Overload

Big garden event – the cherry tomato plants have blossoms. Not many, but some starting. All of the plants seem to be doing just fine and giving hopes of a bumper crop. The winter stuff is bolting rapidly – two weeks of upper 80’s will do that. We usually see this in April so it’s way ahead of schedule. We’re eating our little hearts out but don’t stand a chance of catching up. We could eat a meal of cabbage every night; a meal of peas every night; a meal of broccoli every night; a meal of chard, a meal of kale, a meal of spinach every night; and a salad with every meal, including breakfast, and still not keep up. Cauliflower gone. We’re not canners and really prefer it all fresh rather than frozen so it’s eat, eat, eat. Nancy has several meetings going this week and she likes to carry bags of goodies for the girls so that will help thin out some of it but nothing like it needs.

Someone noticed that the Tyfon (AKA Holland Greens) growing in the garden were sporting roots that looked exactly like turnips. I dug one up and sure enough it looks like a turnip – globular with a purple top and white bulb. One person I had given the greens to had complained that they were “hairy” so I was just wondering if I could salvage the crop by using the turnips. I called the seed company and talked to one of their experts who read some customer comments to me. A couple said they were “hairy” unless cooked. At that point they were reported to be better than spinach and way better than mustard greens but absolutely no comments on the turnip roots. I went to the internet and found reference to “stubble turnips” and that the roots of the Tyfon were similar to stubble turnips and were grown in Europe for cattle feed – the roots, not the greens. My plan now is to dig up the roots and give them to Nancy’s quilting buddy with the cows and see if we can do a turnip for beef swap downstream. As far as the greens go, Joey said they were delicious cooked so I think when I pull them for the roots I’ll donate the greens to one of Nancy’s bridge buddies with the stipulation that they be cooked. Actually I did eat some raw but as part of green smoothies and they tasted fine – lost in the blend – so I guess the ninja blender chopped up the “hair”.