Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I’ve got lots of stuff to cover so I will get right to it! Winter squash are still coming in here as they mature. I pulled up most of the dead vines to make room for a fall planting of turnips. I’ve got a few plants left growing, but most are done for. In the below photo there’s the Honey Nut Baby Butternut along with a giant Butternut Rugosa (aka Violina Rugosa). The Butternut Rugosa weighed right at 6 pounds, while the Baby HoneyNut averaged a little over 10 ounces each. Both will need to be stored a bit before we get a taste of them.
Baby Honey Nut and Butternut Rugosa winter squash
The tomatoes are nearing the end but I still managed to harvest over 30 pounds of them last week. Juliet is keeping us well supplied with tomatoes for processing. There’s almost two gallons of them in the colander.
Juliet tomatoes
The bush paste tomatoes are about done too, but I got a big bucket of them last week. It’s mostly Viva Italia and Health Kick in the below photo, right at 10 pounds of them. We used all the tomatoes to make another batch of Homemade Ketchup, plus a batch of unseasoned tomato sauce. I saved a few out for another project though.
Viva Italia paste tomatoes
I ground up the last of the 2015 dried Aji Panca peppers to make a chile powder. Aji Panca is a baccatum pepper with mild heat, and is the second most popular pepper in Peruvian cuisine (behind the Aji Amarillo). The dried peppers are described as having a berrylike, smoky flavor, and I can even detect a hint of coffee or cacao to them. I’m growing it again this year, but the peppers are nowhere near ripe yet. I used some of the paste tomatoes and the ground Aji Panca to make a red enchilada sauce to top a batch of bean enchiladas I cooked up one night. That might not be how the Aji Panca peppers are used in Peru, but they sure made for a tasty enchilada sauce here at HA!
dried Aji Panca peppers
Aji Panca chile powder
I harvested two more of the Captain Lucky tomatoes last week. This one has proven to be a new favorite here this summer for sandwiches and for just eating sliced. The vines are still going, and I hope they might put on another flush of fruit for later on.
Captain Lucky tomatoes
sliced Captain Lucky tomato
Eggplants are still coming in too. That’s a pair of Galine in the below photo. We’ve been enjoying them prepared in a number of ways.
Galine eggplant
We used one of them to make a grilled eggplant and pesto sandwich. We layered slices of the grilled eggplant with cheese, basil pesto, sliced tomato (Captain Lucky) and a bit of lettuce (from the grocery). The photo doesn’t really do the sandwich justice, but it turned out very tasty and we plan on making it again as long as the eggplant and tomatoes hold out.
grilled eggplant sandwich
I continue to get ripe peppers from the garden, though it’s more of a drip than a deluge. Celia Dulce is a Mexican heirloom pepper that I thought was going to be sweet, given the ‘dulce’ in the name and the description at Dustbowl Seeds, where I ordered them. The peppers turned out pretty spicy though. I sent an email to them asking if this was normal, and they confirmed I have a Not Celia Dulce instead of the real deal. I also think it’s interesting that these peppers are showing the ‘corking’ on the skin that is common on jalapeno peppers. I do think they might be good smoked, which I may do if I get a few more of them or others to make it worth my while to fire up the grill. We will see what happens in the pepper patch the next few days. I could even smoke some green Numex types, of which I have plenty at the moment.
ripe Celia Dulce peppers
A real treat last week came to us by way of our friend Jane, who shared some of her paw paw harvest with us. Jane planted her trees a few years before we did, and has been getting fruit for a couple of years now. The two in the below photo come from a Pennsylvania Golden Paw Paw tree, and were very soft and ripe. The Pawpaw is native to eastern parts of the U.S. and southern Canada. The leaves and twigs produce a chemical that serves as a natural insecticide, and the trees are rarely eaten by rabbits or deer. It does take at least two genetically different trees for pollination to occur, and for that reason we have three different varieties planted here: Mango, Wabash and Shenandoah. According to this Purdue University bulletin, the easy to grow trees are rarely bothered by pests, and also serve as a larval host to the Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly, so they got that going for them too.
