In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen

Let’s start with salads today since it is still salad season in my garden. All the ingredients are there—lettuce, spinach, kale, carrots, celery, broccoli, herbs and edible flowers. The salad varies with my mood, what needs to be harvested or a color theme. I’ve got a purple thing going on the salad here.

Inspiration for the purple theme came from the recent harvest of ‘Purple Rain’ in the tricolor carrot mix at Renee’s Garden. I’ve grown other purple carrots but like the strong contrast of the purple and orange portions. And they taste like I think a carrot should.

Last week we met up with family for a neighborhood, socially-distanced picnic. The orange theme was working that day with calendula petals, carrots, violas and candied orange peel.

We’re still bringing in navel oranges even as the tree blossoms with next year’s crop. There’s orange juice most mornings, orange slices at lunch and porch drops of oranges to neighbors. Unlike zucchini, they’re gratefully received.

The Tuscan kale is still free of aphids, typical but unwelcome spring guests. Perhaps the beneficials have the upper hand this season. My favorite use for kale is a salad with toasted bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese.

I have way more kale than I can eat and there is an abundance with the winter rains. I cut a whole plant for neighbors at a socially-distanced garden meet-up and they picked sweet peas. We’ll probably do this again in a week or so. The less than perfect leaves of kale and lettuce go to my friend with four rabbits.

Last week the rabbits got a pile of celery leaves too. I slayed the six celery plants which were over two feet tall, salvaging the best of the celery to store in the fridge and gave away a pile to a friend. Even the less than perfect celery makes an excellent vegetable broth.

Two broccoli plants remain but after today one will go away. Apparently, the rabbits like broccoli leaves too so some will be set out for the Monday pick-up

‘Bountiful Blue’ blueberries are abundant and liberally harvested as needed.

One of the purple artichoke plants is in my street side garden. The wicked thorns and prickly stems deter anyone who might consider taking one home for dinner. Lately, we’ve had artichokes almost every night. Isn’t that the way with growing your own food? You relish the season, eating heartily of what’s abundant.

A bouquet of Cerinthe major with the gorgeous hanging bells graces the dining room table. Cerinthe is an herbaceous plant native to open meadows and grassy plains of the Mediterranean basin, especially in Southern Italy and Greece. As a Mediterranean plant, its normal habit is to grow in winter, bloom in spring, set seed and die, and then germinate from seed in the fall. Since I garden in a Mediterranean climate here in SoCal, it does just that.

You may enjoy seeing what other garden bloggers harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

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