Harvest Monday - October 24, 2016

The harvests are on the verge of really slowing down now. I gathered the final good sized flush of cherry tomatoes and just a few of the larger fruited tomatoes.

Sweet Gold

Piccolo Dattero and Camp Joy plus one Mavritanskite

There would have been more Camp Joy cherry tomatoes, but they have turned out to be the rats new favorite garden treat. I'm hoping that the trio of rats that got snapped in the traps that I set in the tomato vines were the primary culprits and that there aren't too many more waiting in the brush for their chance to nab some tomatoey treats.

Jaune Flamme, Pantano, Orange Jazz, Mavritanskite
Pomme d'Amour, and Reisetomate from Transylvania

Some Mareko Fana peppers were ripe enough to harvest. My one plant isn't as large as either plant I grew last year so I won't be harvesting anywhere near as much. But I'm happy with what I'm getting because I thought I might get nothing this year because of the you-know-whos.

Mareko Fana

The Gogosar peppers that I had hidden under a thick layer of Agribon fabric produced some very nice peppers, considering. And there were a few decent Yummy Belles peppers to be had when I cleared out the plants.

Gogosar and Yummy Belles

I pulled out the Petite Marseillais plants and got a lot of peppers, but most of them were already getting dry and wrinkled. The majority of them were cut into strips and dehydrated.

Petite Marseillais

The Tromba d'Albenga vines popped one more squash.

Tromba d'Albenga

And I cut a few sprouts, a bit overgrown but still good, from the Calabrese broccoli plants. I have found that I actually prefer the sprouting broccoli when the heads loosen up a bit.

Calabrese

That was it for the week. It won't be long before the harvests are dominated by leafy greens which I'm kinda craving now that the season has turned to shorter days and colder nights.

I cut up one of the Discus Buttercup squash that I harvested a few weeks ago, one of the sunburned ones that was actually getting a bit moldy where the skin was damaged. It turned out to be very good, dense and a bit dry, not too sweet but not bland. I cut it in thin wedges, skin removed, and first sautéed the wedges in brown butter and then finished them in the oven. Served with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, some grated parmesan, and sage leaves browned in butter. Dave and I loved it.

And I used a pound of the Zuni tomatillos that I harvested the week before last to make a "Finger Salsa", following a recipe (mostly) from Gran Cocina Latina by Maricele E. Presilla. That also used up a few tomatoes, an onion from my stash, and some fresh cilantro from the garden. It was really good. Dave wanted to make sure that I could make it again. The rest of the tomatillos got roasted and frozen in portions for future use.

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

Calabrese broccoli - 10.4 oz.
Gogosar peppers - 3.6 lb.
Mareko Fana peppers - 5.7 oz.
Petite Marseillais peppers - 2.4 lb.
Yummy Belles peppers - 10.6 oz.
Camp Joy cherry tomatoes - 2.2 lb.
Jaune Flamme tomatoes - 1.4 lb.
Mavritanskite tomatoes - 13.5 oz.
Orange Jazz tomatoes - 1.3 lb.
Pantano tomatoes - 1.2 lb.
Piccolo Dattero cherry tomatoes - 2.5 lb.
Pomme d'Amour tomatoes - 1.4 lb.
Resietomate from Transylvania tomatoes - 1.6 lb.
Sweet Gold cherry tomatoes - 4.5 lb.
Tromba d'Albenga squash - 1.4 lb.

Total harvests for the past week - 26.1 lb. (11.8 kg.)
2016 YTD - 826.8 lb. (375 kg.)

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