Harvest Monday - July 4, 2016

First of all - Happy 4th of July to all those south of the border!  Our tradition on Canada Day (which was a few days ago on July 1st) is to go out for breakfast and then watch the fireworks in the evening.  Whether you go out or stay in, I hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday today.  Now on to the main attraction... the harvests!

First up this week was the smallest, but most exciting harvest:

Fall Gold Raspberry
 

If you recall, I mentioned how all of the berry bushes had suffered from the heat and lack of rain in my Hilltop Update last week.  Most of the buds on the bushes are dried out but a few blossoms miraculously made it through and provided us with our first taste of this variety.  After the one pictured above, we harvested a few more later in the week.  Yum! 

Next up is broccoli.  I harvested from 2 varieties, neither of which was overly impressive.  Packman gave us a good sized head, but it was not exactly uniform:

Packman Broccoli
 

The other variety I harvested was Munchkin...which certainly lived up to it's name:

Munchkin Broccoli
 

That's two heads in there...if you can call them that.  I'm probably being much too critical, however, as we have had very hot temps over the past month and broccoli likes it cool, so I'll take what I can get.  And of course, a harvest doesn't have to be pretty or large to be delicious.  Now I wait for side shoots which comprised the bulk of the broccoli harvest last year.  I'm hoping that the 5 Arcadia plants in that bed give me a better showing than these varieties did.

The next newcomer this week is sugar snaps:

Sugar Snap Peas
 

This is always an exciting harvest - we LOVE our sugar snaps around here.  Since we have been harvesting snow peas for a couple of weeks already, I felt as if our first harvest of sugar snaps was rather late, but when I looked back at prior years it was pretty much on time.

We are continuing to pick strawberries:

Strawberries
 

Not much left in the patch now - perhaps another small picking or two.

The last of the garlic scapes were harvested:

Garlic Scapes
 

And of course lettuce:

Jericho & Royal Red Lettuce
 

Lastly the snow peas, which are hitting their peak:

Oregon Sugar Pod (left); Golden Sweet (right)
 

I had previously mentioned that I wasn't sure about the future of Golden Sweet snow peas in my garden.  I liked that they were a climber, which may give me a larger and/or extended harvest, but their taste and minimal crispness didn't win me over.

This past week, however, I changed my tune.  Why?  Because I discovered the PERFECT use for them.  Since I found them rather unimpressive as a fresh snow pea, I decided to see what they would be like after I gave them a quick whirl in a skillet.

I drizzled a bit of olive oil into a frying pan, added the trimmed peas and stir-fried them over medium highish heat for a couple of minutes, then sprinkled them with coarse salt.  That's it.  And WHAT a transformation!  They were actually crisper & juicier than before I cooked them.  And as a side note, it was indeed a drizzling of olive oil - perhaps 1/2 a tsp. - these are not deep-fried by any means.

Golden Sweet Peas - Transformed
 

We couldn't get enough.  If you have these guys in your garden, do give this a try - you'll be amazed.

My harvest totals this week were:

Broccoli – 398 grams (0.88 lbs)
Garlic Scapes – 244 grams (0.54 lbs)
Lettuce – 1,260 grams (2.78 lbs)
Snap Peas – 488 grams (1.06 lbs)
Snow Peas – 1,216 grams (2.68 lbs)
Strawberries – 496 grams (1.09 lbs)
Raspberries – 12 grams (0.03 lbs)

Total for Week – 4,106 grams (9.05 lbs)

Total to Date – 26.78 kg (59.03 lbs)

To see what everyone else has been harvesting over the past week, head on over to Our Happy Acres where Dave is our host for Harvest Mondays.