First Harvest of the Season (2016)

Yes, only mid-May, and already a harvest... of shiso (tia to) and kinh gioi.  I'll have to figure out the translations and English names at some point.

I suppose it's not so unusual to be harvesting them - they DO come up like weeds.  I decided I needed to be more proactive this year, thin out their ranks before they take over everything, like they did last year.  So, on this, one of the first warm-enough days this year, I checked the various pots and planters where they were NOT supposed to be, and picked them out, cutting off their roots, and dumping them into a colander with a tub underneath. 

Purple shiso one of the pot that had one of last year's tomatoes, and the parsley

Shiso seedlings taking advantage of water/soil seeping from underneath a planter - the one with the Endless Summer hydrangea, I think

Shiso amid the weeds (I guess really, the other weeds)

Before: Green shiso, in the pot with the blackberry

 

Weedy as they are, and they most certainly are, it is hard to bear the thought of simply tossing them into the compost pile.  They're edible - I grew up in the don't waste any food school of rearing; maybe it's that I still carry with me the psychological marks of a Third World birth, and was raised by parents who came into adulthood there.  We just don't waste food.  So I felt the need to pick them carefully and clean them for a salad.  Last year I got into trouble not getting to them early enough - they grew and grew and grew, and we could not eat enough of them, my sister and I.  They got too big and the leaves were large, and there were too many plants.  So today's resolution was to get them while they were still teeny weeny to small, so they could be consumed, and as sissy was in class today, consumed alone by me, for lunch.

 

This pot stayed intact; it's for the regular purple shiso.  Probably needs some thinning in days to come.

After: Blackberry pot after being mostly weeded of the green shiso.

 

The initial harvest.

Then I realized how much green shiso there was in the blackberry planter.



And at the end of it all, there was enough for a light lunch!  I was going to have bun (rice noodles) at first, but then realized I had enough leaves to probably have a full-blown salad.  Luckily, the stems are still tender and edible - less work for me!  (And, I wanted to save enough room in the belly for potential street fair food.)

 

Just added meatless sausage (pretty tasty!), and tossed it in nuoc man with some sriracha.  Not bad.

So there we have it - two birds with one stone.  Weeding and eating :)