In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen

We feasted on the first of the purple artichokes, which despite their wicked thorns are the best artichokes I’ve ever grown. We believe they’re the Italian artichoke ‘Violetta Di Chioggia’.

Note the green lace wings on one of the petals.

The Globe artichokes are not nearly as flavorful so we’re considering ejecting them in favor of the the purple artichokes which are crowding the espalied apple tree. ‘Violetta’ would assume the prime spot where the Globe artichokes are growing.

Here’s the Violetta artichoke prepped for cooking. There’s a lovely symmetry to it I deemed worthy to capture.

Though we prefer the purple artichokes we still savor the spring Globe bounty and wish our urban garden had sufficient sun and space to devote to more artichokes. The plants are quite ornamental as well.

This is a small harvest of baby leaf kale and rainbow chard grown in containers. They were planted too late in the winter garden and did not produce as well as they usually do with an October sowing.

The baby greens were a colorful addition to green and red romaine lettuce from the garden. I decided to keep the Easter dinner salad simple, with garden celery and chives, dried tomatoes and a few options on the side.

It’s a race to harvest and use or share the lettuce before it bolts. The ‘Freckles’ (‘Flashy Trout Back’) seems slower to succumb than the red and green romaines.

I still have a handful of sturdy outer red cabbage leaves that are used in vegetable stir-fry or added at the last to roasted vegetables. One small head remains for other uses. Maybe an Asian themed shredded salad this week.

The celery still thrives though the warmer weather brings stronger flavor. Now I cut a few stalks when needed for cooking but skip the celery and peanut butter snacks.

And I’ll close with the garden bouquet I took to church for Easter.

See what other garden bloggers harvested last week in their gardens at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.