Harvesting your leafy greens

What to do with this wacky weather? The early hot weather of the last weeks has been hard on those of your vegetables that most prefer the cooler weather. This has encouraged the Asian greens (bok choy and mizuna) especially to bolt to seed. All is not lost! Those lovely yellow flowers are a delicious topper to any mixed green salad. Instead of harvesting your bok choy as a bulb, you can simply snip off as many sections of leaves as you need and leave the rest of the plant to keep on growing.

For those clients with us from last year, your summer planting is coming up soon. It feels early because of the sudden drop in temperatures, but rest assured that it is the right time for your tomatoes, peppers and eggplants to start going in the garden. We will contact you about three days before coming. Please harvest your spinach, radish and bok choy to make space for your summer veg.

You can harvest your leafy greens as soon as the outer leaves are big enough for your taste. I suggest removing a couple of large outer leaves per plant, and letting the smaller inner leaves keep on growing for a continual harvest. Simply add a nice olive oil, your favourite vinegar and some salt and pepper for a lovely mixed green salad. For more details, take a look at my video.

The low, dark green leaved plant many of you have in your garden is Tatsoi. It is also an Asian green, in the same family as bok choy. You can harvest the outer leaves of this plant as well. If you enjoy the more bitter taste you can eat it raw, but it is most often steamed with butter, or as an addition to a stir fry.