First fruits

Well, first flower heads, at any rate.

Cut the first Romanesco broccoli of the season last night and had it for dinner. A bit early, so the flavour was not so well developed, but still very nice and full of goodness.

And there's nothing like the feeling one gets from going out to the garden with a pair of kitchen scissors to get something to eat.

Put them in a bit late this year, not 'til December, so they're not really ready yet. Last year I did a mix of winter brassicas planted as seedlings in September, and they were ready in March and April. Everything except the red cabbage did very well, and I've still got a little bit of cauliflower in the freezer. But this year I just did the Romanesco, which is pretty much my favourite veg ever, and isn't always available in the local shops, even in season. So I just wanted a big bunch of it.

Brassicas really are superfoods, every kind is good for you. Eat the leaves too. Just cut off the big ones on the outside and discard (compost) the whitish cores which are very stringy. The green parts are absolutely jammed with nutrients. Broccoli has one of the highest vitamin C ratings of any of our cultivars.



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Oooooo! I love onions!

This is all the onions that I haven't eaten all piled on the little table for cleaning and sorting. Plus a couple of garlics under there somewhere. I'm going to cut off the green parts and freeze them, and put the rest into a big bin into the shed. 

So, last night I was puttering around, weeding and building my endless trellis, (that now completely encloses two sides of the ornamental garden and has a grape annex that is turning into a gazebo) and I thought I would pull my remaining onions. I wanted to make some room for a big raised bed I'm planning on the no-dig method.

I was quite pleased with the onion harvest. I've been pulling a few as I've needed them for cooking and the remaining ones have filled a whole bucket. I realised it was a little bit early (normally you wait until the onion leaves die back and this is when the bulb is fully formed) but I was still pretty happy with the ones I got. I put the white ones in in the autumn and the red ones in in the spring after I pulled the last of the cauliflower. Onions really do take FOREVER!

But the red ones were doing so well they were already popping out of the ground and saying, "Where's the soup?!" I figured I could cut off the green leaves and put them in the freezer bag of vegetable trimmings I'm saving for making stock.

But when I proudly showed off my harvest Annamaria told me you have to at least wait until the Crescente. This is a bit of folk wisdom that I'm just learning about now. The Crescente is when the moon starts ensmallening again. We're just about there. We had two new moons this month, and the Calente lasts until the 27th. I have a special contadina farmer's and gardener's calendar that tells me all this stuff. (Annamaria, of course, grows whole wheelbarrows-full, and gave me enough to last most of the winter.)

Anyway, today I start building the first of the tufa block raised beds in the orto. I figure it will take a while, what with the Italian summer making it fun to work in the blazing heat. But it should be ready in time to put in the winter's brassicas. Annamaria does hers in late August, and they did way better than mine that I put in September 14th.



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