Summer harvests

Rooftop gardening

August 28, 2014

Like every summer, it's been difficult to find the time to publish my harvest one by one, so I will post some of them now.

Harvest

Tomatoes have been really satisfying: my favourite was Zukertraube, a sweet cherry with a grape aftertaste.
I also harvested a lot of cucumbers, peppers, onion, basil, mint and many aromatic herbs.

I harvested all Longbow leeks from my rooftop, and prepared a gratin.

Some leeks were very thin and have instead produced a large bulb. In this case, the aerial part of the plant is too tough but the bulbs can be used like garlic cloves: they have a more delicate flavor but tasty and more digestible.
I used in the Vegetarian chili with herbs.

Like the name suggests, the Winter Over onions are grown during the winter and spring and were ready to be harvested in June.

Last year I enjoyed my 10 Herbs tea and I prepared it again this summer, harvesting and drying all the herbs.

This year I used more than ten herbs, because I added also lemon grass, self-healing, horehound and corean mint. I added also anise hyssop, wild strawberry, salad burnet, vervain and other herbs from last year recipe.

I prepared also another herbal tea, the flowers tea with yellow clover, marigold, chamomile, cinnamon basil, cornflower and alfalfa.

I harvested a lot of chamomile this summer.

Read the post Storing Chamomile for details.

This summer I have also grown marigold: I will use the dried petals for tea but also as a natural food coloring.

With coriander, cumin, sesame, nigella and almonds I prepared again dukkah: it's a snack of pita bread, dipped into the olive oil and then into the dukkah.