Here's another Harvest Monday update from Eight Gate Farm. The drought continues, forcing us to water a lot more than we'd like, but overall conditions are very favorable to good harvests.
Leading off with the "first harvests," I picked the first Sugar Rush Peach peppers. Compared to Sugar Rush Cream which I am also growing, Peach is larger and much, much hotter. Prettier too, I think, when they get their full peachy color, like this.
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| Sugar Rush Peach |
I'm growing two varieties for paprika; Alma Paprika and Hungarian Cheese, which is technically a stuffing pepper but its thick walls serve the paprika purpose.
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| Alma Paprika and Hungarian Cheese peppers |
I had a fun time pulling all the alliums. This variety is new to me, "Alisa Craig." It can make very big bulbs but does not store for long, so we'll use them first. It's called an "Exhibition" onion, and that's certainly what I hope to do for the Deerfield Fair at the end of September.
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| Alisa Craig (op) onions |
"Talon" is an onion I grew last year with good success, and this year is too. It stores for months.
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| Talon (hyb) onions |
"Red Marble" is a red cipollini onion that also stores very well. We still have a few from last year in good shape.
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| Red Marble (hyb) onions |
Compared to last year, the "Ambition" shallots are smaller but more numerous. This is another excellent keeper.
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| Ambition (hyb) shallots |
Yes, these photos of the onions crops look messy to me, too.
Rounding out the first harvests was the first picking of "Honey Select," a Triplesweet hybrid type. I will be feasting on this for the next week. It is crunchy and very sweet.
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| Honey Select (hyb) |
Moving on to the "general" harvests, here is Monday's tomato pickings.
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| Monday tomato harvest |
And Monday's "everything else."
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| Monday non-tomato harvest |
Wednesday was only tomatoes.
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| Wednesday tomato harvest |
Friday had another heavy basket of tomatoes.
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| Friday tomato harvest |
And hot peppers; Serrano, Sugar Rush Cream, and cayenne.
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| Friday hot pepper harvest |
And finally Friday's "everything else" harvest.
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| Friday general harvest |
The Kitchen Goddess braves thorns and bees to pick raspberries, which are starting to come into their big production period that will extend to hard frost.
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| Raspberries |
In thinking about the Sugar Rush Cream peppers, I realize I've gotten over 5 pounds from the one plant I overwintered. We're starting to run out of ideas for them. On Saturday we started another fermentation batch with them (and the few Peach peppers). So we have a couple of weeks to decide. TKG made a Jamaican Jerk sauce with the last batch, and we had it slathered on chicken and grilled...very tasty! We also dried all the hot red peppers to make crushed pepper, something we use a lot of. Processing veg for the freezer freed up a lot of fridge space, but it will only fill up again shortly.
Lastly I show another great sample harvest from the community garden plot TKG shares with her mother.
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| Community garden harvest |
Yet another busy week! Hope yours was great too. Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.
That is a good looking haul of onions there! That would keep us supplied for a couple of years. Still waiting on the ripe SR Peach peppers here. I made a 'single variety' hot sauce with it last year, and it is one of my favorites. I'm hoping to do that again this year. I'm also trialing the red version. I may have to try the Cream next year too. So many peppers!
ReplyDeleteThanks Dave! We too make a single variety sauce from the Peach peppers, and it too is one of our favorites.
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