The peas we bring home from the farmers’ market are mostly for preserving, while the homegrown ones are solely reserved for eating right away. The first planting of them are finally ready, while the second batch has come to halt in this week’s heat. We’ve been picking them all week, plunging them directly from vine into a bucket of water to cool them down before shelling.
With a forecast of temperatures in the 90’s, we harvested to save much of what was already beginning to bolt, including the spring planting of salad greens.
Above: A mix of Red Russian, Siberian, and Beedy’s Camden kales, and rainbow chard. We were unable to obtain more seed for the Siberian, and are trying out the Beedy’s as a replacement. There was a striking difference in germination between the two, most likely due to the difference in seed freshness. Though similar in appearance, the Beedy’s, an heirloom from Maine, is slighty frillier and milder tasting than the Siberian.
Some rhubarb went into another galette with strawberries while we still had them. We harvested the remaining tatsoi, which was beginning to bolt. It’s tolerance for cold makes it a good spring crop for us, though it seems to prefer growing into cold.
Confronted with a basketful of tatsoi, we thought of freezing it, much like bok choy. Above, their snipped-off root ends.
A brief dunk in cool water serves to wash as well as plump up the tatsoi before their two to three minutes of blanching. After draining, the leaves are ready to be packed up for the freezer.
This week’s harvest: Peas, tatsoi, fun jen, kale, chard, salad greens, and rhubarb.
Putting-up: Frozen peas, tatsoi, and garlic scape pesto; quick-pickled Napa cabbage, Tokyo turnips, chard stems, celery, stem lettuce, rat-tail radish, and more snap peas.
Diary of a Tomato 
Really beautiful greens you have there. Love all those peas!
We’re surprised at how much is surviving this season’s heat!
I love your beautiful harvest! We’re in the midst of a Seattle heatwave, and trying to harvest things before they bolt, water things so they don’t die, and protect tender leaves, so they don’t singe. I didn’t know you could freeze tatsoi. That’s a great idea!
It’s the first time trying out freezing tatsoi, we’ll see how we like it ;)
Same here with the heat. The peas are gassed. At least the kale and chard seem to tolerate the heat. I also grow Beedy’s Camden and really like it. It seems to be pretty winter hardy and can winter over here in milder winters.
It was surprising to find a discernible taste difference between the Beedy’s Camden and the Siberian, and we love that the Beedy’s an heirloom from Maine!
Beautiful spring-like harvest! I never realized you could freeze tatsoi or bok choy. How does it come out? I always have more than I can keep up with in spring and it seems a shame, so maybe it would be worth a try next time. I love, love, love tatsoi!
We’re always going to prefer having bok choy and tatsoi when fresh, though having some in the freezer stores does give us a wider variety of greens come mid-winter!
That’s a really great looking harvest. Thanks for sharing the advice on freezing Asian greens. We have never tried that. We will have to give it a go with our fall crop.
Both bok choy and especially the tatsoi seem to last far into the winter here, though it’s nice to have some extra stored in the freezer when the gap months comes around!
Wow, the peas are gorgeous and lovely greens, nice harvest.
Thanks! We had two plantings of peas, but the second one never does as well as the first, and we’re considering just planting them all at one time next year.
Wow that is some really gorgeous greens in your harvest this week. We are still getting lettuces and broccolis and the peas are just about ready for us to do the big harvest of them, but soon all the cool season crops will be a fond memory until fall rolls around again.
We feel so far behind gardens in other places, it’s nice to hear that yours is about in the same place in the season!
Oh my, I don’t realize how much I miss my spring greens already until I see such beauties as what you are harvesting now. Good idea to freeze the tatsoi, I imagine it freezes quite well.
Our season is short and there are a lot of things we can’t grow, however greens are one thing we’ve learned do well here!
Looks delicious!
Not a big variety but enough to always have something from the garden on the table ;)
I struggle with growing peas – the slugs and snails around here never allow the plants to get established – they seem to prefer them above all crops.
We struggle with between getting them early in the ground and risking rot, or later and risking them collapsing with the heat…