Harvest Monday - December 31, 2018

It's the last day of the year and the weather has turned seasonably cool during the day and nippy at night, but unfortunately the rain has stopped for now. The clear night skies brought the threat of the first frosty last week so I decided to harvest most of the ripe or ripening peppers that were left in the garden. I found more than I expected, about 10 pounds which put my total pepper harvests for the year at about 222 pounds. That's a huge chunk of my total harvests for the year of 533 pounds which is about half of the total harvests for 2017.

I only harvested the ripest Joe's Giant Aji Amarillos and left quite a few green and ripening peppers on the plants. The predicted frost didn't actually materialize so the remaining peppers in the garden are still good.

Joe's Giant Aji Amarillo

The Habanadas plants were in better shape than I expected, they usually decline rapidly when cold and wet weather settles in. Most of the peppers were only about half ripe though, they should be more of a bright orange color.

Habanada and Sugar Rush Red

There's actually one new very late ripening variety in the harvest basket. Aji Banana looks almost identical to Joe's Giant Aji except that it isn't quite as giant as Joe's. I haven't tasted it yet so I don't know how the flavor or heat level compares to Joe's.

Aji Cacho de Cabra, Aji Banana, Aji Amarillo Grande,
Craig's Grande Jalapeno, Ethiopian Brown

The last couple of heads of Three Heart butterhead lettuce held up pretty well, the rain had spoiled some of the outer leaves but the hearts were sound. The Rishad cress is loving the colder weather. This mildly spicy green grows very quickly and is easiest to harvest as whole plants. There's enough left in the garden for a few more harvests like this but I suspect that it may start to bolt pretty soon so I'm going to scatter more seeds about somewhere.

Rishad Cress and Three Heart Butterhead Lettuce

I pulled a couple more Short Stuff carrots and cut more stalks of Pink Plume celery. The photo is deceptive, the big carrot weighs about 1/2 pound. 

Short Stuff Carrots
Pink Plume Celery
Polyvit Chives

That's the latest from my garden. 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. 

Next week I'll be giving Dave a break from the duties of hosting Harvest Monday so if you are looking to link up or find links to other Harvest Monday posts please stop by. Dave will resume his duties as host on February 4.

Happy New Year! Wishing you all success in you 2019 gardening endeavors.

Harvest Monday - December 24, 2018

There's a little more to show this week than last because I actually took some photos.

I thinned out the daikon radishes again and found some promising roots. The photo is deceiving though, those smallest roots are barely the size of a salad type radish. All those greens were pristine, tender and green with barely an aphid to be found. I blanched the greens for future use. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the Bora King and Mini Purple radishes other than size and the fact that Bora King tends to throw off a few more off-type white roots. They're both good and I'll happily continue to grow both so long as I still have viable seeds.

Bora King and Mini Purple Daikon Radishes

My second harvest of Amsterdam Prickly Seeded spinach was thankfully less infested with leaf miners than the first harvest. I didn't think I was going to be able to use these right away because we had planned a trip over the holiday so I blanched and froze them. As it turned out we ended up cancelling our trip so we could have enjoyed fresh spinach but it is nice to have some spinach handy in the freezer for quick meal prep.

Amsterdam Prickly Seeded Spinach

This will be the last arugula harvest for a while since the whole lot was starting to bolt. I'm not surprised considering I sowed this round in September and then we had a long warm fall so I was expecting it to bolt even sooner. The weather has stayed mild so I took the chance of sowing more seeds. Normally I don't bother trying to sow arugula in December because the cold weather seems to stunt the plants but I've noticed that some cress that volunteered is growing better than expected so perhaps the arugula will too. I've got more than enough seeds and space in the garden so it is worth the effort.

Speedy Arugula

Our last round of rain was not kind to the butterhead lettuce, it was starting to get some rot, so I harvested the 2 worst looking heads. Fortunately the rot was confined to the outer leaves and I was able to salvage quite a bit so it wasn't too much of a loss. More rain is due tonight so I should go rescue the last 2 heads today.

