Harvest Monday - November 28, 2011 (Plus a bit of an update)

I managed to photograph one of my harvests last week. The short days at this time of year often find me harvesting at the end of the day in the failing light and once I get done there isn't enough natural light left to take a decent photograph so I skip it. For this harvest I took the camera with me to the garden and just got the job done before the veggies even got out of the harvest basket.

The only thing new in this basket is a small harvest of Corazon de Paloma peppers, a small podded pepper with a big chile bite. I dried these using my 200°F slow roast in the oven method. I'm hoping to be able to harvest a few more ripe peppers from the garden before we get our first freeze of the season. Last year the first freeze came the night of November 24 and the year before it came on December 8. We had one freeze warning a couple of weeks ago but it didn't get that cold this close to the coast. And now, dare I mention it, we are enjoying one of those amazing warm spells that we can have here at this time of year and it is forecast to hold through the coming weekend.

This is about half of the Stregonta Borlotti beans that I harvested. I took a photograph of the harvest before the beans obscured the rest of the harvest. I harvested over 2 pounds of beans in their pods that day but I'm only including shelled beans that I've cooked in the totals shown below. The 8 ounces of beans that I shelled this week were included in my annual post-Thanksgiving pot of Turkey-Vegetable soup.

This is another head of Piracicaba broccoli from the fall planting. The other greens in the basket are shoots from the Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli that is a holdover from the spring planting, the fall planting hasn't started producing yet. It's nice that the Piracicaba broccoli produces rather quickly and the Di Sarno broccoli matures later, I can't say that I planned it that way, it just so happens to be.

The only other new item was the first harvest of Lacinato kale for human consumption, the chickens have been getting kale treats for weeks already but I don't weigh that. I used it to make Kale Caesar Salad. Oh wow, was that good, I got it right on the first attempt, I don't need to do any recipe adjustments for my taste. My husband is already asking when we're going to have it again.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Stregonta borlotti beans - 8 oz.
Chioggia beets - 13.3 oz. (w/o aphidy greens)
Egyptische Platronde beets - 15.9 oz. (w/o aphidy greens)
Di Sarno Calabrese broccoli - 22.8 oz (spring planting)
Piracicba broccoli - 14.7 oz.
Lacinato kale - 15.5 oz.
Big Jim newmex chile peppers - 4.5 oz.
Corazon de Paloma chile peppers - 7.3 oz.
Shishito peppers - 6 oz.

The total harvests for the week were - 6 lb., 12.3 oz.
The total harvests for the year have been - 555 lb., 13.6 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.

And now for a bit of an update on what's growing in the garden. I cleared out the space where the Tarbais and Musica pole beans and the cucumbers where growing and now I've got a new crop of water bottles and row cover going. Just kidding, the water bottle cloches are protecting new plantings of Flamingo chard (4 in the foreground) and Guntmadingen Winter Spinach. The rowcover in the rear is protecting newly transplanted Renee's Golden Beets.

Here's the September planting of Guntmadingen Winter Spinach (what's left of it after the sow bugs munched on the seedlings) which I've not bothered to uncover to photograph until last week. It looks like I need to harvest some of it.

This variety of Spinach has a very interesting cut leaf. I can't wait to try it, last winter I found it to be very sweet tasting for spinach, with less of the oxalic acid tang and fuzziness that most spinaches have when eaten raw. I think that this will make a really good wilted spinach salad.