Harvest Monday - August 6, 2012

This was the bulk of my harvests for the past week. Zucchini, broccoli, cucumbers, scallions, capers, green coriander...

And the first Manzano chile pepper. I used this pepper in a peach and cucumber salsa with scallions and green coriander that I served with some local California Halibut that came from the CSF that I subscribe to. I prepared the halibut by wrapping it in fig leaves and grilling it on the barbeque. When the fish was finished I then plopped my trusty grill basket on the barbeque and "stir fried" a mix of snap peas, beans, zucchini and red onions which was tossed with chopped fresh basil just before I served it. Yum, summer dining at its best!

The filet beans that graced my harvest basket from June 14 through July 27 are finished and I will take out the plants today and replace them with some Fagiolo del Purgatorio beans that I sowed in paper pots on July 30. The Purgatorio beans are a bush type that produce small white dry beans that are great for making bean salads. I acquired my original seeds years ago through the Seed Savers Exchange annual yearbook. The last time I grew them out and saved seeds was in 2006 so I am very pleasantly surprised to find that most of my seeds have germinated. It's pushing it a bit to be planting a dry bean variety at this time of year, but last year I sowed Stregonta pole borlotti beans on July 25 and successfully brought in a good crop, and last year was quite a bit cooler than this year.

I've been harvesting a lot of green coriander seeds but I've not been using them right away. I found that the flavor of dried coriander is far superior when I harvest the seeds when fat and still green and then dry them indoors on a tray rather than letting them dry on the plants. This was something of a doh! moment, I've used this technique for harvesting fennel seeds for a long time, I should have figured out long ago that it would work for coriander seeds as well. doh!

Here's the harvest totals for the past week:

Apollo broccoli - 14.4 oz.
Capers - 1.6 oz.
Green Fingers Persian cucumbers - 3.6 oz.
Tasty Green Japanese cucumbers - 13.1 oz.
Parade Scallions - 1.8 oz.
Yellow Manzano chile peppers - 1.3 oz.
Da Fiore zucchini - 3 lb., .3 oz.
Zucchini blossoms - 1.2 oz.

The total harvests for the week came out to - 5 lb., 5.3 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for the year to - 88 lb., 13.9 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.