Monday, November 20, 2017

Harvest Monday - November 20, 2017

The weather so far this fall has been mild here, a smattering of rain now and then and nighttime lows dipping into the high 30ºF's but staying away from freezing which means that I'm still harvesting some colorful veggies. Most of the sweet peppers have finished but the seasoning peppers are still ripening in the garden.


The photo above shows the harvest from one day - a few sweet Gogosar peppers, ripe Craig's Grande jalapeños from 2 different plants, orange Habanadas, Ethiopian Brown, Baby Aji Amarillos from the 2016 plant, and one small red Caribbean Seasoning. The photo below shows the harvest of ripe Gogosar peppers from the extra plants that I grew in pots.




The old broccoli plants are still producing side shoots as are the new broccolini plants. In the center of the basket above are a bunch of pea shoots. I sowed a bunch of seeds for shelling and snow peas directly into the garden on October 1 and didn't get great germination. So instead of letting the few plants sprawl around I trimmed them back to force them to branch out and make room for some more seedlings that I've got going in paper pots. The tender parts of the trimmings went into the harvest basket because I've learned that the tops of just about any pea variety are good eating. Those went into a stir fry along with some of the broccolini.

Petite Snap Greens

Another new pea variety that I'm trying is Petite Snap Greens. This pea is grown just for the unique greens. Even the tendrils on this variety are leafy which makes nearly the entire plant edible and very cool looking. You're supposed to be able to get multiple harvests from first the main shoot and then side shoots that grow back. Unfortunately I got poor germination from this bunch also. I think the problem wast that we had a heat wave just after I sowed the seeds. I'm definitely going back to my preferred method of starting peas in paper pots.

Also harvested but not photographed last week were about 3 more pounds of tomatoes, mostly cherry, and a few more stalks of celery, and a few more pods of some dried beans. I've been waiting to show the colorful dried beans that I grew this year. It hasn't been a big harvest but they sure are pretty.

And I'll end with a photo of the rest of the Santo Domingo Rainbow corn that I finished shelling last week.

Santo Domingo Rainbow

The total harvests for the year have passed 900 pounds but it doesn't look like I'll hit the 1000 pound mark this year. You can see more details of the harvests for the year by clicking on the link on my sidebar.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave on his blog Our Happy Acres, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.


5 comments:

  1. High 30s? Isn't that a little cold for you? We're still in mid 50s at night if we're lucky. 92F predicted for Thanksgiving Day. Ugh.

    Gosh, 900 pounds! Quite a lot from you garden. Many congratulations!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jane! My harvests are usually in the 900+ pound range by this date. My annual average for the past 6 or 7 years has been about 1000 pounds.

      High 30s is not unusual now and the first frost can come as early as the end of November or early December, although some years it doesn't hit until January. Tomorrow is forecast to be a warm one at 80 and then it's supposed to cool down to 76 on Thanksgiving Day.

      Delete
  2. I like the looks of those Petite Snap Greens pea! I plan to grow some pea shoots indoors again this winter, and that looks like a great candidate. I start them in the basement, which is cool this time of year and they should germinate nicely. I'm having Gogosar pepper envy though. My plants got off to a very late start and none of mine ripened before frost came. Next year I plan to start all the peppers earlier, and hopefully I can avoid the aphid problems I had this year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm pretty sure that Johnny's is the exclusive seller of the Petite Snap Greens, that's where I got my seeds.

      Gogosar tends to be one of the early peppers to ripen in my garden so I imagine an earlier start should get you some ripe peppers. One thing that I'm liking about them is that they don't all ripen at once so the harvest lasts longer.

      Delete
  3. The peppers in that first photo are gorgeous - those colours! I didn't realize that there were pea varieties grown specifically for the greens - pea shoots is something I have been meaning to try for a long time.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. I value your insights and feedback.