Monday, October 18, 2021

Harvest Monday - 18 October 2021

We've been thoroughly enjoying this stretch of fine fall weather, with warm days and nights nowhere near freezing. Part of me wonders though if we are on borrowed time.

Harvests are continuing to slow, but still occurring. Here's Monday's. The tomatoes on the left are all from the unidentified volunteer plant. These fruits fully ripen particularly fast indoors.

Monday harvest

I've said many times how impressed I am with collards, and the amazing amount of food value we get from them. This time I decided to cut one stalk and pull off the leaves. Again I want to thank our Harvest Monday host, Dave, for inspiring me to try this crop.

"Top Bunch 2.0" collards

What else can I say about raspberries? We continue to be deluged with them, and that's a happy problem for sure. At this stage there's no more flowering, but still many to ripen.

Fall raspberries

Here's Friday's harvest. Again the mystery tomatoes are on the left. It looks like this is the last of the eggplants, and these are on the small side. The Kitchen Goddess used many of them that night to make a delicious moussaka. 

Friday harvest

I finally had enough hot peppers to make unfermented "varietal" hot sauces.

Cayenne and Hot Lemon peppers

I used the very simple method I like, with only three ingredients: peppers, vinegar, salt. The kitchen was a spicy place that morning!

Cayenne and Hot Lemon sauces

I think I'm going to order more of the cute little sauce bottles we like. We have plenty of leftover bottles, but the red shrinkwrap seals are in short supply, and as far as I know, you can't order just the seals.

I also made three pints of tomato sauce for the fridge.

For garden activities, I expanded the field garden by another roughly 120 square feet. I'm experimenting with the "lasagna" style of bed creation; no dig, no till. I put down two layers of large sheet cardboard, then added about four inches of slightly rotted grass clippings, and topped with another four inches of finished compost from the shredded leaf pile. It looks pretty good! I'm not sure what I'm going to plant there, but I have all winter to figure it out.

Lasagna-method plot extension

I also planted garlic this week, adjacent to the above. I'm growing 48 plants; 16 each of Katterman, Music, and Chesnok Red--all hardnecks. The Katterman cloves are really huge, and if there's one thing I've learned, big cloves make big plants. Here's Katterman compared with Chesnok Red.

Garlic clove size comparison

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and thanks once again to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.





4 comments:

  1. Oh to be deluged with raspberries! Making hot sauce usually gives me sneezing fits before I am done. I too like to experiment with the different varieties. I need to make a chili garlic sauce with some of mine soon.

    I love most greens, including kale and turnips. But like you say, collards really give you a lot of leaves for the amount of space. I'm letting ours grow until the weather cools a bit, which hopefully will sweeten them some.

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    1. I still have 3 collard plants, and no current need for the greens, so I'll let them chill out just like you are.

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  2. All those soil microorganisms will be busy until the cold slows them down. Report back to us next spring. Impressive harvests for this late in the season. And again, oh those raspberries. What variety? Ours used to only produce in the month of July.

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    1. I will keep you posted on the new bed. I wish I could tell you what variety of raspberries, but they preceded us here. I just know that their thorns are not as wicked as our other raspberries, which I am gradually eliminating since they are a nuisance.

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