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| Stocky Red Roaster |
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| Lady Bell |
Lady Bells have a surprising diversity of shapes and sizes for an F1 hybrid. I don't care about that, they have been a reliable producer and are very tasty. They have the thickest and sweetest flesh of any of the short season/cool climate bells that I've grown. Lady Bells roast beautifully also and thanks to some inspiration from Dave of Our Happy Acres I've started to slice and dehydrate the more odd shaped and difficult to roast peppers. The dried slices will be a great addition to my Dave's lunch frittatas.
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| Shephard's Ramshorn and Piment doux long des Landes |
Shephard's Ramshorn is another good roasting pepper. It's larger and a little more irregularly shaped than Stocky Red Roaster. Piment doux long des Landes is a French sweet frying pepper similar to Jimmy Nardello. I like to slice it up fresh, either green or ripe, and use it in salads and sautes. It also dries well.
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| Giallo di Cuneo and Odessa Market |
Gially di Cuneo is an Italian bell pepper from Piemonte. It's from a northern alpine region so I thought it might do well in my cool climate and I'm very happy with it so far. The plants are compact and productive, the peppers are small to medium sized with good thick sweet flesh. It's not a hybrid but I don't know if it's an heirloom or not. I'll definitely be growing it again next year. Odessa Market is a pepper that I've been growing a few years now. It's a great thick fleshed sweet roaster but also good fresh in either it's bright apple green stage or it's ripe red stage. It also grows on nice compact plants and is one of the first peppers to ripen for me.
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| Lady Bell and Giallo di Cuneo |
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| Pimento de Padron and NTR |
The Padron plants are as productive as ever. They were such a disappointment last year, the plants had pretty much stopped producing by this time. I changed my seed source this year from Renee's back to Franchi. It's one of the few disappoints I've had with Renee's seeds. The pepper sharing space in the basket with the Padrons and also shown below came from a plant that should have been Topepo Rosso, but it most certainly isn't, thus my name for it - NTR, as in Not Topepo Rosso. Topepo Rosso peppers are round and thick fleshed, like a pimiento pepper and the variety I'm growing is sweet. This pepper is elongated and thin fleshed, sweet but with a little kick of heat, in fact they are pretty tasty.
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| NTR and Tarahumara Chile Colorado Musica and Golden Gate beans Tasty Treat and Garden Oasis cucumbers |
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| Garden Oasis and Tasty Treat cucumbers Musica and Golden Gate beans |
Take a good look at those Tasty Treat and Garden Oasis cucumbers above, that's the final harvest that I plucked from the vines as I pulled them out. The Green Fingers Persian cucumbers that I planted recently when I thought the spring planted cucumber plants were dying (but didn't) have started to produce and just how many cucumbers do I need?! The Golden Gate beans are done also, the plants have been dying and what beans they managed to produce weren't very good so I pulled them out. The Musica beans put out a great second harvest but there's a population explosion of spider mites in the plants. I know that when the mites are producing webbing that the plants are doomed so that could be one of the last harvests of good quality beans from the plants.
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| Kagraner Sommer butterhead lettuce |
That's the first head of summer planted lettuce. We had the first BLT last night along with a Harvest Salad that Dave spotted in the latest issue of Food & Wine magazine that he begged me to make. It was good, with a shallot vinaigrette, gorgonzola dolce, grapes, bacon, and hazelnuts.
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| Tromba d'Albenga and Romanesco zucchinis |
There's more Romanesco zucchini lurking in the bottom of the basket. I'm just about zuked out and am in the process of removing the Romanesco. The Tromba Squash is staying for now.
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| Honey Nut butternut squashes |
The butternut vines were pretty much dead so I cleared them out and collected the squash. That's the production of 2 vines. The squash shown below is the largest of the bunch. These haven't been weighed yet so they aren't in the tally. If these are good eating I'll have to remember to grow 3 or 4 plants next year.
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| Largest Honey Nut butternut squash |
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| Chianti Rose |
Back to the harvest of red veg. Both Chianti Rose and Potiron Ecarlete produced nice harvests this week but there's only a few fruits left on each plant. So this will be the last tomato porn for the season. I also harvested more Amish Paste tomatoes but didn't photograph the pitiful things. It was the final harvest for one of the two plants which I pulled out and there's just a few more fruits on the remaining plant.