Three Heart Butterhead Lettuce

I did not grow any squash this year and this is not a squash that I purchased, it's a Terremoto squash from 2017. These are long keeping squashes and this one was the champ, it only started developing a soft spot this past week. The only problem with keeping a squash so long is that it loses it sweetness. I prepared one quarter of it by roasting slices and topping it with a cilantro salsa and yogurt and the lack of sweetness marred the dish. Another quarter went into a pureed soup with Asian flavors which turned out to be quite delicious because I was able to adjust the balance of flavors. I'll roast the rest of the squash, puree it, and freeze it for future use.

Terremoto Squash from 2017

Not pictured are some Sugar Rush Red and Sugar Rush Peach peppers that came from plants that I cleared out of the garden. Pepper season is not over here yet but I just didn't feel the need to take yet another photo of yet more peppers. Maybe next time.

That's the latest from my garden, head on over Dave's blog Our Happy Acres to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately. And my warmest wishes for the holidays to those of you who celebrate.

Harvest Monday - December 17, 2018

The harvest posts are quick and easy at this time of year when the harvests are less abundant and especially when I don't take very many photos. I often times find myself going out to garden at the end of the day to quickly harvest something for dinner and at this time of year it often means there isn't enough light left to take a decent photo. That's why today there's only one harvest photo to show for a week's worth of harvests.

Joe's Giant Aji, Sugar Rush Peach, Sugar Rush Red

And that's still not the final harvest of peppers. Sweet peppers are totally gone but the late baccatum peppers are still ripening along with some Jalapeños and I'm waiting for the Habanada peppers (C. chinense) to ripen up a bit more also. We had about 3/4-inch of rain yesterday but other than that the weather has been mild for this time of year with highs in the 60ºF's and lows in the 40ºF's and mostly sunny days so the peppers are still hanging in there.

The other harvests for the week were some Queen of Crunch lettuce, Rishad cress, a bit of Batavia broccoli, Pink Plume celery (of course!), a couple of Short Stuff carrots, and some Peppermint Stick and Italian Silver Rib chard. 

I'm dragging a bit this morning because I'm fighting some sort of bug so I'll keep this post short.

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.

The Garden In December 2018

It's time for another tour of the garden. Let's start with the view from the hillside above. The big differences between the view now and the view from the last tour in November are a) clear blue sky, b) Fort Pepper is wide open, and c) the hillside is turning green.

Beds No. 1 and No. 4

Beds No. 2 and No. 3

The rest of the differences are in the details.

Bed No. 1

I cut down a few of the pepper plants that had overwintered and come back from 2017. And the weird setup around the trellis, a combination of hardware cloth and Agribon fabric, is what I put up to deter the birds from pecking my sweet peas into oblivion. Those are ornamental sweet peas not edible ones. I know that the birds love edible pea foliage but didn't know that they also love Lathyrus odoratus just as much.

The spinach has grown enough to provide another harvest soon. The cilantro that I planted in front of it got to be too big so I gave it a good hard whack. It should grow back again because it is very reluctant to bolt at this time of year.

Amsterdam Prickly Seeded Spinach

The small daikon radishes are in need of thinning again but I don't think that there are any sizable roots yet. Fortunately the greens of these radishes are not very prickly and are mild tasting so they won't be going to the compost.

Bora Bora and Mini Purple Daikon Radishes

Carrots are growing slowly but surely.

Short Stuff Carrots

I'm glad I put a few I'itoi onions into the garden bed because they are much happier than the ones that I have growing in fabric pots.

I'itoi Onions

I never got around to harvesting the potted I'itoi onions and now they are too crowded.

I'itoi onions

The lettuces are holding well in the garden and I'm harvesting them as I need them.

Queen of Crunch and Three Heart Butterhead Lettuce

Arugula is still resisting bolting.

Speedy Arugula

I had scattered some seeds of Rishad cress in an area and then decided to plant the Yellow Potato onions in the same area. The cress popped up around the emerging onions and the onions don't seem to be adversely affected by the cress, at least while it is small, but I've been thinning out the cress before it gets to be too big. In the past I've intentionally done the same thing when I used to grow bulbing onions, I would scatter seeds of parsley or Golden Corn Salad when I set out the onion seedlings and then harvest the young greens before they overwhelmed the growing onions. It's a good way to get 2 crops from the same space.

