There's more of the "usual suspects" in the harvest basket this week, but first a parade of runty onions.
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| Red River, Bianca di Maggio, Rossa Lunga di Firenze, Australian Brown |
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| Flat of Italy |
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| Desert Sunrise |
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| Tropeana Lunga |
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| Bronze D'Amposta |
Bronze D'Amposta was the worst of the lot, all but one of them bolted. In spite of devoting more space than ever and growing more varieties than in past years I ended up with a much smaller total harvest of onions than in prior years. This year the total harvest, including spring and uncured onions was 51 pounds. 2016 was 86 pounds, 2015 was 141 pounds, 2014 was 93 pounds. Curse that downy mildew!
Enough of the onions and on to the stars of the show for the week.
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| Mavritanskite |
The first and for a while the only big tomato. This one set while the young plants were enjoying the protection of a mini greenhouse before the plants were set out in the garden. I think it will be a few weeks before I harvest another large tomato. It was absolutely delicious paired up with some burrata and basil.
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| Green Bee |
We sampled the first ripe
Green Bee cherry tomatoes. These little beauties are unique because they don't become soft when they ripen. You can tell when they are ripe when the background color develops hints of yellow and/or pink, the unripe fruits are green on green. The first few bites were good!
A few more Purple Bumblebee and Piccolo Dattero cherry tomatoes ripened, along with the first Jaune Flamme and Marzano Fire tomatoes. The Marzano Fire tomatoes are a striped paste tomato but they have a nice balance of sweetness and acidity that makes them a tasty slicing tomato too. We enjoyed one of the Marzano Fires long with most of the cherry tomatoes in a "Zoodle" dish inspired by a Vietnamese rice noodle salad. I used a few big Romanesco zucchinis to make spiralized noodles that I salted, rinsed, and then squeezed in a dish towel to remove excess moisture. Then I piled the uncooked zoodles in individual bowls, topped them with cut up tomatoes, sliced cucumber, thin sliced red onion, chopped cilantro and basil, chopped roasted salted peanuts, cold cooked shrimp, and dressed with a Vietnamese Nuoc Cham sauce (sugar, water, fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, chiles, shallot). Dave declared it a winner and said I should make it again so I guess I'll have to write up the recipe for my recipe blog.
And now for the lineup of the usual suspects.
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| Batavia Broccoli Side Shoot! |
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| Green Fingers Cucumbers |
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| Batavia Broccoli shoots and Broccolini |
Even though my kitchen project is still in process I manage to turn out a few good meals. I found that my 10-inch cast iron skillet fits perfectly in my toaster oven so I made a version of a
Broccoli Raab Frittata using broccoli instead of the raab and substituting bacon for spicy Italian sausage and using only only 2 cheeses instead of 4. It came out great.
I've also been relying on my Big Green Egg. The other night I grilled up a few of the Tromba squash, cut into about 8-inch lengths and sliced in half. I topped those with a mixture of sauteed ground lamb, onion, and dried sweet peppers seasoned with cumin, cinnamon, fennel pollen, pomegranate molasses, tomato puree, and cilantro. A cast iron skillet works well in the BGE for sautéing which is how I made the topping.
That's the latest from my garden and kitchen. 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.
That's a bountiful harvest! I tried to get seeds for Bronze D'Amposta this spring through Baker Creek, but they were sold out. It seems that may have been a happy misfortune for me, though I'm truly sorry to see that your onion harvest was far below your expected. When do you generally plant onions in your area?
ReplyDeleteBaker Creek is where I got the Bronze D'Amposta seeds so I guess they ran out. I set out onion seedlings in January here. If I'm starting from seed I sow them in pots in early November.
DeleteHaha, your "side shoot" looks bigger than my biggest broccoli this year. I guess your onion harvest is small by comparison to other years, but 51 pounds is still huge in my book. The Mavritanskite tomato is flawless. I do want the recipe for the Vietnamese sauce--it sounds delicious. One last question, what's the brown tool thing in the harvest basket with the trombones?
ReplyDeleteNot all the side shoots are like that! That's my folding Opinel knife that I use exclusively for harvesting. Actually, I was pretty surprised at that 51 pound total, the onions were hit so hard by downy mildew that I almost pulled all of them out to toss in the trash. I didn't get around to pulling all of them and then the mildew relented and the onions started to bulb up so I went with it to see what would happen. Not bad considering.
DeleteI'll post my favorite version of the sauce on my recipe blog later along with the recipe for the Vietnamese Zoodles.
50-140 lbs of onions? Are you running a restaurant or what? I'd take those runty onions any day ...
ReplyDeleteI did cut back after that 140 pound deluge. Trust me, I'm happy to have the runts, it's them or store bought. I'll be missing even the runts next year because I'm not going through the heartbreak of constant downy mildew infections again.
DeleteDo you have any onion cultivars that are resistant to downy mildew? We have Santero available here in the UK, which does shake it off a bit quicker and continue to grow and bulb up. Might be worth a check perhaps? It is devastating seeing your whole crop succumb like that
DeleteI'll take some of the runty onions off your hands, they look pretty good to me. The big slicer tomato is a specimen, but that's the only one? Your growing seasons must be way different than what we have in the temperate midwest.
ReplyDeleteThose runts are better than I hoped they would be so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. That's the only slicer for now, the rest will come in mostly in September and October - diseases and pests allowing. The seasons are different here near the cold Pacific - long cool spring, late summer and delightful warm autumn. I have been able to harvest tomatoes and peppers through November some years.
DeleteI pulled up all our onion today, now we have to hope the rain stays off so that they dry off. It's always tricky to tell when green tomatoes are ripe, the mind tells you green means unripe. It's the same with greengages which we hope harvesting soon.
ReplyDeleteThe green when ripe tomatoes are a bit of a mind bender. All the ones that I've grown so far develop a yellow tinge when ripe and most of them get a bit soft.
DeleteThe Vietnamese zoodle salad sounds really tasty and I can see me making it here, though with something other than shrimp since it doesn't agree with my wife. I've done done raw zoodle salads with Mediterranean ingredients but that's about it.
ReplyDeleteThe Green Bee looks something I would like but it didn't make the cutoff this year for me. I'm growing an unnamed and unreleased green one though from Artisan Seeds but it is bigger than the Green Bee, and softens when ripe. I'll be interested to see your overall impression if it once you've had more to taste.
The Vietnamese salads are also great with grilled pork or chicken or even grilled tofu. I usually end up doing shrimp because I keep frozen cooked shrimp on hand and it's quick to thaw out.
DeleteI will report back on the Green Bees when I get a more thorough taste test.
That is one whopper of a tomato and that broccoli "side" shoot...whoa! I'm not having much luck lately with my onions either. I had to harvest about half of a bed before I went away and the onions were definitely small. Not sure yet if they were smaller than last year, but they certainly weren't that much bigger either. I have a feeling I'm not amending the bed enough and have to really look at upping that next season.
ReplyDelete