August 23
Herb ID: leaf celery, curly parsley, Opal basil (purple), cinnamon basil.
Double Red sweeetcorn, nearly ripe.
This week's harvest:
NEW: SWEETCORN. It's been nearly ready day by day and I fear, writing this on Thursday, that the wild animals will eat it tomorrow at dawn. But if they didn't I picked an ear of Double Red corn from Adaptive Seeds for you.
Less dramatic: curly parsley.
Back after a pause: small green onions, leaf celery.
ONGOING: Romano-type snap beans (yellow and purple), summer squash (=zucchini), tomatoes, lettuce, chard, molokhia, magenta spreen, cucumber, okra. Basil if I manage to cut it after picking corn.
MAYBE THE LAST: magenta spreen; looks like it might be about to bolt. Could get one more week of it.
Storage notes:
Special for this week: the tomatos are all threatening to split. They can't handle being overwatered, this rain is A Lot, and I had to discard some that split as I picked them. So, eat quickly!
As before:
Everything INSIDE the BIG plastic bag has been washed in at least three changes of water and drip dried.
Some crops don't wash well or don't store well when wet, and those will be delivered UNWASHED and OUTSIDE the big plastic bag, possibly in a small plastic bag. Big sturdy things like summer squash will just be loose. Rinse anything outside the big plastic bag before eating.
Basil and cilantro and flowers keep best with their stems in water, like little bouquets, I find. Basil outside the fridge, cilantro in the coolest part of my house or the warmest part of my fridge.
In general: root veg, including carrots, should have their greens taken off promptly, after which the roots like cool dark storage. The greens on our root veg are all edible. All greens like cool humid storage.
Recipe suggestions:
Another collection of green beans recipes, this one from Smitten Kitchen. Note particularly the made-from-scratch but one-skillet version of a green bean casserole with mushrooms and cream; on a cool breath-of-fall evening, maybe that's the dish.
I am also going to try three bean salad with raw purple beans to see if the color stays. Good with any or all of the fresh herbs.
I haven't made zucchini bread yet this year, it's mostly gone into roasted zucchini; the round ones roast really nicely if cut into wedges, I find. Slices fit into sandwiches better though.
I'm also going to dry some of the summer squash. Did that last year just to keep it as veggie thickener for winter soups, but they're surprisingly tasty as chips -- sweeter than I expected. I wonder how to add a little oil and salt to the dried chips to make really snacky chips. Winter project, there.
Getting ripe for next week:
Next week is likely to be more of the same; different balance among types of greens and tomatoes and squash, but pretty much the same. Cilantro should be back! Just realized I forgot to pick it this week.
I am working on having another change in crops by the end of the season, though. When we got the unexpected cool rainy week, I seeded all my available ground with the fastest growing cool-weather greens. Some of them are sprouting already! Kale for baby leaf; spinach; lettuce for baby leaf; arugula. Faint flecks of green on the damp bare black soil, all developing their characteristic hue and gloss and shape day by day.