Harvest Monday - 9 September 2024

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.

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.

Guajillo pepper

Now for general harvests. Here was Wednesday's, dominated by beets both red and golden.

Wednesday harvest

 Here was Friday's. Pole beans, at least, are coming in strong.

Friday harvest

Sunday's was equally small, but colorful at least.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Harvest Monday - 2 September 2024

Happy Labor Day (US) from Eight Gate Farm! This holiday weekend we spent two nights in southwestern Vermont, about 2.5 hours from us, to attend the garlic festival now called "Garlic Town USA." It seems lately that there are as many "craft distillery" booths as the garlic growers have, but we were still able to procure all the seed garlic we need for fall planting. The festival is quite fun: people watching, sampling food truck food (all the rage lately), and listening to live music. The seed garlic is a bonus. Plus the tiny town, Wilmington, where we stayed at an historic hotel, has some amazing restaurants.

We were able to get a few "first harvests" this late in the season. Leading off, here is the sweet pepper called "Hungarian Cheese." It's described as a stuffing pepper, but we prefer the thinner-walled, larger, red bell peppers for that. Instead, we use it for drying and grinding into paprika.

Hungarian Cheese (OP) peppers

I also had fun digging our entire crop of potatoes. In keeping with the theme of less production but also less work, this year I only planted one 12-foot row instead of two. We should be well-supplied nonetheless.

Kennebec potatoes

A crop I've ignored in recent years is hops. But at the garlic festival, I sampled a hopped gin from one of the distillers, and liked it. So when we got home I harvested a small bit of our hops, and plan to infuse a quart of gin with them. I'll let you know how it goes.

Mount Hood hops

It was also time to pick our entire pear "crop". This year the animals were unkind to us, taking all our peaches before we got any, and leaving us with only one pear!

First and only pear

Two "general harvests" were also taken this week. Here was Wednesday's:

Last general harvest of August

And here was Sunday's. A couple of things to note. There were four more petite artichokes, making our total for the year something like 40 from 4 plants I raised from seed. We've never had such good production before. Also, on the far right, is a large quantity of Anaheim peppers. The two plants had paused for a few weeks, then put on another flush. We have to figure out what to do with them all.

First September general harvest

And fall raspberries are continuing to be taken in small amounts for now.

Fall red raspberries

The bobcat (Lynx rufus) is not exactly rare around here, but is extremely shy and elusive. Most of the time I only catch them at night on my trail cameras. So we were thrilled the other evening to see one trotting toward us while we were on the screened porch out back. It stopped, turned to look at us, then continued on its mission, whatever that was. We will always remember the close encounter with this beautiful creature.

Bobcat

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

Harvest Monday - 26 August 2024

Just a quick Harvest Monday post for today. We were away for the whole week at the lakeside preserve we love to go to...second time this year. 

Only one first harvest was recorded: fall raspberries!

Fall raspberries

 On Monday, the day we left, we did a general harvest. We took a lot of this for our meals for the week.

Monday general harvest

And on Sunday, the day we returned, we had catching up to do!

Sunday general harvest

Even though it's high gardening season, it's nice to get away from the chores and just paddle around a lake, in a canoe, kayak, paddleboard, or (my favorite), a plain old floatee. We love listening to the haunting cries of the loons.

That's all for this week. On Friday, the start of the Labor Day weekend here in the US, we will once again be travelling to Vermont for the Garlic Festival, where I like to buy my seed garlic directly from the growers. It will be fun! Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday - 19 August 2024

Here's another Harvest Monday update from Eight Gate Farm. This week, the "first harvests" were all about peppers and onions, which are two of my favorite crops to grow.

I took the first red-ripe "Ace" sweet bell peppers. The plants are not large, but they have a good number of fruit in various stages of ripening.

Ace (F1) bell peppers

I also took the first ripe "Lunchbox Red" sweet peppers, described as a "snacking pepper."

Lunchbox Red (F1) sweet peppers

Snacking pepper? I picture this:

• Kid: "Can I have a snack?"
• Mom: "Have a tiny pepper."
• Kid: "No, I said a SNACK."

Now for the alliums, which are all very early this year. These are first and entire harvests. I intentionally grew much fewer compared to prior years.

Here's the yellow onion "Talon," which I've grown for many years with good success. It stores well.

Talon (F1) onions

Here's the red onion "Barolo," another I've had previous success with. They store extremely well; we still have a few from last year.

Barolo (F1) onions

Here's the white, large variety called "Alicia Craig." They are flavorful but don't store well, so they're the first ones we'll be using.

Alicia Craig (OP) onions

Finally, here's "Ambition," a shallot. They also store well.

Ambition (F1) shallots

Turning to general harvests, here was Monday's.

Monday general harvest

Here was Wednesday's.

Wednesday's general harvest

And here was Friday's. You may notice that I am picking some very green tomatoes. This is intentional. They are Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, one of our favorites. But it also seems to be the favorite of some small animal, which samples them just as they are starting to vine-ripen. Even though they are green, they are still maturing well indoors.

Friday general harvest

The Kitchen Goddess was busy this week, making many wonderful things. She made tomato sauce and chopped tomatoes, not for canning but for immediate use. She made stuffed bell peppers, and chiles rellenos (which is a much different stuffed pepper). She also took three pounds of jalapenos and cayenne peppers....

