Harvest Monday - 5 September 2022

Happy Labor Day (U.S.)! We are supposed to have a full day of rain today, something we haven't had in weeks. Bad news for people with outdoor plans, but for us, we are using the opportunity to do things like can tomato sauce (The Kitchen Goddess) and trim, clean, and place the onions in storage (me). 

The harvests keep rolling in, and as usual I'll start with the first harvests of the season. Here are the first guajillo peppers. The seeds were kindly provided to me by none other than our awesome Harvest Monday host, Dave. He uses them for chile powder, and that's what I'm going to do too. I love the dark red color. I had some problems with early fruit falling off, but that's resolved itself now and the crop looks to be good.

Guajillo ("Dustbowl") hot peppers

Habanero peppers are a favorite of mine. They're way too hot to eat, but make an excellent simple hot sauce. This year I'm growing the open-pollinated version on the left (one plant), and the hybrid "Helios" on the right (two plants). Helios, bred by Johnny's Selected Seeds, is supposed to be earlier and more productive. For me, so far, it's a tie, and the fruits look identical. We'll see how it plays out as the season progresses.

Habaneros: original (OP) and Helios (hyb)

Here we have two sweet "bullhorn" style peppers, stablemates from the Johnny's breeding program. On the left is Cornito Rosso; on the right, Escamillo.

Cornito Rosso, Escamillo

Most I chopped and froze, but I took one of each and made stuffed peppers, giving us each half a red and half a yellow. I made mine the good old traditional, Ozzie and Harriet style, with ground beef, rice and tomato sauce. But TKG wanted a low-carb version, so instead of rice and sauce she asked for...kimchi (what??). She liked it, but I did not dare try it. Why mess with tradition?

Another new one are these hybrid bell peppers called "Ace." I chopped and froze these as well.

Ace (hyb)

I dug the last row of potatoes. These are "Kennebec," a white potato I've been growing for years, that is very tasty and stores well. This year's crop was productive.

Kennebec

Nothing says "summer" like harvesting the first winter squash. This week I picked the first hybrid butternuts called "Butterscotch," yet another creation from Johnny's. They're billed as "personal-size," and at 1.5 pounds each, that is true.

Butterscotch (hyb)

Definitely not personal-size are these hybrid pumpkins, "Blue Prince." In fact, the largest weighed 13 pounds. I love the frosty blue-gray color, and the catalog picture showed them as bright orange on the inside. I won't be able to confirm that for a few weeks, after they've had a chance to cure.

Blue Prince (hyb) pumpkins

Now on to "continuing harvests." But first, on Monday, TKG did a marathon session using up all the accumulated tomatoes to make 14 quarts of stewed tomatoes. It was the hottest day of the week, and she was exhausted, but was glad to once again be able to see the top of her dining room table, and to have her precious sheet pans back.

Canned stewed tomatoes

And then, naturally, this happened the next day.

Tuesday tomato harvest

Tuesday also had a big harvest of hot red peppers, mostly cayennes with a few serranos.

Tuesday hot pepper harvest

And this was Tuesday's "everything else" harvest.

Tuesday general harvest

Thursday had another basket of tomatoes.

Thursday tomato harvest

And everything else.

Thursday general harvest

Sunday had more tomatoes (see a pattern?).

Sunday tomato harvest

So now you can tell why TKG has to can today.

I also did a heavy picking of collards, and took the remaining crop of sweet corn. Yes, 23 ears is a lot when usually I take 2 or 3 a day, but even the newest hybrid sweet corn does not hold more than two weeks in the field before it gets starchy, so I ate a few ears that night and cut the kernels off the rest for the freezer, i.e. "niblets" (not sure if that's a trademark from one of the frozen vegetable companies. If it is, sue me!).

Top Bunch 2.0 (hyb) collards, and Honey Select (hyb) corn

Here's Sunday's everything else harvest.

Sunday general harvest

My last picture is an example of the almost daily picking of raspberries done by TKG. The freezer is being replenished. 

Raspberries

I was thinking yesterday that if an early frost took down the gardens this week, it would still be a year to remember. Not that I want that, of course. Thanks for reading, and please join me in acknowledging our host, Dave, at HappyAcres.blog for all the efforts he does to maintain Harvest Monday, which gives me so much enjoyment