Thursday has turned into harvest day here, and has become one of my favorite mornings of the week. I get to get up early, check out what’s at its best, eat some stuff fresh from the plant, and do some creative food stuff composing salads for Lactuca Micro Farm. I’m going to try to make a point of posting about what’s in the salads, as it will not only diarize it for me, but folks at market ask, and this is a good way to get them the info without having to waste paper to print it on. Also a good way to highlight what’s in season in my world at this precise moment.

Below is a shot of Dubuisson endive, and it’s making its first appearance in the mix. I’m not generally a big bitter greens lover, but am trying to work on my palate on that front. Lots of other cultures have learned to appreciate them so I figure I can too. Not hard to balance them in the array of flavours going on at the moment. This one is an old school french frisee type. Also new the lineup this week is peppery nasturtium petals [orange and red], and a double dose of the citrusy pop of geranium petals. Not trying to be fancy, the flowers actually bring loads of flavor and balance to the salad equation. My garden is abloom with coriander blossoms, which have a floral citrusy bent that I really dig, and some of the last mustard and nodding onion blossoms are still making their way in. There’s also a particularly heavy dose of tarragon. The chassis of the thing is heavy in red russian kale, mizuna, a variety of lettuces, some very baby arugula, etc. Lots of planning is being put into the base mix – being nerdy about specific hard-to-find varietal choices for the blend, lots of which is seeded and should show up in the salads in September. I also put out a few packs of cooking greens for market this week too – mizuna, kale, and tatsoi primarily with a pair of garlic scapes in each pack for funsies.

The greens thing is kinda going crazy. Lots of infrastructure planning, building, seeding, and general logistics going on. Will be doing a lot more writing about it as we continue to ramp up on what’s become a really wicked little urban ag business in good old #yeg.