Yellow Potato Onions and Rishad Cress

Saffron crocus is the only other thing that I've got growing in this bed. It should continue to grow through the winter and then go dormant some time in spring or summer.

Saffron Crocus

There is a bunch of happy volunteer nasturtiums growing at the end of the bed. They will continue to grow vigorously until they get zapped by a hard frost.

Nasturtiums

Not a lot has changed in Bed No. 2. 

The Brussels sprouts and Kalettes plants are taller. I've been cutting the older leaves off, partly because they are getting powdery mildew and aphids and partly because it seems to be encouraging the sprouts to size up.

Brussels Sprouts and Kalettes

But I'm still waiting for the Brussels sprouts to reach a respectable size. Perhaps they never will get very large and I should just take what I can get.

The Autumn Star kalettes plant was the first to produce sprouts large enough to harvest and it has more nice ones coming along.

Autumn Star Kalettes

Snowdrop is the kalettes variety that is supposed to take the longest to produce sprouts. I've just noticed in the past week that the sprouts are starting to swell.

Snowdrop Kalettes

Mistletoe is the second of the three kalettes varieties to produce. I got one small harvest last week and there's more forming.

Mistletoe Kalette

Not much has changed inside the cages in Bed No. 2. The parsnips have nice lush foliage but the roots aren't quite big enough to harvest yet.

Gladiator Parsnips

The celeriac is holding well, the roots are slowly growing larger. There's no rush to harvest them.

Prinz Celeriac

The same for the carrots, there's some nice roots in there but I don't need to pull them all yet.

Short Stuff Carrots

And the beets are still just a runty now as they were last month.

Sweetheart and Badger Flame Beets

I think that the first rutabaga will be large enough to harvest pretty soon.

Improved Helenor Rutabaga

The chard made something of a comeback since I cut it back severely because of aphids and ants. After I took this photo I cut it back hard again because there were a lot of leaf miners. If it isn't one pest it's another. I did not manage to get an even halfway decent photo of the amazing multiple cropping fennel but you can catch a glimpse of it growing (again) in the cage behind the chard. It is growing much more slowly now but I think I'll get a few more small bulbs in the next few weeks.

Peppermint Stick and Italian Silver Rib Chard

Pink Plume celery has been one of the star performers in the garden of late. I managed to not screw things up this year and it's been very happy. Last year I kept the plants in little pots for far too long before I put them in the garden and they never recovered. My photo of them from this time last year shows a few stunted plants that look more like seedlings than the mature plants that they were.

Pink Plume Celery

Pink Plume Celery

The only other veggies in this bed are some sorry old broccoli plants that I didn't even bother to photograph. I can't believe it, but I'm buying broccoli from the farmer's market again. Broccoli used to be such a reliable veggie for me. I could harvest it almost all year long. But it's such a favorite of the rodents now that it's just too much of a bother to grow it because it's just a bit too large to be easy to protect.

Over in Bed No. 3 is just an odd assortment of things. If this was a normal year without a plague of rodents I would be completely clearing out this bed and preparing it to sow a cover crop. This would be the bed where I would be growing tomatoes and peppers next year. But I've decided that next year I will skip growing tomatoes again and grow just a few sweet peppers for fresh eating. That leaves most of the bed free for growing something else. What that will be I haven't decided yet. In the meantime I took an artichoke plant that has been growing in a pot for years and put it in the corner of the bed. The plant was never productive in the pot, only putting out an occasional artichoke that I allowed to bloom because they are so pretty and the bumble bees love them. It will be interesting to see if the plant will actually produce artichokes worth harvesting. To the right of the artichoke are some Bachelor Buttons and to the rear are the Nema-Gone marigolds that I hope are putting a dent in the nematode population.

This should be a patch of Cosmos but the birds decimated the plants. I've grown Cosmos before with no problems from the birds but I guess the birds didn't find much to eat in the natural landscape so they ignored the bird scare flash tape and zeroed in on the Cosmos. They were attacking the marigolds for a while but as soon as I put the cosmos in the garden the marigolds were pretty much left alone. Maybe I need to put something in the garden that the birds prefer to cosmos that I don't care about. Whatever that might be?

