June 4th, 2025
What’s in your share?
Broccolini
Salad Mix
Komatsuna
Bok Choy
Kale
STORAGE TIP!
Put all your greens into a sealed container or a plastic bag immediately! Greens wilt and get dried out, losing their integrity when they sit in the fridge naked and cold (how would you feel?) 3 Ways to Preserve Kale
Salad Mix - Lettuce loves cool weather, and it can be difficult to grow in the summer months. We’ve received overwhelming feedback that our salad mix is something folks want weekly, so we will have it as often as possible. We don’t grow “baby greens”- we find harvesting, weeding, and cleaning that style of salad mix is tedious and makes us cranky. Instead, we pick out actual head lettuce varieties and plant them at closer spacing; harvesting above the growth point so that the individual leaves are cut as opposed to the whole head. This also allows each plant to grow back, so we usually cut each bed twice. You may notice that the color of the leaves changes as the weather becomes warmer. Hot, dry weather often makes the colors less prominent, while cool weather increases their sugar content and makes the colors more vibrant. We eat our salad mix for almost every meal, so we are constantly paying attention to quality and make note of the seasonal changes.
Bok Choy - is a Chinese vegetable that is one of the first crops to mature in spring. Different from the other early, more leafy greens, bok choy has a hearty stem, or rib, that makes it ideal for sautéing, grilling, roasting, steaming, and boiling. We also love eating it raw, using it in slaws or salads. If you want to eat the stems whole (it makes for an impressive presentation) the trick is to soften them enough that you can easily cut them with a knife or a fork. I like to use a combination of steaming and frying with high heat to get softened stems, with a crispy crust and leaves.
Kale - It’s green season, clearly! Greens love spring and fall, and because we have so much other stuff in the summer, we don’t really try to fight the weather and keep the greens growing during the summer. They’ll make an appearance in fall again, but enjoy them while they’re here. My absolute favorite way to eat kale is what I eat literally every day for lunch: de-stemmed kale, sautéed quickly with olive oil (tops two minutes, high heat in a wok), next to an egg on toast and a little ferment or dressing or whatever is seasonal and lends itself to some additional flavor.
Broccolini - is much easier to cook (and grow!) than broccoli. Without a huge stem that is, let’s be honest; likely to get tossed, it comes to you in its completely edible form. The main head is sort of like a broccoli, and you may need to cut it up a little, but the stems are so tender, so before cutting them from the floret, give them a try! We loooooove roasting broccolini. Its a quick and easy way to get dinner on the table. The key is to oil it up real good.
Komatsuna - is grown in Japan and Taiwan. We treat it like a hearty spinach leaf; it can be eaten raw or cooked. Its great in an omlet, stir fry, soup. Sometimes I like to make little tuna salad wraps with the raw leaves adding the stem to the tuna instead of celery.
RECIPES TO TRY
All the brassicas loving the sunshine. If you look at the covering on the greenhouse, you can see all the holes from the hail storm we had a few weeks ago. The holes are 1-2 inches in diameter! So much for having a dry space to get out of the rain!
Bok Choy Stir-Fry (and lots of other tips!)
Stir Fried Chinese Mustard Greens (use komatsuna instead!)
