Welcoming Spring 2014 with Jerusalem artichoke, spinach, daikon, broccoli, potatoes…

Last year, my suweeto haato bought a bunch of Jerusalem artichokes from the local farmer’s market…
They tasted really good: sweet and crunchy…
So, I kept three little ones as seed for our potager…
Just harvested one plant yesterday, and woah, was surprised to see this ‘cannon-ball’ coming out from the soil…
The taste, as I recall, is equally good as the original ones we got from the farmer’s market….

Prior to that, we had obtained some tubers (see picture below) from a neighbor…
Those tubers produced pretty yellow flowers but they did not taste good…
I shouldn’t be surprised in that they are ‘good’ and ‘not-so-good’ strains in veggies…
Am only happy that we can continue to enjoy tasty Jerusalem artichokes from now on…

As with the artichokes, yes, there are ‘good’ and ‘not-so-good’ spinach as well…
This specimen, with seeds that are spiky, is crunchy and tasty…
The plants are stocky, thick, and the leaves, deep green…

Now, this next specimen, with seeds that are round and smooth, is, hmmm, in my opinion, not quite as tasty as it should be…
Perhaps it is my lack of skills to nurture them…
But I have them in two separate lots, and they all take on a similar ‘anatomy’…
Their stems are long and lanky, and their leaves, light green and ‘salad-like’…

I grew a lot of daikon (radish) last season, in rows…
Too much, in fact…
I did not do a good job in thinning them out, so they did not manage to grow big…
Anyway, we ate and ate the daikon…
Yet, we could not ‘keep up’…
Finally, they became a little too fibrous for consumption…
Next season, I should not do rows for daikon…
Instead, I should keep to ‘spot’ planting them in intervals of about 15 to 20 centimeters…
And really, how much daikon can a husband and wife team consume in one season? Duh!

Yes, broccoli… isn’t this a lovely vegetable as well?
I normally grow just two plants each autumn…
And they have always given me good harvests…
I keep them in the field even after harvesting the main ‘crown’…
Reason is, there will be numerous mini-mini broccoli heads sprouting out from the main stem…

And whooppeee… potatoes… what would we do without them…
I grow them twice a year and never get tired of them…
For this new spring season, I just planted twenty two seeds of what the Japanese folks call ‘Andes no hitomi’ (direct translation: the ‘Eyes of the Andes’)…
It is my fist time to try this specie and I am looking forward to see how it turns out in a few months’ time…