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It's a gardener's dream. A dish with seasonal vegetables, all coming fresh from the garden, and enjoyed by all!
A big piece of the puzzle is timing. By strawberry season, we want all the pieces to come together, with all vegetables maturing at the same time. See my Garden Notes below for more about timing.
Now for the recipe:
On My Bookshelf.
Looking for inspiration to enjoy your vegetables or to craft your own recipes? One of my favorite go-to cookbooks is Milk Street Vegetables by Christopher Kimball.
Kimball is a chef known for crafting distinctive recipes that maintain the simplicity required for the home cook. Find his cookbook on Amazon here.
Garden Notes
A healthy garden begins with healthy soil. See my Garden Primer to learn more about preparing a garden bed to ensure great soil structure and fertility.
Pak Choi
These were sown in well-water trays the last week of February. Once they germinated, I moved them an outdoor cold-frame until the ground was warm enough for transplants.
These were transplanted when they were three weeks old on March 13th in a mulched bed with felted covers protecting them overhead. The felted covers were replaced with netting on March 30th as day-time temperatures rose beyond 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pak Choi has been ready to eat since the beginning of May, and needs to be harvested quickly before they bolt in the hot weather.
Strawberries
The strawberry patch was started three years ago when some friends gifted to me several strawberry plants from their patch. Since then, I have amended them with leaf mulch in the fall and dried grass each summer. They are just fruiting this third week in May.
To prevent disease, I will have to till over one of my three patches, and replant using plants from the other two beds. I will continue this each year in a three year rotation, adding rock dust with each till. Rock dust is a natural amendment that can feed the soil for up to five years.
If you have kids, you should have strawberry plants! They love exploring that part of the garden. They eat half of the strawberries, and pick the rest for me.
Radishes
Radishes were inter-sown directly in the soil on the last day of March with carrot, beets and parsnips. Varieties sown were Icicle, French breakfast, and the purple Malaga. Directly after sowing, we received a nice amount of rain, which I think allowed for good germination of the seed.
While mulch has so many benefits for the soil, when sowing directly, I pull the mulch away to make room for new growth.
Because I have clay soil and carrots are so finicky, I also make a small trench in the ground, lay the seed, and top the seeds with potting soil.
Lemon Oregano
These are beautiful plants, perfect for a perennial ground cover right next to your kitchen door. The bright lemony flavor is so tasty, and they basically take care of themselves, once planted.
Garlic
I do grow garlic each year, however, I haven't yet been able to grow enough to have some ready to eat in the spring.
Garlic is planted out in the fall, and is then well-mulched. Apart from weeding, these plants need little attention. Soft neck garlics should be ready by the middle of June, hard neck plants need a month longer.
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