinks. If your hands get stained, salt or lemon juice will remove the color. Note: Beet pigment can affect bodily fluids. The condition, called beeturia, is the excretion of red (or pink) beetroot pigment in urine and/or stool of some people. The pigment is harmless, but can be quite alarming to the unsuspecting.

To store cut off the greens of the beets one inch ABOVE the beet top because the leafy greens will quickly draw the moisture from the root greatly reducing the flavor. Also, leave the taproot intact to retain moisture and nutrients. Wash beets carefully with out breaking the skin. Breaks and tears allow color and nutritional value to escape. Beets stored in a plastic bag in a refrigerator (32°F and 95 percent humidity) last several weeks.

We will have green beans, cabbages, and potatoes (see above and behind Robert), and cucumbers. These crops all have flowers and are growing nicely at the present time. Robert plants multiple “waves” in multiple gardens for our kind of home-grown “crop insurance.”

Later still there will be tomatoes which are currently staked. Yes, you may have tomatoes that are ahead of ours; but we were busy planting and harvesting all of those other veggies you have been eating this spring when you were planting (only) your tomato plants! But we are happy to hear you are attempting to grow vegetables just the same. One can do much with a small patio garden!

Above you see ONE of our pepper and eggplant gardens! And in yet another garden there is a big maybe for cantaloupe and honey dew melons. The plants look good now, but harvest is still a ways off for them. We shall see what Mother Nature has in store for us this 2020 Harvest Season.

I made a great broccoli soup with white beans pureed in the mixture for added protein. And we convention oven baked some delicious kohlrabi slices last evening! I want to try kohlrabi au gratin with gruyere cheese as a member told me how delicious theirs was. So many veggies–so little time . . .