In my experience, leafy greens are among the easiest kinds of veggies to grow. But they don’t keep for very long and after you’ve given basketfuls of them to your friends and eaten stir-fried leafy greens, leafy greens in soups, in stews, and added to salads, and they’re still coming, what do you do with them next?
Below is a basket of produce from our modular veggie garden. I’ve lost count of how many of these I’ve brought to the kitchen or given as return gifts to friends in exchange for music lessons, fruit, preserves, and general good-will.
But lately I’m finding that I even have more green leaves than I can reasonably give away. Here are two ideas for preserving leafy greens when this happens to you. The first is a bit of an experiment. The second is a tried and true favourite in my kitchen.
The experiment: can you make sauerkraut with green cabbages that haven’t formed heads?
There are quite a number of cabbages like this one in the garden that haven’t had time to form heads yet and are starting to get a bit chewed by caterpillars. We’ve been eating the outer leaves from them for a while but yesterday I decided to harvest some whole cabbages and use them to make ‘kraut, even though they haven’t headed yet.
Because:
- I’m not certain they will head at all; our hot, dry weather is approaching and they may not have time to form heads before they think about going to seed.
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