3 lbs. hot peppers

...and made and canned eight jelly jars of "Cowboy Candy," an old favorite around here. It's a hot pepper relish whose sweetness perfectly compliments the heat of the peppers. 

Cowboy Candy

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

 

Harvest Monday - 12 August 2024

Greetings from Eight Gate Farm! We got some much-needed rain this week, capped off on Friday by the remnants of Hurricane Debby (now tropical depression), which skirted us to the west while heading to the Canadian Maritimes. It brought rain and some wind gusts, but nothing damaging. Between the showers over the week I was able to go out a few times and bring back heavy harvest baskets, including a number of firsts.

I lead off with the second batch of sweet corn. This is another Supersweet (sh2) called Eden RMN. No, I don't know what the initials stand for. This is an all-white variety, so you can see from the picture that a bit of cross-pollination occurred with my first batch of bicolor corn. I thought I had timed the maturities appropriately, but I was wrong. Regardless, the taste is not affected, and it was delicious.

Eden RMN Supersweet corn

Well, that was Friday. Saturday morning we discovered this:

Corn crop destruction

Something quite large, a raccoon or a porcupine, scaled the fence and destroyed the crop of this second batch of corn. I was able to find only two undamaged ears on the 30+ stalks. 

While I am saddened, it is not the tragedy you'd think it would be. For I had truly reached my limit for eating corn, and my "system" told me so. But I hope the villain is suffering worse indigestion than I did. I thought it was prudent to cut down and remove all the stalks, in case it decided to return and finish off the half-eaten cobs.

A number of first harvests were recorded for the nightshade family. This is BlushingStar, a true pink tomato that I first tried last year. It has a bold, balanced flavor.

BlushingStar (F1) tomato

I cut the first "Black King" eggplant. It looks a lot like the Midnight Queen I harvested previously, and is a bit later, but may turn out to be more productive.

Black King (F1) eggplant

I also cut a couple of "Bride" eggplants. I think it is the prettiest eggplant I grow.

Bride (F1) eggplant

On the pepper side, I took the first slightly-hot Anaheim peppers. Actually quite a few before this looked promising, but rotted, perhaps from sunscald.

Anaheim (OP) hot peppers

I also picked most of the first crops of dry (soup) beans. This is Jacob's Cattle. I got a lot more than I did last year, where I barely filled a jelly jar with beans.

Jacob's Cattle beans

Later I picked Black Coco (a new variety to me).

Black Coco beans

Both varieties are spread out and further drying in the sun room. I'll show the results when they are ready.

Turning to continuing harvests, here was Tuesday's. Note the two grotesquely large kohlrabi.

Tuesday general harvest

Wednesday's harvest had the last of the Solstice corn. Most of that went into a spicy corn dip The Kitchen Goddess made for a garden party. I confined myself only to a taste of it, and it was delicious.

Wednesday general harvest

Friday's harvest was more varied. That's the last of the artichokes. I can't believe we harvested 40 of these little gems this year.

Friday general harvest

Now for "using the harvest." I had accumulated 20 of the large Red Ember cayennes, so I made cayenne powder, an all-day, sneeze-inducing process.

Cayenne powder

And TKG salvaged what she could from the aforesaid kohlrabi, and started fermenting it for kimchi.

Kimchi science project

Sorry, went a bit long this week. Thanks for sticking with it. Thanks also to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday - 5 August 2024

Our weather changed once again to oppressive humidity. I've said, "we don't have to move to Florida, Florida's moving to us." As if to prove my point, and I don't think I've mentioned this before, like a lot of places in the US, our USDA Climate Zone jumped a half-step. Ours went from 5B to 6A. But I think most gardeners here already knew that before it was made official late last year. 

The harvests haven't really slowed, and almost everything seems to be ahead of years past. I'll lead off with the "first harvests."

Top of the crop was the first sweet corn! This year I set out to grow the type I've never done before, the Supersweets (sh2). They are known to be finicky about soil temp for germination, but I solved that by starting them indoors and transplanting out at 10 days or so. It worked! I got the first ears before the end of July. The flavor and texture is just wow!

Solstice (a Supersweet)

Another first harvest is this good-sized, Italian-style eggplant, called Midnight Queen.

Midnight Queen (F1) eggplant

The "last first," coming in a few days ahead of Midnight Queen, is this Ping Tung eggplant.

Ping Tung eggplant

Now for the continuing harvests. Here was Monday's.

Late July general harvest

Here was Thursday's. The fennel bulb was really too large, at over a kilo, and the woody parts had to be shaved off

Early August general harvest.

And here's Sunday's. We took another overlarge, slightly woody fennel bulb. Fortunately, that's the last. As for the corn, I've eaten two ears every night this week. Could I be approaching my limit? Not quite yet.

Early August harvest (2).

I cleaned all the garlic harvested a couple of weeks ago. I like to see them all clean and lined up. Clockwise from right is German White, Music, Russian Red, and the Elephant "garlics" (more closely related to leeks). The latter did not truly get elephant size, but it was a fun experiment to try them.

2024 garlic harvest

I haven't said much about the "42 Day" tomato that I first harvested several weeks ago. I must say I'm completely impressed with it. In true determinate fashion, it has set all the fruit it's going to for the season, but look how loaded the plant is. And the 1.5 - 2 oz "saladette" fruits are quite tasty. I think this would be an excellent choice if you are looking for a container variety.

"42 Day" tomato plant

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and continuing appreciation for the work Dave does at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.