Taking out the heat!

Today, on harvest day, one of the main jobs after the actual harvest is to "take out the field heat."  This is the practice of cooling down the crops as fast as possible to slow the ripening process, keep the plants from wilting right away, and to slow or inhibit  the growth of decay-producing microorganisms.

In other words, to preserve fresh-from-the-field goodness for as long as possible.

Mixed greens bathing in cold water to remove field heat.

Along with salad greens, we've been harvesting radishes and garlic scapes.  The radishes are a variety called D'Avignon, French and fancy and pretty on walnut tables:

And garlic scapes? WHAT ARE THOSE???

The story of garlic scapes:  The story starts with the garlic clove.  The cloves are planted in the fall and sprout in the early spring.  We grow a couple of varieties of garlic, a soft neck and a hard neck variety.  Around this time, the hard neck plants send out a bonus central stem which goes straight up and then usually makes one or two loops.  See them bowing in the photo above. You could think of the stem like the flowering stalk of many plants when they are anxious to “go to seed.”  In the case of hard neck garlic, instead of an actual flower at the top, there’s a little bulge that contains “bulbils” or miniature cloves.  The part that is good to eat, with a mild garlic flavor, is the green stem itself, sauteed or steamed in a pan like asparagus.   Still growing is the bulb underground, getting bigger and bigger for harvest later in the season.