Summer Vege Bag - Week 8
Click on any vegetable that has a link to see previous posts with recipes and cooking tips. You can also browse and filter the whole vege bag archive by vegetable here.
You’ll need 2x containers this week
For take-what-you-want salad + microgreens!
Kia ora tomatoes!
We finally have the first wee harvest on tomatoes. We’ve tried for 3 years in a row to get an earlier first harvest, this time we started the seeds 4 months ago on heat mats. That’s a month earlier than we started them in 2024, but we’re still harvesting at the same time of year.. This seems to be as early as we can get ripe tomatoes in an unheated greenhouse in Ōtaki (on our soil). I believe the limiting factor is our soil temperature - we are on a heavy clay soil. Among the many challenges of growing on clay is that it takes much longer to warm up in the spring than lighter soils (e.g. the sandy-loamy soils closer to the coast).
(Not very) fun fact: some NZ grown tomatoes take over 1.4kg of coal to produce 1kg of tomatoes, as they’re still (mostly) grown in inefficiently heated greenhouses. All the more reason to eat seasonal and local!
We’ve only got a handful this week - hopefully by mid january there will be enough for every vege bag member.
This week we have:
Carrots (Ahoaho māra kai)
Cucumbers (Ahoaho māra kai)
Zucchini (Ahoaho māra kai & Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Salad Mix (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Microgreens (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Herbs - garlic chives, lemon sorrel, coriander, parsley or dill (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Tomatoes(!), Tomatillos or Kamokamo
Pak choi, kamokamo, rampicante (Crooked Vege Ōtaki) or rhubarb (Ahoaho māra kai)
Vege highlights + suggested uses:
Tomatillo
An unfamiliar crop to most of us, but it’s a favourite of mine. If you’ve ever had salsa verde (the green salsa, often on tortillas), tomatillo is the main ingredient. It also looks a lot like cape gooseberry (they’re closely related).
I’ve never learnt other ways to use them, because salsa verde is so delicious. Here’s a recipe. A couple of notes on this recipe:
cilantro is the american term for coriander
dried chillies (or no chilli) works fine!
I prefer to prepare the tomatillos by roasting them
You can also use them fresh in salads, or cooked in stews/soups (a little similar to how you might use a tomato).
Ka kite,
Jon
