May 2009: Vegetables of the leafy variety

We have lots of wholesome produce to showcase from May, so I'm starting with leaf vegetables in this post. First, there are a mixture of lettuces that I harvested:

And some of the lettuce plants in bloom. I believe this first one was a frisee/escarole plant with great purple flowers:

And I think this was arugula seed pods after the plant had been blooming here in front of the frisee.

Some other lettuces that were too mature to harvest:

The amaranth seeds made there first appearance . . .
And after some good rain and a few weeks, they looked like this:
Amaranth leaves are edible and the plants stand up to the summer heat much better than lettuces. I didn't eat as much of the leaves as I should've this season, but I was impressed by how long they lasted (well into July). They also produce a grain that's similar to quinoa . . . maybe next year I'll try to do something with that.

The brussel sprouts also went crazy, but they were overwhelmed by some little gray bugs that ate them up. There were still some sprouts left to harvest, but the bugs were so small and numerous that it would've taken much too much painstaking effort to clean them up before cooking.
I had two cabbage plants that had done really well since I transplanted them in the fall of last year. One of the heads was pretty small when I tore away the old leaves

But the second one was quite a bit bigger, and I made cole slaw out of it. (I don't have a picture of the cole slaw here, but I think I'll have a post of it in the future.)

I never knew that cabbage would tint the water it's washed in, but that's what the bright blue stuff is. When that first happened with a cabbage I brought home from the market, Jenny wondered aloud if it could produce a fluorescent color like that and still be organic . . . now that it's come from our backyard too, it seems all-natural and legit.

I think you've been seeing pictures of these plants for about a half year, ever since I planted it in the fall of 2008 -- well, I finally decided to do these two in, once and for all: Blue lacinato (dinosaur) kale and swiss chard . . .