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| Potiron Ecarlate |
The cherry tomatoes are still producing well but I didn't get around to photographing them. Jaune Flamme keeps producing good tomatoes as well, but those also didn't get photographed. I also harvested but didn't photograph more broccoli and more melons and started to collect the dry pods from the Petaluma Gold Rush beans and I also cut the first ears of Floriani Red flint corn.
It was another huge week of harvests, especially considering that not everything I harvested has made it into the tally yet.
Here's the weigh-in for the past week:
Golden Gate beans - 7.4 oz.
Musica beans - 3 lb., 5.8 oz.
Di Ciccio broccoli - 1 lb., 1.3 oz.
Garden Oasis cucumbers - 1 lb.
Green Fingers cucumbers - 1 lb., 3.7 oz.
Tasty Treat cucumbers - 3 lb., 2.2 oz.
Kagraner Sommer butterhead lettuce - 1 lb., 11.2 oz.
Alvaro Charentais melons - 4 lb., 12.6 oz.
Retato Degli Tuscan melons - 6 lb., 3.4 oz.
Red Candy Apple onion - 1 lb., 2 oz.
Giallo di Cuneo bell peppers - 2 lb., 1.2 oz.
Lady Bell peppers - 8 lb., 3.7 oz.
NTR peppers - 1 lb., 1.2 oz.
Odessa Market peppers - 2 lb., 5.5 oz.
Padron peppers - 1 lb., 14.4 oz.
Pimento doux long des Landes peppers - 7.3 oz.
Shephard's Ramshorn peppers - 3 lb., 6.8 oz.
Stocky Red Roaster peppers - 3 lb., 10.2 oz.
Tarahumara Chile Colorado - 2.5 oz.
Amish Paste tomatoes - 7 lb., 6.6 oz.
Chianti Rose tomatoes - 8 lb., 9.5 oz.
Isis Candy cherry tomatoes - 2 lb., 14.5 oz.
Jaune Flamme tomatoes - 4 lb., 12.8 oz.
Potiron Ecarlate tomatoes - 6 lb., 14.3 oz.
Sweet Gold cherry tomatoes - 3 lb., 10.1 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 3 lb., 11.5 oz.
Tromba d'Albenga zucchini - 8 lb., 11.6 oz.
Whew! The total tally for last week was - 94 lb., 1.3 oz.
Which brings the total tally for 2014 up to - 927 lb., 15.3 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.
Wow - 94 lbs is a crazy week - can't believe that doesn't even include the butternuts. What an incredible variety of peppers - such an inspiration! The fact that the same variety from two different sources behaved so differently is quite interesting - I would never have thought to look to the seed source and not the variety when it came to vigour. That's definitely something to keep in mine if you have a bad year with a particular veg.
ReplyDeleteAnd I guess your NTC can join my NCK (curly kale) - really tasty but who know what it is... ;)
Nice assortment of peppers. I may look at some of these like Stocky Red Roaster and Odessa Market for my garden next year. The Lipstick is late and not very productive. Carmen has been great but a little later than its stated 75 days. My Musica beans are also still cranking out beans and are loaded with flowers and baby beans.
ReplyDeleteWhy are you so mean, Michelle? I can't believe how beautiful your harvests are. I was intrigued by the Honey Nut squash. Is that a variety of butternut (C. moschata)? I really would like to try it out here. Do you remember your seed source?
ReplyDeleteIt is a moschata squash, I read that it was developed by crossing a butternut with a buttercup squash. My seeds came from Renee's Garden, but there's a few other sources including High Mowing, Harris, and Southern Exposure. I don't intend to be mean, really. :-/
ReplyDeleteGorgeous peppers! I've usually managed to squeak out enough jalapenos for my needs, but have always struggled with sweet peppers. Do you have good advice elsewhere on your blog on best techniques? You sure seem to know what you are doing!
ReplyDeleteWhat a huge pepper haul this week. And I wish I could have had enough zucchini to want to pull a plant because I'm tired of it. Some year I probably will.
ReplyDeleteQuite a parade of peppers, the Honey Nut butternut squash sounds interesting, looking forward to learning how it tastes.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant peppers, Michelle! The thing which strikes me most about your photos is that they are ALL taken in bright sunshine, which really makes them glow. Interesting to read that you have had some seeds that have produced unexpected results (i.e. your NTR). I have had a few mis-labelled seeds too. Sometimes a seed of something else creeps into a pack by mistake.
ReplyDelete