The rest of the bed has old things that I need to remove. This end of the bed is where I'll put the sweet peppers next year. For now there's a lingering Orion fennel plant that produced bulbs for me in 2017 and that I allowed to bloom this year. I harvested a lot of ripe green seeds that I dried and now I've got enough fragrant tasty fennel seeds to see me through a couple of years. Other than that there's a small patch of parsley and some lingering basil plants.

The basil is nearly dead.

And finally Bed No. 4, aka Fort Pepper. The last good rain event that came through came with some good wind gusts that tore into the flimsy Agribon fabric roof of fort pepper so it's now wide open. The main target of the rodents was the sweet peppers and those are all gone now so it's not a problem. And since I took these photos I also removed nearly all the side panels so the bed is wide open to whatever wants to have a taste.

Look closely and you'll see plenty of ripe peppers still hanging in there. I am really tired of dealing with peppers!

And to finish the tour I'll direct your attention to this handy metal box that has been the final destination for a number of mice. I figured out purely by accident that this area between the pots and the fence seems to be a mouse highway. I put that Ketch-All trap back there to get it out of the way and then found that it was repeatedly catching mice. I've lost count of how many.

That's the latest from my garden. Thanks for taking the tour.

Harvest Monday - December 10, 2018

The weather has finally settled into a more seasonable pattern of cool days, cold nights, and some rain, although the rain has dropped out of the forecast for the next week. Some of the harvests are looking more seasonable also.

I got another small harvest of Kalettes, this one is either Mistletoe or Snowdrop. I planted one plant each of three different varieties of kalettes that are supposed to have successive harvest dates and this was the first harvest from the second plant. I'm still learning how to grow this veggie and I think that next year I'll have to put in more plants to get a decent harvest. That harvest below was only 1.6 ounces which was barely enough for a single serving. They are really tasty and the rodents don't seem to be attracted to them so that makes them worth trying again next year.

Kalettes

Cilantro loses it's urge to flower during the shortest and coldest days of the year but it grows pretty vigorously so it's not unusual for me to get a big harvest like the one below. Now I have to find something to make that requires a large amount of it.

The celery is also loving the cool weather and rain. The knife in the photo is my No.10 Opinel which is 9 inches (23cm) total in length which should give some perspective of the size of the stalks that I'm harvesting now. Celery is also the subject of one of my latest fermentation experiments. I took a bunch of stalks and cut them into about 1/4-inch thick slices, placed them in a brine, and allowed them to ferment for about a week before putting them in the fridge for longer term keeping. They retained their crunch and have just a slight tang. The pink hue from the skins colored the brine and the flesh also picked up some of the color. I'm thinking that they would be a nice contrast in a potato salad or used instead of fresh celery in a classic Waldorf Salad. I've been making another salad lately that features celery, dates, pomegranate arils, Parmesan, and almonds and perhaps the fermented celery would be a nice addition to that. But they are also really good just eaten right out of the jar. I'm interested to see how well they keep in the refrigerator over the next weeks or longer. If they keep their crunch and good flavor for a long time it will be a good way to preserve some of the crop when the plants start to bolt in the spring.

Pink Plume Celery

I've started to clear out some of the plants that overwintered from 2017. That's the last of the Aji Angelo, Aji Golden, and Craig's Grande Jalapeño peppers from the 2017 plants. One Ethiopian Brown pepper decided to join the harvest but the plant remains in the garden and still has peppers that are ripening. The Aji Angelo plant still had a lot of green peppers left on it but after harvesting 10 pounds of ripe Aji Angelos this year I declared that enough is enough and removed the plant.

Craig's Grande Jalapeño, Aji Golden,
Ethiopian Brown, Aji Angelo

I cleared out the last of the sweet pepper plants from Fort Pepper and harvested more of the late ripening baccatum peppers.

Joe's Giant Aji Amarillo, Aji Cacho de Cabra,
Florina, Odessa Market, Topepo Giallo, Gogosar

That's the latest from my garden, head on over to Dave's blog Our Happy Acres to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.