fresh roasted vegetables

golden beets, rose gold potatoes, garlic scapes, patty pan squash, rosemary, sungold tomatoes, and zephyr squash.

What started as a desire to try some of the fresh garlic scapes from the garden turned into a full-blown meal of fresh roasted vegetables. Scapes are seriously seasonal and available only for a short time in late spring/early summer - now, so if you want to try some, you gotta find them soon. Wanting to allow the flavor of each vegetable to come through while still working together as a whole, I decided to roast them. Or, at least finish by roasting them. Here's how...

Take a small handful of scapes and some young beets, cut them all into bite-sized pieces and toss in a bowl with some sea salt, a pinch of pepper, and enough olive oil to coat. Spread out on a shallow pan and put them in a 350° oven to roast for about a half hour (I like golden or albino beets for this since they won't turn everything red). As they're roasting, cut up some new potatoes into one inch chunks and boil them until barely done. (Or better yet, use baby potatoes and boil them whole.) As that's happening, heat olive oil in a skillet, slice up some young summer squash about a quarter inch thick, and saute them with a little salt for about 4 minutes until golden brown but also barely done. You don't want to overcook either the potatoes or the squash since they are both now going to be added to the roasting pan along with a handful of cherry tomatoes and a couple teaspoons of minced rosemary. Toss everyone together in the pan, making sure to get everybody coated with olive oil. Roast for just a few minutes more to meld the flavors and finish cooking. Whatever you do, don't overcook the veggies because that's just disgusting.

Yes, several of these things are early, but with the greenhouse, I'm able to get a jump on the season. Of course, other fresh vegetables would also work. Use what's available to you. For instance, I think scapes and asparagus would be great roasted together, maybe served warm on a bed of spinach with a little vinaigrette.

early potatoes go in

A cold and rainy day here today – such a contrast to the sunny weekend, part of which was spent in a t-shirt in the greenhouse, prepping and planting the first bed of the year with early Rose Gold potatoes. I started out by tilling the bed twice, before adding a bale of peat moss, some organic rock phosphate, greensand, blood meal, and bone meal. I then tilled it one more time, made a furrow, dropped in the seed potatoes at one foot spacing, and covered them up. Now we wait. Hopefully, this planting was timed so that new potatoes will be on the market stand by early June.

Next on the planting agenda are the tomato seedlings. A little early to put them in, maybe, but they are growing like nobody's business and need to get in the ground.

Also, in the next couple of weeks many of the seeds will be planted for seedling sales at the herb and plant fairs in York, Lancaster, and Quarryville. More details on those events later.