Monday, October 23, 2017

Harvest Monday - 23 October 2017

Welcome to another Harvest Monday update from Eight Gate Farm. We got the expected frost on Monday night, and quite a few plants were affected.

The eggplants were hardest hit. I took out all of them, and there were a few small fruits that could be harvested.


Looking at these now makes me highly suspicious of Dave's Patio Baby eggplants.

Most of the peppers had wilted too. I was able to get quite a few baby shishitos, and some Anaheims.


I just couldn't stand looking at the tomato vines any more, so they came out too, with some fruits taken to ripen indoors.


The last zucchini plant was almost dead but still had a nice fruit on it. Unfortunately I stepped on it. No picture.

The Kitchen Goddess has been braving thorns and bees to pick raspberries about every other day. We now have close to six pounds in the freezer.


Another leek had sent up a flower stalk, so I pulled it. Turns out it was really trying to reproduce, as it also made several small clones of itself at the base.


We still have lots of other leeks waiting to go through another frost or two. I want TKG to make cock-a-leekie soup. I've never had it before, and it sounds delicious. But mostly I'm looking forward to the opportunity to scream COCK-A-LEEKIE!!!!!! at the top of my lungs. Numerous times.

I harvested the last tatsoi.


And on Sunday I spent several surprisingly pleasant hours shelling the Floriani Red Flint corn. 


We got over 10 pounds of kernels. That's great, but nowhere near our 2014 harvest of 25 pounds, which I wrote about here. Unfortunately almost half of that crop molded in storage. The lesson was learned. Now I spread the kernels out to dry a further week or two.


We tied up the cornstalks into our sacrificial "witch pole," which will get the ceremonial torch once they dry out. Meanwhile I just like looking at it. Here's a view facing toward the house:


That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and special thanks to Dave at Our Happy Acres for hosting Harvest Monday, and hopefully for not banning me from future posts!


9 comments:

  1. Fortunately, I guess, all my hot weather plants except peppers succumbed to disease over the last two months, so no frost trauma here. This area gets hit Saturday morning according to forecast, and Dave, a hundred miles south of me, will probably escape it.

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    1. Peppers are surprisingly disease-resistant. But certainly not frost-resistant!

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  2. Do you have a device to assist for the corn shelling or do you do it by hand (and thumbs)? We've got our first freeze forecast for the weekend so I will be bringing in the summer stuff too. I have some eggplants left on the vine. None of the Patio Babys though, suspicious or not! ;-)

    The witch pole burning sounds like good fun. I once burned a brush pile that had the local volunteer fire department paying me a visit because they saw the smoke a mile away!

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    1. Yes, I have a little tool I made. If you follow the link in the post you'll see it, now improved-upon with screws instead of nails. I once burned a large brush pile out in the woods, a little too close to a pine tree, with predictable results. Nothing severe though fortunately.

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  3. That was a mighty fine last crop of peppers - I'm hooked on the Shishito and will be doubling the # of plants next year.

    And here I was all proud of my raspberries...6 pounds in the freezer? Now THAT'S productive!

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    1. Yes, the shishito is a fine pepper. I grew four plants this year, just the right amount.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Never heard of a witch pole before but I kind of like the idea, especially so close to Hallowe'en. Your corn kernels look superb

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    1. Witch pole is just something I made up, in my overactive imagination.

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