I’ve never had such an early brassica harvest in all my gardening years. 

This year I decided to try a new approach to growing brassica greens. Usually, I’d sow the brassica seedlings around March, transplant them in the middle of May, and if the year was good I’d start with my first harvests around the middle of July. This is actually a bit late, especially if you want baby leaves, but in my garden, the earlier harvest was just not possible. The coldness of the soil and the forest next to the garden just kept the seedlings from fast growth.

This is why this year I decided to try and grow brassicas in bottles, and see if it could work in my garden. The plan wasn’t to grow big cabbage or cauliflower heads. A few years back I’ve switched from ordinary kale to leafy varieties, and I’ve noticed that they actually grow better in my garden, so why shouldn’t I try the same with the rest of the brassicas? Especially since I don’t want to waste the perfectly edible leaves.

So this year, I’ve planted a bunch of different brassicas into juice and water bottles and waited to see what would happen. To my surprise, the brassicas exploded in the bottles. In just two weeks the fruit crates in which I’ve grown my brassicas were full of fresh leaves. The leaves grew with such a speed that the change in size was visible every single day. 

This week I decided it was time to harvest the leaves for the first time. I’ve harvested all the bigger leaves and left the middle intact to grow more leaves. I will fertilize the plants once more now that the leaves have been harvested, to encourage new growth, and wait to see if I’ll get more leaves. 

The amount of harvested leaves are actually great. I’ve got enough leaves for 2 big meals. I’ve also harvested my tatsoi, which bolted due to the high temperatures we’ve been having.

The reason why I wanted so many greens is the stews. My hubby loves to eat stews. Out of 7 days, I cook stews 4 times a week. Hubby likes stews because he’s able to take them to work the next day. Brassica greens stew is great because it can be eaten in many different combinations. The meal is light but still gives you energy, which is important to my hubby since his job is in the metal processing industry and requires lots of strength.

Brassica greens stew was on the menu this week once again, so I decided to use the freshly harvested leaves for lunch. This time I was making simple brassica greens and potatoes stew.

I make most of my stews the same way, the base is always the same, I just change the ingredients. The only exception are stews that include sour turnip or sauerkraut. They don’t mix well with onions. 

I start my stews with oil frying the diced onions and sliced peppers. Sometimes I add diced peppers and tomatoes if I have them at home, or I add a few pieces of sliced pickled peppers if I don’t have any fresh veggies at home(during the winter). Once the onions turn gold, I add a spoon of flour, 2 teaspoons of powdered red paprika and water.

After adding the water I add some of the spices, usually some powdered black pepper, a mixture of dried vegetables, and diced potatoes, and leave the water to boil. 

Once the water starts boiling I add the greens. The very young leaves are very tender and don’t need a long time to cook, so I add them once the potatoes are almost finished. If I have some older leaves I add them right after the potatoes. After the greens, I add some tomato puree, salt, more pepper, and dried(or fresh) parsley. The stew is finished once the potatoes are cooked. 

This time I’ve served it with fried sausages. If I make a stew with diced meat, cooked sausages, or added grains I don’t make any additional meat with the stew, but since this one was light I made something extra.

The leftover greens were boiled for a minute and I’ve stored them in the freezer for the next meal. If I manage to get a harvest like this every couple of weeks, I will be able to cook fresh stews and store enough greens for most of the winter. I’ll definitely plant even more greens next year, this method is turning out to be one of my favorites.