Harvest Monday - November 23, 2015

Harvests slowed down a lot last week. Other than clearing out the leek patch it was just a bit of this and a bit of that.

The notable harvest of the week was the first couple of decent parsnips that I've ever managed to grow.

Gladiator parsnips

My ruler shows that they are a bit more than 12 inches long, and for the rest of the world it actually also shows that they are more than 30 centimeters long. Those tops are huge also, but now I've learned, fortunately not through experience, that the greens should be handled with caution because they contain a chemical that reacts with UV light to produce skin rashes and blisters.

The leaves went into the compost and the roots went into a batch of soup that also featured the harvest in the next photo, some Spigariello Riccia broccoli. Spigariello is a leafy broccoli but the one remaining plant in my garden is resisting the urge to bloom and is just huge and leafy. I took a look at the plant tag yesterday and noticed that I sowed the seeds for this plant way back on February 5. It was a big branch that I cut off, but after trimming off the individual shoots it produced about half a pound of tender leaves and shoots.

Spigariello Liscia broccoli

The other broccolis that I harvested look more like you would expect broccoli to appear, just on the small side.

Batavia broccoli

As I said, I cleared out the leek patch. They looked ok after they were cleaned up and the white parts and tender green parts are tasty. A couple of the larger leeks went into the soup.

Blue Solaise leeks

It would have been nice to leave the leeks in the garden to harvest them as needed over the next couple of months, but you can see below how the leaves have become terribly infected with rust. They were getting to be pretty disgusting and had to go. I especially didn't want them to be a nice new source of spores for the garlic that is sprouting in the next bed over.

Last week I decided to dry more of the the Mareko Fana peppers that I had harvested the week before.

Mareko Fana peppers ready for dehydrating

I finally got around to grinding up the first batch of dried Mareko Fanas and found that they are absolutely delicious. The ground peppers are a lovely brick red color and have a sweet fruity flavor. Removing the cores and seeds before drying them reduced the heat to a very pleasant mild level. It's a common misconception that the heat in chile peppers is in the seeds, but the seeds are not the culprits,  the heat is in what the seeds are attached to - the core and the ribs, but especially the core. I left a little of the ribs in the peppers that I dried to preserve some of the heat.

Ground Mareko Fana peppers

A few years ago I figured out a way to grind dried peppers to a coarse texture that approximates commercially ground chile pepper flakes. Instead of using my coffee/spice mill I run them through the food grinder (aka meat grinder) attachment for my mixer. I wrote a short post back then which you can find here.

That's about it for the past week other than a tiny trickle of half ripe cherry tomatoes and a few more little harvests of broccoli, none of which got photographed.

Here's the details of the harvests for the past week:

Apollo brokali - 5.3 oz.
Batavia broccoli - 8.1 oz.
Di Ciccio broccoli - 9.3 oz.
Spigariello Riccia broccoli - 8.7 oz.
Blue Solaise leeks - 7 lb., 15.7 oz.
Gladiator parsnips - 11.4 oz. (roots only)
Camp Joy cherry tomatoes - 2.2 oz.
Sweet Gold cherry tomatoes - 1.6 oz.

Total harvests for the week - 10 lb., 14.3 oz. (4.9 kg.)
2015 YTD - 1190 lb., 2.1 oz. (539.8 kg.)

Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave on his blog Our Happy Acres, head on over there to be inspired by what other garden bloggers have been harvesting and cooking up lately.