Last week we savored the first of the heirloom purple artichokes, ‘Violetto Chioggia,’ from Northern Italy. We favor this later maturing artichoke over the traditional globe artichokes despite the wicked thorns (which I snip prior to cooking). We find these purple artichoke leaves tender and meaty with a delicate artichoke flavor.

If you’d like to give them a try, Territorial Seed Company offers seeds. They report it to be hardy to USDA Zone 6 and above. Visiting in the Pacific Northwest, I see artichokes grown as annuals for farmers’ markets.

Check out the poem, Ode to the Artichoke by Pablo Neruda featured with other ‘choke photos in an earlier blog post.

I find cross sections of vegetables enchanting; cf. an artichoke above and last week, a radish. With embarrassment, I admit this nearly 1.5 pound beet has rolled around my produce drawer for almost a year. Surprisingly, it was in near perfect condition and last week was the star of Russian Beet Borscht from the original Moosewood Cookbook.

Ignoble carrots harvested for the occasion did add flavor and texture. I grew them from palletized Bolero seed and had many misshapen, squatty and fat carrots despite stellar growing conditions. I’ll be back to regular seeding of Bolero in the fall.

I direct seeded Little Gem lettuce in late January then thinned and transplanted to two rows about two dozen plants. In cool spring weather and plenteous rain they’ve thrived. I harvested the first two for a meetup with my sisters. In my haste, I forgot to snap a photo.

I harvested a mountain of Catalina spinach from a ten inch row, leaving plenty for another vegetable side later this week. High quality spinach in April is not typical in my garden. I’ve continued succession sowings so we’ll see how long I can keep this gig going.

My contribution to the meetup dinner with my sisters was homemade apricot ice cream. Last June, with our abundant crop, I froze several containers of prepared mix so the final steps only required heavy cream and almond flavoring. Apricot season is less than two months away and finally, the weather has warmed so we all welcomed the lightly sweet and flavorful dessert.

The bearded iris are spectacular this year. Here the bouquet for the church entry.

Check the What I’m Planting Now page as I think spring in the garden. Then head to Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Happy Acres Blog and see what garden bloggers around the world harvested last week.

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