I work at Wellspring Charitable Gardens, a CSA farm in Oakdale, California.
The newsletter is my weekly journal, documenting our work and what was harvested for the week’s produce baskets.
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On Monday, we planted onions and garlic.
These plants store energy in the bulb and will spend the winter in the ground.
Because our ground never freezes, we put off planting until late in the fall.
The alliums, including garlic and onions, have bulbs that naturally regenerate and continue their life cycle every year.
In the picture, you can see the garlic bulbs swelling as the sprout in the middle starts to form. The plant is coming out of dormancy. We separate the cloves from the head and plant them about an inch underground. The sugar in the clove will keep it alive until the sprout reaches the surface and begins to capture the sun's energy.
It will start to grow in the spring, creating a flower in May. We could let the flowers grow and collect seeds, but by cutting the flower off, the plant sends energy back to the roots and creates our garlic heads.
The plants die back, and we dig them up, sending heads out in the summer and fall until the cloves start to sprout again. And the life cycle continues.
We will send out the garlic if we can't see the shoots on the outside, but you will see the sprouts when you cut open the cloves.
When the sprouts are large, I occasionally remove them, but usually chop everything up and use it.
This week everyone received a head of garlic.
I was asked about how to keep the garlic from burning when you sauté it. The advice varies depending on how you are cooking. Usually, you want to wait until the end of sauteing before adding the garlic. When the garlic starts to show color, you will do one of two things. Either remove the garlic and whatever you are cooking from the pan, or you would add liquid. For example, if you were sauteing shrimp, cook the shrimp first, then add the garlic when the shrimp are nearly done. Remove the garlic and shrimp from the pan to stop cooking at this time.
If you were making a stew, saute the vegetables, then add garlic, then add your liquid as soon as you see any color on the garlic.
My new favorite kitchen tool for garlic is my Microplane zester. I use this when I need raw garlic crushed. If you have a press, this is doing the same thing.
Grate the garlic on the Microplane and then add the garlic paste to salad dressings or salsa.
We also harvested the following items:
Sweet potatoes went out to all members. We will have more next week and through December. I will have many opportunities to convince people to eat these without brown sugar and marshmallows.
We took Butternut squash out of storage. I've mentioned that they should sit for 1-2 months after harvest for the best flavor.
Carrots were harvested. I haven't yet tasted one, but these should be tasty after the frost.
Lettuce heads were cut and sent. We had red butter lettuce and a few romaine. Next week everyone will get green leaf.
The new growth of the arugula was cut and sent out along with braising greens. Both of these will slow down over the next few weeks.
Brussels sprout leaves were cut off of the Brussels sprouts plants again. These leaves grow out of the stalk. Removing them will help us grow larger sprouts, and they make an excellent addition to the baskets instead of just feeding them to the chickens.
We had more green onions to harvest today. The white parts can be used as a regular onion. The green parts are good added at the end of a recipe like chives.
Herb Bunches with Rosemary, Oregano, and Basil were cut and a little Cilantro for the Sweet Potato-Greens Soup in the members' newsletter.
Our landscape has continued to change as the cold weather froze most of the plants from summer. I think we lost the green bean plants. Despite putting on the row cover last week, it was just too cold. I hope that they will come back and still produce a harvest, but this is wishful thinking.
Have a great week,
Julie Moreno
When I am not digging in the dirt or in cooking in the kitchen, I am writing about where our food comes from and how to cook it at fooddemystified.com