Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. Around here we have sure been enjoying the fall veggies. I sowed turnip seed back in early August, and I think the turnips have done quite well this year. That’s Oasis in the below photo, a little over five pounds of them, and we ate the greens and the turnips one night for dinner. We didn’t eat them all though, since I harvested a bit more than I planned. Oasis takes a little longer than Hakurei to size up, but it seems to get bigger. I planted both this year, along with Tsugaru Scarlet and some Purple Top which I’m growing mostly for the greens.
Oasis turnips
I also cut the first of the fall broccoli last week. I’m growing four different varieties, in an attempt to see which ones perform well here. Goliath was the first to make a head, though there is some browning of the beads. It tasted fine however, and I was happy to have homegrown broccoli back on the menu! I’m also growing Green Magic, Diplomat and Imperial.
Goliath broccoli
We’ve been enjoying the fall planted kale too. I cut some of the White Russian last week, which I also grew as a spring crop. This Brassica napus cousin of the Red Russian kale is touted by numerous seed catalogs as being especially tender and tasty, and I have to say I agree. I can’t wait to see how it tastes after it has been kissed by frost. It’s my first year growing this o/p variety, which was bred by Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seeds.
White Russian kale
In the non-brassica department, I harvested the first Thai Rai Kaw Tok squash. This variety was a good producer last year, though many of the fruits were very late to mature. This year is no different, and I have another one that is almost ready plus several more in various stages that may or not make it before the first killing frost. The one in the below photo weighed almost eight pounds. It and the Seminole are tied for Last Squash Standing status in what has been a challenging year for all the squash varieties. All the other squash plants are history.
Thai Rai Kaw Tok squash
Sweet peppers are still ripening. We’ve grilled most of them, which makes for an easy side dish. I also chop them up and freeze them for later use, as well as dehydrate them. In the below photo you can see the orange Glow, yellow Early Sunsation, the red bell Big Bertha and Corno di Toro Rosso.
assortment of ripe sweet peppers
This year I am growing a C. baccatum pepper called Malawi Piquante, which is round-ish with thin walls and sort of resembles a cherry pepper. This is the o/p pepper supposedly used to make the trademarked processed peppers called ‘Peppadew’. I have one plant in a container and another planted in the ground. I started the seeds back in March and set the plants out in late May. It has taken until now to produce ripe peppers, which you can see in the below photo. There are two Kaleidoscope peppers in there as well, which is another mild tasting baccatum variety that has fruit about 4 inches long.
Malawi Piquante and Kaleidoscope peppers
There are recipes floating around the web that claim to be for the Peppadew. This one from Food.com calls for brining the peppers overnight, then pickling in a solution that includes, vinegar, sugar, water, ginger, bay leaves and garlic. I have to say my taste buds don’t detect salt, garlic or ginger in the ones I buy at the store, but who knows since the process used is a trademarked secret! I pickled some Topepo Rosso peppers last year using this recipe as a starting point, but skipping the brine and omitting the ginger and bay leaves. Those turned out to be pretty tasty, and I used a similar sweet pickling brine for the Malawi Piquante peppers this year. There are quite a few seeds inside them, and I settled on using an apple corer to remove the stems and seeds. I’ll let you know how they taste in a week or so. I can also see them stuffed with cheese and served up as an appetizer.
Malawi Piquante peppers ready for pickling
Pole beans are still coming on. The Fortex and Trionfo Violetto are hanging on and producing the occasional flush of pods, which is a bit rare for this late in the season. I’ve also been harvesting the Good Mother Stallard pods and bringing them in to finish drying before I shell them.
harvest of pole beans
In non-harvest news, I am working on documenting how I make the Sourdough Rye Hearth Bread so I can share the recipe here. This has become my go-to bread for sandwiches. I baked up a batch on Saturday, and while the tops split open a bit more than I like, it turned out great otherwise. The loaves were under-proofed and/or not scored deeply enough, and I made a note for next time. I froze one loaf for later use and we started eating the other one as soon as it was cool enough to slice.
Sourdough Rye Hearth Bread
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!
How do you manage to keep your brassica bug free? My spring plantings were fine but fall plantings were attacked by all kinds of bugs. Beautiful Thai Rai Kaw Tok squash wish I had room to grow them.
