Operation Green Thumb continues. All be it a small harvest to date. It has been a tasty harvest. We have enjoyed lettuce and spinach greens, radishes, carrots, hot peppers, green and yellow beans, sweet pea pods, fingerling potatoes and cabbage.
Most recently we enjoyed a Sunday lunch of fried cabbage and bacon with a side of sauteed fingerling potatoes.
Fried cabbage is both easy and tasty. I like to think its pretty healthy too, but well, it is fried and there is the bacon so…
We started with 1/2 lb of chopped bacon bits and fried them until almost crispy, then chopped up 3/4 of white onion and sauteed in the bacon and its grease. Chopped cabbage was added, when the cabbage began to wilt we added 1 tsp Seasoned Salt, 1/4 tsp of Seasoned Pepper and 1/2 tsp of ground garlic. Cooked until the cabbage was al dente. Delicious.
Our side dish were these French Fingerling potatoes that we harvested earlier in the week. The recipe was similar to the fried cabbage and bacon dish. Why mess with a winning recipe?
We cleaned the potatoes and sliced them with a mandolin at the number 1 setting. (Shaved) Rinsed them with cold water. Heated a saute pan with avocado oil and 1/4 stick of organic salted butter. Added the shaved potatoes and the 1/4 onion left over from the cabbage dish. Season with 1/2 tsp seasoned salt, 1/8 tsp seasoned pepper and 1/8 tsp garlic powder. Saute for 5 minutes on medium hot heat, flip saute for an additional 5 minutes on medium heat. Equally delicious!
We have tomatoes that are beginning to ripen now. Mostly the Super Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes, but we have harvested the first two of 70 San Marzano tomatoes that are on the plants.
We’ve discovered something very fun, tasty and healthy. It’s referred to as Garden Candy. The pea pods and the cherry tomatoes do not make it into the house or storage. We tend to eat them right off of the plants while we do other garden or yard chores. The peas do not stand a chance, while there is usually 12 to 24 cherry tomatoes in a basket in our garage fridge at any given moment.
The Super Sweet Cherry plants should generate roughly 100 tomatoes per plant. We have 3. I’m estimating that number will come to fruition. It is difficult to know for sure because we keep eating them.
The bonus to all of this is a general knowledge that to date we are doing well. The cucumbers are coming on. There is zucchini beginning to form, the cauliflower is forming too.
And the potatoes. Potatoes should come in droves, well in buckets anyway. We will harvest the larger 5 gallon bucket of fingerling this coming weekend after 100 days of growth. Then 10 days later begin to harvest the Yukon Gold potatoes that mature in the 110 to 120 day time frame.
Our goal for this grand potato bucket experiment is to harvest buckets throughout the maturity range. 90 to 100 days for the fingerlings. 110 to 120 days for the Yukon Gold. If we are unhappy with the size of the spuds, we will harvest a bucket every week to see how much time is optimal.
It should be fun. Is it geeky to think of the garden as fun? We are certainly showing our age. Good for us!
Ron's Ramblings 