An Early July Harvest at the Farm
Happy Independence Day weekend! I wish you all a safe and wonderful holiday.
This week, we harvested some of our first vegetables of the season here at my Bedford, New York farm. My outdoor garden is looking excellent and producing such wonderful and nutritious foods - cabbage, lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, peas and so much more. I am so happy to have an abundance of fresh produce to share with my family this July 4th.
Enjoy these photos.
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- The day was quite warm and humid, but everyone at the farm is always so excited to harvest from the garden. My housekeepers, Enma and Elvira, went down to pick some of the season’s first vegetables.
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- Enma picked this lettuce, Lactuca sativa. Lettuce is a fairly hardy, cool-weather vegetable that thrives when the average daily temperature is between 60 and 70-degrees Fahrenheit. Lettuces can generally be placed in one of four categories: looseleaf, butterhead, crisphead, and romaine.
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- I love all the different lettuce varieties and always plant many for my family’s delicious salads.
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- Elvira harvests some of the Swiss chard. Swiss chard is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. The leaf stalks are large and vary in color, usually white, yellow, or red. The leaf blade can be green or reddish.
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- Look at these vibrant red Swiss chard stalks. And Swiss chard is a nutritional powerhouse – it’s filled with vitamins K, A, and C, and is also a good source of magnesium, potassium, iron, and dietary fiber.
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- A bit crunchier than spinach, Swiss chard is also more tender than kale. Swiss chard is actually a beet but doesn’t have a bulbous root. It’s referred to as a member of the “goosefoot” family due to the shape of its leaves.
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- Our brassicas are also looking very good this season.
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- Enma harvests the first cabbage – a big head of green cabbage. Green cabbage is what is most familiar – the wide fan-like leaves are pale green with a slightly rubbery texture when raw. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, purple, and green.
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- This cabbage isn’t quite ready yet – it still needs a couple weeks to grow. Red, or purple, cabbage is often used raw for salads and coleslaw. It contains 10-times more vitamin-A and twice as much iron as green cabbage. I can’t wait to harvest some of these cabbage heads.
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- The leaves of the Savoy cabbage are more ruffled and a bit more yellowish in color – so pretty. This is also developing nicely.
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- The cauliflower isn’t ready quite yet either, but look at this white variety of cauliflower – beautiful, and so, so healthy.
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- Here’ a head of broccoli, which is high in vitamins A and D. We will have some nice heads of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage in our next harvest.
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- Soon, we will also have lots of beets from this garden. The beetroot is the taproot of the beet plant, and is often called the table beet, garden beet, red or golden beet or simply… beet. Because we practice succession planting, we have lots of ready-to-pick beets in my vegetable greenhouse.
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- The onions look wonderful too. We planted a lot of white, yellow and red onions. Onions are harvested later in the summer when the underground bulbs are mature and flavorful. I always look forward to the onion harvest.
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- We planted many peas along the garden fence – shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as snap peas. Here’s Elvira harvesting many peas.
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- The pea plant can be bushy or climbing, with slender stems. They are best grown on supports to keep them off the ground and away from many pests and diseases. It’s best to pick peas early in the morning before it gets too warm.
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- The pods can range in size from four to 15-centimeters long and about one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half centimeters wide. Each pod contains between two and 10-peas.
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- Our peas are so fresh and green, and picked just at the right time – when pods start to fatten, but before peas get too large.
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- Snow peas are also known as Chinese pea pods. They are flat with very small peas inside, and the whole pod is edible.
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- Everyone always asks what I do with all the vegetables I grow. I share them with my family, but I also love sharing the bounty with friends, colleagues, and my hardworking crew here at the farm. I provide fruits, vegetables, and eggs for photo and video shoots. And, of course, all my birds get vegetables too.
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- I am so excited about this year’s growing season. It’s nice to know I have a great source of nutritious, delicious produce right here at the farm. Have a wonderful Independence Day weekend. Enjoy the time with loved ones, and please stay safe and healthy.
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