Monday, December 12, 2011

Harvest Monday - December 12, 2011

Most of the past week we had clear and cold weather with freeze warnings so I harvested all the ripe peppers from the late producing baccatum plants and even a few runty pods off of one chinense plant. Here's the harvest from last Wednesday.


Rainforest

Christmas Bell and Aji Habanero

Aji Habanero

Aji de la Tierra

Chiero Recife


The Chiero Recife was the only chinense species that I got to harvest this year. I also harvested a few other peppers last Monday plus all the remaining eggplants in the garden. Here's the harvest from Monday:


Aji Angelo

Corazon de Paloma and Yellow Manzano

Big Jim

Diamond eggplant

Rosa Bianca eggplant


The rest of the harvests were very green, mostly Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli, a bit of Piracicaba broccoli, and a head of Sweetie Baby romaine lettuce. Oh, and I shelled the last of the dried Stregonta Borlotti beans. I love the colors of the Stregonta Borlottis, most of them have a tan background, overlaid with lavendar, with dark purple blotches over all, but there is quite a bit of variation in the mix of the three colors.







I could have harvested more vegetables from the garden, there's a bit more napa cabbage left, lots of spinach, some kale, celery root, and beets that are ready to harvest, but we've been out more nights than usual so I haven't been doing much cooking from the garden. Fortunately, most of the vegetables will hold in the garden quite well during the cold short days of December and January, we rarely weather cold enough to damage them.

Here's what I harvested last week:

Stregonta Borlotti beans - 1 lb., 1.2 oz.
Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli - 1 lb., 4.5 oz.
Piracicaba broccoli - 3.1 oz.
Sweetie Baby romaine lettuce - 10.1 oz.
Aji Angelo peppers - 3.9 oz.
Aji de la Tierra peppers - 5.4 oz.
Aji Habanero peppers - 10.2 oz.
Big Jim peppers - 15.7 oz.
Chiero Recife peppers - 1.1 oz.
Christmas Bell peppers - 1.1 oz.
Corazon de Paloma peppers - 2.9 oz.
Rainforest peppers - 5.8 oz.
Yellow Manzano peppers - 2.6 oz.

The harvest totals for the week were - 6 lb., 5.6 oz.
The total for the year is - 567 lb., 8.4 oz.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.

17 comments:

  1. Looks lovely. I keep thinking your garden mojo is going to rub off on me, but so far no go.
    The beans remind me of my haul from Lucca. They must be related.

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  2. Beautiful harvest. If I'm lucky I'll be harvesting green, green, and more green in the weeks to come. But yours is colorful still.

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  3. Such a lovely selection of peppers, as usual! Big Jim let me down this year, but thankfully Anaheim did well. My pepper tastes run to the milder types.

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  4. A colorful harvest. Love your dried beans. Will the colors change after cooking?

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  5. Beautiful harvest..I love the colors of your peppers- making me long for summer already!

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  6. Colourful harvest! Wow I am amazed on the varieties of peppers and eggplants that you grow.

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  7. Wow those are pretty peppers. The piles of them with different shapes and colors is really beautiful. Lots of good eating coming from your garden.

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  8. It always amazes me just how much and for how long you are able to harvest such a fantastic variety of vegetables...very nice. We grew that Diamond eggplant this past summer and it did pretty well for us.

    So, if you don't mind, I have a question. You had previously mentioned to me that you grew/grow the Olive Leaf arugula...is it an annual or perennial variety? Also, were you happy with the service and seeds from Gourmetseed Co.? Thanks.:)

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  9. Norma, the colors on the beans do fade away with cooking.

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  10. Mr. H, Ah, the joy of gardening in zone 9!

    The Olive Leaf arugula is a perennial variety. Mine was allowed to go to seed and now it volunteers all over the garden. It doesn't all come true, but in my garden that is prpbably because it is very attractive to pollinators and it is probably crossing wildly with other perennial arugulas in the neighborhood.

    I've been ordering from Gourmet Seed for a few years now and have found their service to be prompt, the seeds well packaged (some in the original Italian seed packets and some repackaged into their own packets), and the seed quality has always been very good. I do recommend them.

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  11. Incredible bounty, especially for those of us from New England! What do you do with the peppers — preserve or dry them?

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  12. diaryofatomato, I dry most of them, and at this time of year I usually end up "drying" them in a 200° oven which makes them crisp and barely toasted. The green ones get cooked and eaten right away.

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  13. That is a LOT of peppers! Do you really use so many of the really hot ones? I grew a habanero one year and I don't think we used more than one or two of them! Tho I adore mild green chili and pickled jalapeno.

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  14. Mary, Most of the peppers that I grow are mild to medium hot. I don't like really hot peppers, so in spite of its name, the Aji Habanero is totally sweet. The hottest pepper from my garden this year was the Yellow Manzano. I haven't grown a true Habanero in a couple of years, and then I didn't end up using very many of them because they were too hot!

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  15. Thanks Michelle, much appreciated.:)

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  16. Hi Michelle,

    Wat you are blogging about from 2007, grow and cook, I've started it this year (october, so not much vegetables are growing right now). I'm glad to find your blog and hopefully can learn from you. I live in the Netherlands, USDA zone 8, in a seaclimate.

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