Update for 2024 as the season gets closer!
Here’s the vegetable line-up from 2023, not yet updated for next season. At the bottom of the page: quick storage tips, how every harvest is a little different, and, with seasonal veggies, why there’s never too much of a good thing. All photos from Tiny Farm.
Beans (string, snap) – This green bean variety, Jade, has been reliable over the years. Excellent raw or cooked. Great for freezing and fermenting, as a fresh reminder through the winter.
Beets – Sweet round red Kestrel, with excellent greens. Try grated raw, as a garnish and in salads. Best way to cook for incredible flavor: roasted in the oven; cut up for faster cooking.
Bok choi – Mild, with light, crunchy stems. Use raw or sautée. Add near the end in stir fry. (Baby bok choi adds extra texture and taste to salads.)
Broccoli – Great for every occasion, so long as it’s not overcooked. Does well for winter storage when cut up into florets and frozen. Lightly cooked (steamed, stir-fried) or raw. Stems are often overlooked and great on their own.
Brussels sprouts – Little globes of goodness. Easy favorite prep: cut in half and sautee in olive oil or butter.
Cabbage – Early Jersey Wakefield is an English heirloom pointy cabbage. So surprisingly sweet, light and refreshing, you’re almost guaranteed to want to eat it raw.
Carrots – Miami is an all-around great carrot variety, sweet in summer, sweeter in the cold, great cooked or raw, and perfect for longer term storage. Don’t settle for less than that good ol’ carroty taste!
Cauliflower – Minuteman is a faster growing variety that has always come through regardless of the conditions. Trusty and tasty, all in one.
Jerusalem artichoke – A crunchy tuber that should probably be getting a lot more use! Easy to grow and a prolific producer. Try as a raw snack or grate together with raw beets and carrots. For cooking, use more or less the same ways as potatoes, boiled or baked, sliced or mashed. Don’t overcook or will get mushy. No need to peel. (BTW, it’s a type of sunflower!)
Kale – Darkibor is a curly kale with classic kale taste, great in any type of cooking, or chopped up or sliced into thin ribbons raw in salads. Tip: If you’re using only the leaves, finely chop and freeze the stems, and toss handfuls into soups and stews year-round.
Kohlrabi – A super tasty and versatile member of the huge brassica family (cabbage, kale, radish, turnip, cauliflower, etc), with a sweet, firm flesh, somewhat like a cross between Brussels sprouts, summer turnip, and broccoli stems. Use raw or cooked. Check skin and peel if tough.
Lettuce – Various frilly leaf lettuces, and a great new Romaine called Mezquite.
Pepper, sweet – Gypsy is excellent when picked as a (lime) green pepper, at full maturity as a sweet red pepper, and anywhere in-between. Great raw or cooked. Use…in everything!
Radish – Sora is a reliable variety of your basic round red radish, a crisp, refreshing crunch with a pleasant bite.
Spinach – This is often a cool season crop because it’s hard to germinate in the heat. Keep planting until more appears! Reflect is my variety of choice, along with the earthy Bloomsdale.
Tomato – Tomatoes one of the most rewarding and easy of home food garden plants. This season, Big Beef is again the mainstay, a fairly hefty, red, all-around perfected modern hybrid beefsteak slicer.
Tomato (cherry) – A couple of varieties of red and yellow cherry toms, and one of my top two or three favorites, Juliet, a saladette tomato, slightly larger than cherries, meaty, with a wonderfully full taste.
Turnip (summer) – Not to be confused with rutabaga, although they’re both in the brassica family. Sometimes called summer turnip, although best grown in cool weather. White flesh (rutabaga flesh is yellow). Use raw in salads, sautee, or cook in the same ways as potatoes: roast, or boil and mash.
Winter squash – Butternut squash is a fall staple that stores well into winter. Oven-bake, purée for soup.
Zucchini – A type of summer squash. All the summer squash I’ve tried have been similar in taste and texture, but in all sorts of different shapes. Zukes are somehow most popular. Their shape certainly makes them easy to slice up in nice and neat shapes.
Salad & cooking greens
Some baby greens (mizuna, mustard, kale, bok choi, beet) are also great for stir-frying or adding to soup. Cooking greens are generally baby greens that have grown bigger. The leaves are thicker and firmer, perfect for steaming or sautéing in olive oil for an instant side dish.
Arugula – Full-flavored and nippy.
Bok choi (baby leaf) – Mild, lightly crunchy.
Kale (baby leaf) – A tender and mild version, compared to more mature kale.
Lettuce (baby leaf) – Various, including mini-Romaine (green & red).
Mizuna – There are milder and hotter mizunas. The spiciness is similar to mustard greens (they’re from the same brassica plant family). Great raw or cooked (they lose most of their zip when sautéed or tossed in soup).
Mustard – The greens are spicy and hot, like mustard! Heat can vary, usually something like horseradish or wasabi, the green mustard paste common with sushi. Delicious sautéed as well, but loses the heat when cooked. An exception is the mild, sometimes sweet Fun Jen!
Every harvest is different!
Same-day harvesting for delivery means the Tiny Farm harvest is kitchen-garden style. Harvesting is done as needed, which could be two or three times a week. Ever-changing weather conditions make each harvest at least a little different, even a couple of days apart. A first cut of lettuce mix may be perfect small leaves with a super-mild taste, while the second cut, a week later, could be bigger, firmer leaves, and a stronger taste. Rain and sun in the days before harvest can noticeably change a tomato’s texture and taste. Temperature can affect the spiciness of mustard greens. And so on. There is no uniformity. Tthe baseline is deliciously satisfying, and every harvest has its own character.
Quick storage tips
In a nutshell: Many of our common garden vegetables store best in the cold, some don’t, and a few don’t store well with others. And, since the water content of veggies is high (over 80% for most), you don’t want them drying out.
You can look up tons of veggie storage details online. Meanwhile, if you want to keep it super simple, these basics are likely all you need. Check up once in a while, and adjust as needed:
- For the fridge: Any plastic bag, closed but not sealed airtight, is what I use, for everything from salad greens to beets and carrots. The cold slows down the natural spoilage processes. The plastic retains moisture to prevent shriveling. Closed but unsealed allows a little air circulation and a bit of evaporation, so things don’t get too wet.
- Cool but not refrigerated: Included are tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, onions, and peppers. For them, cold can mess with the taste and texture. As a rule, don’t keep out-of-the-fridge veggies in plastic, where moisture can build up and cause trouble.
- Keep apart: Store tomatoes and peppers apart from other veg, as they naturally give off a fair amount of ethylene gas. This gas speeds up ripening for themselves and quite a few other veggies and fruit. Apples, avocados, bananas, melons, peaches, and pears are other notable ethylene producers. As a rule, keep them separate from others, especially if you find things are overripening or spoiling fast.
- For wilty greens: A few minutes soak in cold water can perk them up fine. You can also place stemmed veggies and herbs in water, like cut flowers, in the fridge or out. This keeps the water content high.
Never too much of a good thing!
Imagine cold, dark, 20-below mid-February and you’re dreaming about fresh veggies. So fresh, they haven’t had the time to take an intercontinental road trip or hang out inside a refrigerated cargo container. A perfect vine-ripened tomato direct from your garden or a local farm. Sweet red peppers, picked hours ago, charring on your grill. Carrots and beets, earth rinsed off, grated into the perfect simple slaw. In central Ontario, the season is short. Many garden veggies are at their peak for only eight to twelve weeks. Even cold-tolerant crops are at their finest for only four or five months. Discover all the different ways to prepare them and eat them often while you can. Enjoy them while they’re here!