Harvest

Deer tongue lettuce was ready to be harvested about a week ago, but we only got them out of the garden yesterday because we had a special meal — barbecue! The weather was perfect for grilling yesterday (and for gardening).


To accompany pulehu-style steak, we made a delicious salad. We rough-chopped cooled grilled sweet onions and mushrooms, and added a little olive oil, a dash of Kikkoman shoyu and local honey. We tossed the lettuce leaves in this (the grilled stuff released a lot of good juices) and then added grill-toasted pecans and grilled stale bread for croutons (I added a little cinnamon to the bread). Yum.


I cut a large deer tongue lettuce plant and three smaller ones. The removal of all four will give the other lettuce more space to grow. I like deer tongue younger too. It starts to lose its luscious tenderness when it gets larger. Deer tongue is Lucas' favorite from last year. We have two heads of either little gem or matina ready to harvest (I'm not sure what it is because they're volunteers) this week.


Before the barbecue, we had pupus — musubi, crackers and Early French breakfast radishes from the garden.

Also:

• planted Atomic Red carrots and Yellowstone carrots from north to south in one long row in the L-shaped raised bed. First, I dug down about six inches and added rock phosphate. Then I added more compost and perlite for drainage and fertilized with a balanced mix. We built up a raised row and then planted both, a little more of the yellowstone since it resists cracking.

• potted pineapple sage.

• continued hardening off process for tomatoes, basils, papalo, epazote and culantro and started process for melons, remaining toothache plant, valerian. The process would be done quicker if there was more sun, but we'd been having a lot of cloud cover. Strong sun yesterday damaged the culantro. I hope they recover.

• many tanagers spotted in the backyard and in the trees on the L Hill.