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This afternoon it was raining gently, perfect weather for turning my week-old compost pile. The cottonwood fluff my husband raked had held moisture well, and was turning black the fastest, but the green component (weeds and grass I pulled) was warm and changing too. I don't know why using the pitchfork to lift the material and rearrange it in a new pile was so satisfying, as the rain fell on the birch leaves above me with little patters and an occasional drip onto my raincoat. I never know whether turning the pile will speed it up or slow it down for me. But even if it seems to stop, I know by next year it'll be ready to use to enrich and renew my gardens.
If I was good I'd clean out the extra raspberries growing wild, and the horsetails and grass growing uninvited where I want a neat path along the staked raspberry plants, and make another pile. But the warm house is calling me. It's so cozy on a rainy day. If I hadn't come out to work on the compost I wouldn't have remembered how nice it is to be able to be inside and relax on a rainy day.
Today I harvested a huge double purple orach. Most of the plants are less than 8 inches tall, but this one was four feet! It wasn't bolting, either. It's normally used as a salad green, but because most of the leaves were so huge I sauteed it with a little bit of butter. Cooking made it even more purple. Mild and delicious and a gorgeous presentation! I will definitely grow this again.
I bought the seed from from Container Seeds.
Also I harvested a head of Munchkin Broccoli. True to its name, it was a small head, but a friend told me to expect side shoots to grow up with more heads.
The kale is thick and bushy so I cut, blanched and froze as much as I could stand. I thinned out entire plants, and cut off just the lower leavees of the bushiest plants. Red Russian and Dinosaur have the biggest leaves, but several other varieties contributed. I stuffed a grocery sack full to overflowing, too much to even stuff in my oversize sink, and yet after steam blanching it, it shrunk down into just four sandwich-size plastic containers to freeze. This winter I will drop those frozen greens into spaghetti sauce, or cook it just a little more with tomato sauce, garlic and a little bit of chili over penne pasta with parmesan. I know from experience that these blanched greens taste much fresher than the tired "fresh" greens we have in the grocery store in the middle of winter.
After harvest, the garden looks better. I plant things too closely together - I never think it all will live!
It's been raining so it's important to harvest greens before the slugs have their way with them. Tonight I made fresh salsa using cilantro, parsley, and green onions from the garden, and tapatias using lettuce from the garden and tomatoes from the bump window, and salmon from the Kenai River that we dipnetted on Friday.
The Stupice tomatoes are great for tacos and salsa, but the Sungold are too good to eat any way but one by one. They are so sweet and tangy!
I had more fish carcasses to bury, and some old freezer-burned fish roe from a friend. I dug between the rows of greens and "planted" them with fish parts. It looks like I weeded there, a great illusion. In past years when I've done this, the greens get noticeably darker and more robust on that fish fertilizer!