I spray the plants with Bt and neem oil every couple of weeks. That’s easier for me than covering them, which seems to tear up the plants plus I still get moths under the covers anyway!
Thanks, next year I will definitely try the Bt and neem oil.
Doesn’t even look like fall your way! Everything looks great. I don’t particularly like turnips, but I’ve been ordered to grow them next year. Please let us know which variety you like best. The Malawi Piquante looks interesting; I’m guessing it’s pretty hot since you are using gloves to process. The sweet brine must be a nice contrast.
The seed company I got the seeds from (Refining Fire Chiles) doesn’t say, but other sources list the Malawi Piquante at about 1000-2000 Scoville units. I always wear gloves processing hot peppers, which is a lesson I learned the hard way!
I enjoy the Harvest Monday posts, but it is slow to load them in my browser because there are so many posts on one webpage. It would be helpful if you could change to one or two posts a page, with a link at the bottom of the page to older posts.
Thanks Tru. I changed the settings a bit and it should load faster for you now!
Thank you!
Wow, you’re really still hauling it all in! How wonderful 🙂 That squash is just gorgeous! I do hope you’ll let us know how it stores and how tastes!
Hope you have a wonderful week, Dave. Thank you for hosting!
Great harvest this week!! Your fall harvest seems to be a bit ahead of mine. We are still a few weeks off for broccoli and turnips!!
Terrific harvest (as always!). Great idea to use the apple corer to remove the pepper seeds – I grew sweet pickle peppers this year and they are small also – challenging to seed.
I look forward to your bread recipe! I know what you mean about documenting the recipe as bread making is so much about “feel” rather than measurements. But your loaves always look so perfect.
What a beautiful set of turnips and greens, and love that huge squash. Very nice peppers of course and you can practically smell that fresh bread from screen 🙂
I didn’t plant anything for fall this year so I will have to live vicariously through the posts here at Harvest Monday. Does the White Russian Kale taste the same as the Red? I love the leaf shape and how easy it is to spot any hitchhikers when washing.
I think the White Russian tastes better than the Red, but it has been a while since I grew Red Russian. The leaves of the White are flatter and not only easy to clean, but great for kale chips!
Oh to have broccoli now! I’ll have to wait for many months. The White Russian Kale sounds like one to try. Are the leaves smaller? Amazing to see how productive your garden is in October. Your sidebar says zone 6b. Where do you live/garden? Thanks again for keeping Harvest Monday alive for so many.
We are in southern Indiana. The leaves of White Russian are pretty large, a little larger than Red Russian I think, and a bit less curly.
Your peppers have ripened much better than ours have we have had none turn read at all.
I completely agree with you on the White Russian – it was delicious and definitely missed once we pulled all the plants in that bed. Even though the Thai Rai Kaw is late to mature and our season is definitely shorter than yours, your previous posts on it have it at the top of my list of winter squash to try – I’m thinking next year. And I’m really looking forward to your sourdough rye recipe – rye is a favourite at our house and I did make sourdough bread several years ago, but have never made one with rye.
Thanks for the second opinion of the White Russian! I will be growing it again for sure. The rye bread uses both a sourdough starter and commercial yeast. The yeast speeds up the time involved, though it does involve an overnight process.
The breads may have split more than you would have liked, but they’re still attractive. I think using the bannetons helps – the look is so “rustic”, and people eat with their eyes first.
(I’ll update my blog to point to yours here shortly — it keeps slipping my mind.)
I wish I had made bread like yours, even if you think it is not perfect! I find baking bread to be very therapeutic, and home-made bread is so much nicer, so much more sustaining and so much healthier than “commercial” bread. I do make bread, but it is more basic than yours. I admire your peppers / chillis too – as you know, this is my “specialist subject”!
I love the Thai squash, it looks very cool. I might try some different squash varieties next year, my seed catalogue arrived recently so I’ll be having a browse through it. The bread looks very nice indeed too, mmm.
Sure wish someone would bake bread like that for me!! Looks delicious! You are harvesting a lot of things yet and things that I don’t grow. Nice. Nancy
Thanks for hosting Dave. That is one beautiful Squash! Like others have said before me, I think you have talked me into giving it a try next year. And as always, I am in awe of your baking abilities. Your homemade bread is just lovely.