Making Salad from the Garden

So far we do not have any fresh tomatoes so I had to get them from the farmers market, but the plants have flowered and the pollinators are out so it is just a mater of time.  However the salad greens and the peppers were available so I harvested that.

salad greens

I collected butter crunch lettuce, sorrel, mustard greens, and micro greens.  We washed and drained them , then tore them by hand into a bowl.  (Please remember my camera is broken, so I cannot turn on the flash, making indoor picture difficult.)

We added tomatoes, green onions and carrots from the farmer's market and gathered fresh herbs from the garden to made an herbal dressing to go on top.

Creamy Herb Dressing

1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup fresh parsley, minced
1/4 cup fresh basil, minced
3 tablespoons herb vinegar (any combo of herbs is good)
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons fresh thyme, minced
1 tablespoon fresh chives, minced
1 tablespoon complementary herbed honey (plain honey is fine too!)
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Combine all ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. For a more emulsified dressing, blend all ingredients except oil, then slowly drizzle in the oil with the blender running. Cover and chill for several hours before using to allow flavors to blend.  Cover tightly and store in the refrigerator.

Weekly Update - Community Patch 6-15-2014

This week I was ill and it rained every day, so i did not even visit the garden between 6-8-14 and 6-15-14.  That morning my hubby and i went out to make sure everything was watered as it did not rain on Saturday.

The one thing you can tell from the garden is that I was not here once this week.  The weeds are taking over.  We spent about an hour weeding with a hoe.  I did not have much energy so the weeding was haphazard at best and I will need to get in here next week to catch up.  I am hoping to feel better in coming days.

Last week i mentioned that my neighbor was new and that she had a lot of catch up to do as the weeds were rampant in her patch.  Well in my absence this week, she cleared out all the weeds from her patch.  It is an amazing sight isn't it?

I expect she will be planting it this week, although there are a number of tomato and other plants along the back edge.

There was great growth and many plants are producing fruit!

Here is a cucumber on the bush cucumber plant.

 A nice pepper on the Lady Belle Pepper plants.  There were actually two of them and we harvested and sampled them.  Wonderfully sweet!

The greens were exploding and not as hurt by the heat as I expected them to be.  The Giant Red Mustard (center) is going to seed, but I am okay with that as I want to harvest the seed and use it.  The leaves of this are bitter, yet not so pungent as to be off putting, tossed in with romaine and bib lettuce they are a great counter point.  The red stem sorrel (to the right) is also very flavorful.. I enjoy this in salads and will try cooking it as a wilted vegetable in the next few weeks.  The arugula (to the left of the mustard) has been ravaged by bugs.

Obviously it is preferred, because the plants next to it on both sides do not have this extensive damage to the leaves.  I cut some often, but I never eat it because the bug damage makes them useless.  I never see the bugs making the damage though so I do not know what treatment is wise.  they are also getting ready to go to seed, so I think I will just leave them as a bug magnet to keep pest off the other greens.

The micro greens I have harvested regularly and will save the remaining seed  for fall when the temps cool back down to grow another crop.  The collared greens are just getting to the mature size needed to harvest.  perhaps another week.

This is after watering and weeding.  You can see I cut down on the weed population, but I think they are still winning.  I added three more rows of string to the pea fence because they had outgrown the  rows I stung last weekend.  Hubby felt my stick frame was not sturdy enough for the peas so he reinforced it with pine stakes.  He also staked the grape and cherry tomato plants.

The herbs are getting bushy and will be ready for a first harvest this coming week.  I have already dried the thyme I harvested a couple weeks ago and plan to cut fresh herbs from the garden for a program I am doing called Be an Herbal Gourmet at the Lisle Public Library on June 17th..