America’s Gardener

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. Last week here was pretty much all about harvesting the tender crops before the freezing weather came. We had below freezing temperatures four days in a row, which killed all but the hardy vegetables. Before it happened, I brought in a lot of peppers, mostly hot ones. I found enough Peppadew peppers to make two quarts of pickled peppers, which we use in a number of dishes including on pizzas. I also found a few eggplant to harvest, which is amazing here in early November.

I began fermenting five jars of the hot peppers, including Aji Golden, Aji Angelo, Sugar Rush Peach and Aji Rico. The Aji Rico peppers did great this year, with one big plant giving me over three pounds of ripe peppers this week before the freeze came. This 2017 AAS Winner has crunchy, mildly hot peppers with a sweet citrus flavor. They make a tasty hot sauce, which is what I’m doing with most of these. This year I want to try single variety hot sauces to do taste comparisons. I usually just blend them all up into one mixed sauce, but since I have so many this year I though it would be fun to keep them separate. I’ll let these ferment for a week or so before turning them into sauce.

I did find a few sweet peppers too. A few weren’t totally ripe so I left them sit out to finish the process. It’s been a great year for peppers here and I will miss having them fresh.

The fall kohlrabi was finally ready, so I pulled several of those as well. I planted Kolibri and Terek this fall, and the purple skinned Kolibri was ready first. We are eating these raw, stir-fried and roasted.

I pulled a few more baby Hakurei turnips, plus I cut enough of the All Top greens to cook up with the turnips. All Top has big leaves and a mild taste, and I’m just cutting the larger outer leaves and leaving the plants to make more. We ate on this batch for two meals. I planted a lot of greens for fall, and now that they have been frosted on they should be even more tasty.

In non-harvest news, I had a couple of container-grown coleus plants I brought inside to overwinter. I also took a few cuttings to make new plants. Main Street Beale Street has dark red leaves, and doesn’t flower until late in the season. Our plants required no pinching or pruning during the growing season, which made them easy to grow compared with many older varieties I have grown in the past. This one was a 2020 AAS Winner, and I look forward to growing it again next year. It added color all summer long to our sun garden.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with using Durum wheat in bread. Durum is mostly used for making pasta, but I also use it for pizza crust as well as for bread. My latest crusty sourdough bread is 100% Durum, with 20% whole grain flour I ground myself and 80% Italian durum flour (aka Semola Rimacinata). A long, slow ferment (20 hours) and baking in a clay baker made for a tangy, crusty bread that went well with soup. I sliced up the leftovers and they went in the freezer for later meals.

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!