In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen

It is the season of greens in the garden. Helped by plentiful rains and cool days, they thrive. Currently there are four varieties of lettuce, arugula, spinach, baby leaf chard and two varieties of kale.

Territorial Seed Company enticed me to try two new lettuces, Rosaine and Newham. Rosaine is described as “our new favorite Little Gem type. Rosaine produces very uniform crops of  glossy maroon heads with green, dense hearts.” I’ll endorse that descriptions.

Newham is a buttery romaine. Both were direct seeded successfully and could be tightly packed. The Rosaine is pelleted seed so I’ll need to use this year. Note to self: rain arrives tomorrow so I should plant more.

I took the above greens to my son who lives in Downtown LA. For several years he had a rooftop garden above his 100 year-old loft. Roots in Downtown LA—2015 tells the story. He just bought his first home—a real fixer—so a vegetable garden is a few years off.

Cauliflower and Romanesco season is over, opening opportunities for late winter planting of carrots, more lettuce and potatoes. This Amazing cauliflower became Cauliflower Cheese Soup (the original Moosewood Cookbook) with some left for a vegetable side.

The last of ten Romanesco was transformed to Roasted Romanesco Pesto Spaghetti, an every year adventure. Several seedlings were mislabeled and I grew too many Romanesco and too few white cauliflower.

Now, I’ll enjoy small bits of leftover purple and white cauliflower and Romanesco in salads.

Our navel orange crop was light this year so I traveled to my sister’s home in Newport Beach to make orange marmalade from her abundant crop. She had picked two laundry baskets full of navel, Cara Cara and blood oranges. The next day she made another three dozen jars of marmalade for herself.

It was a pleasant day, recalling times when we helped our mother and grandmother make orange marmalade and other preserves.

And today’s church entry bouquet with alstroemeria, watsonia and geranium maderense leaves.

Check the What I’m Planting Now page as I transplant and sow seeds in the cool season garden. Then head today to Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Happy Acres blog and see what garden bloggers around the world harvested last week.

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