Romanesco, the garden highlight this week, is a lime green, fractal vegetable. It's a little like cauliflower, a little like broccoli and this 500 year old Italian species is well worth growing. It's art, math and food.

With more garden time in 2020 I grew all my cauliflower from seed. This Romanesco selection, ‘Veronica’ from Territorial Seeds performed exceptionally well. Seven of the eight heads were extremely large with only one undersized, likely because of 12-inch spacing. The plants were monstrous and next year I’ll put them behind the white and purple cauliflower and give them 15-inch separation.

To learn more about this lime green, fractal vegetable and recipe links, check my previous post, Romanesco.

For a better sense of the size of the first Romanesco, I had my husband pose with it. I still have six more, almost this same size. Two will go to friends, one, like Romanesco, of Italian descent and the other a hotel food service manager. They will do amazing things with the Romanesco gifts.

I’ve reviewed my cauliflower recipe folder and have plans for the week. I’ll also be checking Specialty Produce for Romanesco recipes.

With abundant lettuce, broccoli, white cauliflower, snow peas and radishes, lunch salads are limited only by how much prep time I have. A neighbor brings me her sourdough bread which is perfect with a salad.

In return, I keep her in arugula and mustard greens. She declines my lettuce, preferring the greens with some kick.

When another friend stopped by for a distanced garden visit, I cut and snipped according to her preferences—three kinds of lettuce, celery, parsley, snow peas and a head of broccoli.

She likes strawberry guavas almost as much as I do. We’ve been enjoying this unseasonable crop of luscious one-inch guavas. My husband doesn’t usually eat them but he’s taken to these larger ones and we note there are many fewer seeds.

As the ‘Satsuma’ tangerine season wanes, the Washington navel oranges begin. Just a few at the start but our current stormy weather with highs in the 50’s and cool nights will sweeten them and they will turn the lovely color that says winter in SoCal.

My ‘February Gold’ daffodils were coaxed to bloom early by days in the 80’s about a week ago. Still, we need some winter cheer in these times so a January entrance will do.

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