Having a garden in the ground has proven to be pretty awesome, even with super sandy soil. The great thing about having a super abundant garden is that it doesn't matter if you have more than you can quickly eat. Fresh garden produce spoils much slower than store bought produce, because it hasn't already been picked for a week before you get it home to your fridge. It literally goes from the ground to your fridge in about 2 minutes.
RADISHES
All spring long I've been harvesting big bushels of Cherry Belle radishes, and am trying to find ways to eat all of them, besides chopped up in salads. I've been meaning to try some of these recipes from The Kitchn, where you actually cook them up! I've never tried cooked radishes. Have you? Apparently they become less spicy, and much more juicy once cooked. Sounds good to me!
GREENS
Weekly, now, I've been picking gallon-sized bags of salad greens. I planted spinach, mesclun mix, and leaf lettuce. What I'm getting is an abundance of Black-seeded Simpson lettuce, red and green leaf lettuces, arugula, spinach, baby kales, oak leaf lettuces, and even some Tatsoi. I've been eating big salads, and also trying to come up with ways to eat the arugula. It was super prolific, and I've got a ton of it. This pizza recipe looks so good, I might have to try it. Yes, it's also from The Kitchn. I love their recipes and everything always sounds so good.
The last thing I've been harvesting tons of right now, is Pak Choi. I've never grown it, but we love noodle bowls, and stir fries, and got a pack of 4 plants for super cheap in early spring. We planted them in the garden and they've gone bananas. I wasn't sure when to harvest them, and finally got around to it a few days ago. The leaves were a foot or more in length, and about 6 inches across, and the stems were thick, white and crisp like celery. I got so much when I picked it, that I had to chop it all up to fit it in the fridge. It ended up filling up 2 gallon-sized bags. We're going to be eating Pak Choi until we turn into it. So far, I've thrown it into ramen when I'm cooking it up for lunch, and plan to make some stir fry soon.
Spring has been good to us, and I'm so grateful I was able to find a house with a yard. I'm loving having a piece of ground to grow things in. I don't miss container gardening at all, except for the weed control. Weeds pop up out of nowhere every day! It's so hard to keep up on them, but I am loving the harvests that come from the ground!
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