Final Harvest... Almost

 

Here it is, the last lettuce harvest of the year, cut yesterday afternoon. Plus some arugula, a little dill, and a few stalks of celery.

It was a good run. I planted the lettuce in early September, making two plantings a week or two apart. The bed was draped with row cover and shade cloth to protect it from critters and intense sun. It was still really warm in September. Soaker hoses laid along the rows made it easy to keep the little plantings hydrated through the dry fall.

The lettuce seemed to take off much more slowly than I anticipated. However, once it started to reach harvestable size it kept us in lettuce, pretty much. As production dwindle, we supplemented with a little lettuce from the store. This last harvest will keep us in lettuce for a couple of weeks, since we recently bought some because we're take a huge salad to share with family tonight.

While this is the last harvest of lettuce, I still have more stuff to pull from the garden.

Yesterday, I dug horseradish, pulling out muddy roots. I soaked off most of the mud in a bucket filled with water, but they still need to be scrubbed. We still have a jar of horseradish sauce made from last year's roots, so I won't need to processed them quickly. Once they're scrubbed and trimmed, they'll keep well in a bag in the refrigerator. 

My sauce recipe: peel and cut up the roots. Put them in the blender with a little water and some cider vinegar. I use two to three tablespoons of vinegar per cup of puree, and just estimate how much vinegar I will use. I don't add the whole amount at first, but add the rest when I can see how much it will make. I do this because my husband doesn't like watery sauce, so I don't add so much water this way. You do need the liquid to get it to blend, though. I always put the blender near our range and turn on the exhaust. fumes from the horseradish are pretty potent. Don't put your face directly over the blender when you open it.

Yesterday I also pulled more purple daikons. These are my favorite radishes. I planted a lot. Maybe too many. We'll see. About one third of them, maybe less, remains in the ground. I will protect them from the coming deep lows -- in the upper teens Fahrenheit -- with heavy blankets. There are just too many to store in the space we have. When the root cellar reaches an acceptable temperature, they can go in there with the sweet potatoes. I read that you can keep them in a root cellar if you wrapped them individually in newspaper, as you do with sweet potatoes. I hope that works. The purple daikons are the fall vegetable I most look forward to.

Thank you for reading my blog. Have great holidays, however you celebrate.

Blessings.