It’s that time again – time to harvest vegetables from the garden!
And it’s time to show you the reveal of the garden, well it’s not really a reveal because it’s not 100% done (still has to be painted and cleaned up) but here it is, in all it’s vegetable glory! I should have a person in the garden for size comparison, because it’s big. It’s really big. There’s endless amounts of vegetables. I love it.
Transitioning from growing on the roof to growing on actual land has been a learning process full of hard work. We started the process of building the garden during the Winter to have it ready to go for Spring. We started planting to a new schedule that was scary due to possible surprise frost dates (still scary). We battled (still are) water issues. We’re learning. We’re working really hard. We filled the last garden bed this weekend. And it’s all so very exciting because we’re finally picking vegetables. This garden thing (on land!) is actually working.
So now starts weekly harvest posts. We go up to the land once a week to water, clean up, plant and pick. And then we lug all those beautiful vegetables back to NYC. We haven’t really had a chance to enjoy the land yet as we’re working constantly there, but soon enough we’ll be able to take a breather and relax alongside the plants.
What are we picking now? I’m glad you asked. There’s lots of Spring greens growing right now at rapid speeds and they’re all ready to be picked. Does anyone need any bok choy? Seriously. Maybe I went a little crazy planting 94 bok choy plants.
We have a entire bed of bok choy plants, we started picking fuller plants 3 weeks ago, and they are just growing and growing and growing. And I’m picking, picking, picking.
Look at the size of this bok choy!
OH. AH. OH. LA LA.
These plants are ready to be thrown in their harvest bag and taken back home.
Next up is the lettuce. Lettuce grows really quick so you need to pick it before it bolts. We’ve had good luck with lettuce on our roof (remember the monster lettuce plants?) and it seems to be continuing on the land.
The lettuce is crunchy and delicious.
This past weekend we started to pick the kale, which I immediately ate the next afternoon for lunch.
I’m probably going to make some kale cumin chips this week.
And lastly, we picked a big pile of collard greens. This is the first year we’re growing collards and they’re growing great!
The plants are going to be huge!
I am going to make some delicious vegetarian collard greens this week (recipe coming soon!).
And just like that, we have our first big harvest from the land! Make sure to follow along with our pounds chart (it can be found in the “garden” navigation up top).
What’s going to be ready to pick soon?
Some of the radishes have pushed through the soil!
The sugar snap peas are off the races and have started producing small peas already.
Some of the broccoli is popping up. We grew 2 varieties this year, this is broccoli di cicco which seems to grow a little differently than our usual Arcadia broccoli.
And lastly, cabbage isn’t ready to be picked yet, but baby heads were felt when I was poking around. Pretty exciting!
Tell me in the comments what you are picking in your garden right now!
Sophie says
A lovely big harvest already! Every veggie looks amazing, huge & pretty tasty too! A lovely post with fun photos!
We are also harvesting a lot! We have harvested all of the red currants, we also harvest all of the lettuces, radishes, purslane, yellow raspberries, blackberries. We also harvested a lot of rhubarb, the first beets, the first 100 sugar snap peas, carrots, courgettes. In the conservatory, we harvested already many lemon cucumbers & gherkins!
Susan says
Wow, your garden is VERY happy! You must have some wonderful growing conditions there. I’m sure lots of grateful people will enjoy your bounty!
Dannii @ Hungry Healthy Happy says
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff! We planted kale recently and something has stolen it all. Birds, slugs, I don’t know. But I am not happy about it!
Pamela says
Hope you guys are able to find the thief and kick them out of your kale!
Shashi @ RunninSrilankan says
Wow Pamela, every year your gardening skillz blow me away. Looks like y’all have mastered outdoor gardening – those boy choy are indeed gynormous and wow – your greens look incredible! If y’all set up a stall, I’ll come and buy them from y’all when I am in NYC later this July!
Pamela says
You can have all the bok choy you want when you stop by in July Shashi! :D)
Debbie says
HOLY SMOKES!!!!! I cannot believe how much you are harvesting already – what do you do with it all? Do you guys seriously eat all that in a week – oh my gosh!! Garden looks gorgeous – I’m curious about your water issues…I assume you have a well on your property?
Pamela says
We try to use the veggies up over the week that have a short shelf life (like lettuce) while not overdoing it to the point of where we don’t want to see lettuce again. It’s lots of recipe experiments! :D) Bok choy freezes great, so whatever doesn’t get eaten fresh, I’ll freeze to enjoy later on in the year – I love bok choy from the garden in soup when it’s Winter time! The water issue… well, the issue is we have no well! So that’s the problem! Quotes we are receiving are pretty heavy so we’re trying to catch as much rain water as we can! Not a drop goes to waste! :D)
Norma Chang says
Great harvest. How about a stand at NYC union square market? Those bok choy and all the others will be sold out in no time.
Pamela says
I have my own personal market where friends can stop by my house and load up on all the vegetables they want! 🙂
John/Kitchen Riffs says
That’s a LOT of bok choy! I’m sure you’ll figure out a good use for it, though. 🙂 Your garden is doing great — love the pictures and the update. Thanks!