Tag Archives: radicchio

TWE first spring delivery

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TWE 041514-1st deliveryI only grow for 5 customers but this is the first delivery for the 6 week spring season. What’s in there you ask? Radicchio, mizuna, claytonia, cilantro, poc-choi, carrots, swiss chard, and an artisan lettuce mix. The mix has a combination of black seeded simpson, red cross and skyphos lettuce, spinach, and tokyo bekana. The whole idea is simple: take a handful of lettuce and add any of the other salad green “mix-ins” for a different tasting salad for several nights. It’s not really cheap but my customers enjoy the freshest tasting salad greens and veggies around-especially this early. None of the local CSA’s are up and running at this time. The greatest thing? Taste-taste-taste! And no chemical/pesticide/fertilizer residues-ever.

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Arugula and radicchio with a Honey-lime viniagrette and carmelized pecans

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arugula and radicchio saladI have many hobbies-in fact my wife calls me the “hobby king.” To this day I’m not convinced she says that in a good way. But when you have a garden that produces such tasty things as this, how could you not develop a cooking hobby? That’s the case with me. Tonight I harvested arugula and radicchio from the garden. It’s been grown in cold weather so the arugula doesn’t have that overpowering peppery taste that usually comes with it, and the radicchio is no longer bitter. Slice some Granny Smith apples, make some carmelized pecans and a honey-lime dressing, and top it with blue cheese. I promise-you’ll have people asking you for the recipe. The winter harvest-the absolute best.

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This weeks activities

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perfect skyphos lettuce 111113This week has been a lot of fun. Usually I’m busy amending all soil, emptying the compost bins and getting ready to close down most of the garden for the season. I ended up bagging a lot of leaves and will finish that chore this week. I’ve emptied my compost bins and have started to fill them up with all the usually things. My biggest job was putting up my greenhouse. It didn’t take me too long-about half an hour. I did it for a grand total of $75, maybe a tad-bit less. We had a light snow earlier in the week. I had the greatest feeling of going out during the storm and tinkering in my gardens with the temperature in the greenhouse at around 50. It felt like I was in a different world under there! This will the most enjoyable winter garden I’ve ever had. I have 96 squares filled with 25 different crops that will be harvested throughout the winter. Probably the best part of this week was the salad I got to make. I snipped some radicchio and arugula leaves which are nowhere near as bitter as they normally would be when grown in warm weather, and combined them with blue cheese and carmelized pecans. I slices some Granny Smith apples and topped it with a honey-lime vinigrette. Can’t wait for salads this winter. You should learn how to grow your own in cold weather. They really taste notably different when grown in the colder climate.[ois skin=”below post”]

In 148 square feet?

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TWE-getting it ready for winter3We’ve had 3 or 4 significant frosts already.  I’m getting ready to cover this structure with greenhouse plastic.  I’ll only then be using a weighted floating row cover to put over the crops.  As we head into winter, this is what’s growing in just 148 square feet of garden space: 20 pounds of potatoes, 108 heads of lettuce, 8 arugula plants, 320 carrots, 117 spinach plants, 36 mizuna plants, 45 claytonia plants, 4 minutina, 24 komatsuna, 27 mache, 80 radishes, 36 beets, 48 turnips, 44 Swissl chard, 9 onions, 36 chives, 16 radicchio, 63 leeks, 2 kale plants, 20 poc choi, 2 parsley plants, 1 rosemary plant, 45 tatsoi, 36 kohlrabi, and 4 plants of cilantro.  We’re ready.

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Radicchio

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fiero radicchio 101613Everyone is familiar with radicchio-the small, dark maroon pieces found in mesclun salad mixes. Radicchio can be a bit tricky. I grow this particular variety and it’s been a huge hit. The variety is called Fiero-it’s harvested and used as you would romaine lettuce. It’s an open leaf variety and when grown in the right season adds a wonderful taste to salad mixes. Grow it in warm weather and it will turn so bitter that just one leaf will ruin an entire salad. Not only does it taste good, I think the color is amazing. This will be perfect for our winter harvest garden which is starting to really crank up right now with these overnight temperatures in the mid to high 20’s. I had customers clamoring over it this past spring. Give it a try.

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