Many gardeners, in my climate anyway, are familiar with this sad equation: cooler weather + diminishing daylight = smaller harvests. In my case, it is amplified by my reduced plantings this year. But I did manage to get two "first harvests" this week.
We like super-hot peppers, but we typically only use them for hot sauces. Habanero is a favorite, with a Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) rating of +/- 300,000. I'm not growing any of them this year. However, a guy I know asked if I like hot peppers, and when I replied in the affirmative, he gave me two "special" plants: Carolina Reaper and Scorpion. The heat level? Over one million SHUs. I was not sure they would do anything in our climate, but I was wrong. I picked the first Scorpions this week.
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| Danger! Scorpions! |
What are we going to do with them? Well, I was afraid to even touch them! We're thinking we'd make a small batch of hot sauce, outside on the porch with a camping stove, wearing full hazmat gear, and using a cheap pot we won't use for anything else. Not by themselves, but adding something like pineapple or mango. What do you think?
Guajillo is a lovely, mildly hot pepper, which I've been growing for several years, using seeds provided by our Harvest Monday host, Dave. They take a long time to ripen here, but make a wonderful chile powder. I got the first ripe one this week.
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| Guajillo pepper |
Now for general harvests. Here was Wednesday's, dominated by beets both red and golden.
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| Wednesday harvest |
Here was Friday's. Pole beans, at least, are coming in strong.
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| Friday harvest |
Sunday's was equally small, but colorful at least.
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| Sunday harvest |
Another thing coming in strong is the fall raspberries. The Kitchen Goddess is picking them every couple of days. This was the biggest, at 718 grams.
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| Fall raspberries |
Even if the harvests are smaller, you can still have fun. Last week I wrote that I'd sampled hopped gin from a craft distiller at the garlic festival. Having plenty of hops, I wanted to make it. But TKG invalidated me by beating me to it! She just tossed a handful of hops into a quart jar filled with gin, and let it sit for 24 hours before straining. The result is quite good, with an interesting green color. It's hard to describe what it tastes like.
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| Hopped gin |
And I made pickled jalapeno pepper rings, using a simple recipe. I like to toss a few into a glass of lager beer. I know, I'm strange.
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| Pickled jalapenos |
That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and thanks as always to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for continuing to host Harvest Monday.
I'm envious of the raspberries as our fall crop has been disappointing here. And I'm afraid I have no recs for using those super hot peppers. I did make a pineapple hot sauce last year using jalapenos, pineapple, onion, garlic, apple cider vinegar, and honey. That was tasty and worked for me. I am thinking mango would make a good hot sauce too - maybe I need to try one myself!
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