No post last Monday, as we had a 3 night getaway back to the lakeside nature preserve we have come to love. While the folks back home were sweltering in the heat and humidity, we were cool as can be floating on the lake. This report highlights things that came in over the preceding two weeks, starting with the first-of-the-season harvests.
I took the first poblano peppers. This is Trident, a hybrid, and I really like their glossy dark green color. We will use them for chiles rellenos.
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| Trident poblano peppers (F1) |
I'm fond of the hybrid jalapeno pepper called Goliath, as the fruits are productive and large. But my seeds didn't germinate this year, so I had to rush to the farm store to find something as a replacement. I ended up buying two open-pollinated varieties, Early Jalapeno and Jalapeno Gigantica.
Well, relatively speaking, Gigantica (top row) wasn't gigantic, and Early wasn't early. Regardless, it looks like we will get a good crop this year.
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| Jalapeno Gigantica and Early Jalapeno (OP) |
I'm trying out a new paprika pepper this year. We love paprika, and use it constantly. This one is an heirloom called "Leutschauer Paprika," and I bought it at the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds store in Petaluma, CA last November. It looks promising, with thin walls which will make for speedier drying.
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Leutschauer Paprika (OP)
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I took the first cute little "Lunchbox Red" sweet peppers.
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| Lunchbox Red (F1) |
I took the first "Red Mushroom" hot peppers. These were just bought on a whim out of the Territorial Seed catalog. They are supposed to be quite hot, up to 50k Scoville units.
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| Red Mushroom (OP) |
I cut the first "Black King" eggplant.
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| Black King (F1) |
I also had the first fennel harvest, a little ahead of the expected date, since voles discovered the plants and are gradually eating away at the roots underground.
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| Orazio fennel (F1) |
I've grown the hybrid "Kolibri" kohlrabi for years and never had a problem. This year, not only did most of the plants fail to survive, but the one that did turned out to be kale instead! Or at least, it never formed a bulb. Well, kale is useful too.
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| Kale or failed kohlrabi, who knows? |
Last of the first harvests is this solitary Diva cucumber, a little larger than I would like.
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| Diva (F1) |
The Summer Blend lettuce mix is done for the season with this last gleaning. It performed very well this year despite the heat, living up to its name I guess.
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| Summer Blend lettuce |
I'm at the point in the season where "group pictures" can be shown, as I've already discussed the members individually. This is the harvest just before we went away.
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| General harvest #1 |
And this was last Friday's.
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| General harvest #2 |
As for "using the harvest," I needed to make some room in the fridge, so I took this...
...and made this:
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| Paprika |
It's a blend of all the sweet and hot red peppers I had, so it's kind of an "enhanced" paprika. It smells wonderful. It's an all-day process using our 20 year old dehydrator
Sorry about another long post. Thanks for reading. Thanks also to Dave at
HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.
I'll bet those peppers drying were fragrant! It's a bummer about the Kolibri though. It is one of my reliable varieties here. As for the Red Mushroom peppers - Yikes! That's too much heat for my wimpy taste buds.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first year with a dehydrator so I'm just learning about making paprika. I have a bunch of Jimmy Nardello peppers (sweet) ready and now a few chili peppers that are ready to go. I loved reading here that I can combine dried sweet and hot peppers for paprika. I'm not sure how to regulate the heat other than to use way more sweet than hot peppers? Worst case, I guess I can dry more sweet to weaken down the heat factor. I'm going to give it a try. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous red peppers and would I love to try that paprika!
ReplyDelete