pawpaw fruit
My wife and I had never tasted a pawpaw before, so planting our trees was truly a leap of faith. The taste of the fruit is wonderful and a bit hard to describe. The texture is much like a custard or pudding, very smooth and with a great mouth feel. After cutting the fruit open, we ate the flesh with a spoon, popping the large black seeds in our mouth to get every last bit of flesh. The aroma and taste reminds me of a vanilla/banana pudding, with tropical overtones of mango or perhaps even pineapple thrown in. My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed our tasting, and thanks again to Jane for sharing some of her precious harvest with us! Now I can’t wait for our own harvests, which should be coming in another year or two.
inside of pawpaw
another view of the pawpaw
And speaking of pawpaws, I was checking on our pawpaw trees and pulling a few weeds when I spotted an Eastern Box Turtle snoozing at the base of one tree. My wife and I have had a running joke for years, after she saw a box turtle shortly after we bought the place. She called him Timmy, and the only proof he ever existed was a single photo she managed to get of it and post in a scrapbook. We never saw him again here at HA, or any other turtles for that matter. Anytime I see a turtle anywhere, I am likely to ask “is that Timmy?”, even if it’s on fabric.
Timmy the Turtle in 2007
But that changed Saturday when I found Tommy, or maybe Tammy, since I didn’t disturb the turtle enough to ask its name. It was a welcome sight regardless, and a sign that our habitat is appealing to them. Box turtles are long-lived and can even outlive humans, so it could even be the elusive Timmy, but I have to say the markings on the shells of the two turtles really don’t look much alike. Which is even better news – maybe we have TWO box turtles hanging out here!
Tammy the Turtle in 2016
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!
Lovely harvest as always Dave. I love how bloggers who grow veg no share what they made. I remember in the early day, they used to only showcase the harvest, now what they do with it and it excites me. I do love a good eggplant sandwich with a slice of homegrown tomato and yours has me drooling and I am liking your homemade chilli powder.
I don’t really think we are going to have much of a harvest if any of peppers and aubergines/eggplants this year. Fruit it’s still quite tiny on plants where it has actually set.
I don’t know whether to be more jealous of your tomatoes or your turtle! I’d be so happy if we got turtles in our garden, but I think I’m more likely to get tomatoes, as I live in Shropshire (England!). 🙂
We were given a bag of pawpaws yesterday. I didn’t know how to eat them, I will scoop them with a spoon too. If the leaves are a natural insecticide, I wonder if putting a few in my other beds will help with the squash bug problem?
Nice squash and tomatoes. The Celia Dulce are interesting, they don’t look at all like the picture on Dustbowl’s site, which are more bell shaped. With the shape and corking and heat, they must have got a cross with a Jalapeno. The paw paws are nostalgic. As a kid in Missouri with my Boy Scout field guide, I went looking for them but never found a tree so I could sample them. And so is the turtle. My dad and his brother had a box turtle as a pet that lived in the basement. They fed it bologna and lettuce and it outlived all the occupants of the house.
You got me interested, so, from Wikipedia:
“The females usually have yellowish, brown eyes and the males usually have red or orange eyes, but the most reliable manner to distinguish males from females is to examine the plastron; on males there is a concave area centered beneath the hinge.”
The new one looks like it has red eyes.
So maybe it’s Tommy!
I’m totally envious of your tomato crop. The squash provides an interesting contrast; please let us know the taste results. Good luck with the paw paws. I’ve toyed with the idea of planting them here. Can you preserve the fruit? So glad you found the box turtle. They are a threatened species here.
According to several sources (including this bulletin) you can freeze the pulp or even the whole fruit.
What a wonderful discovery the turtle was! Maybe you spotted Timmy’s wife :).
That sandwich with the eggplant looks absolutely delicious! A new use for eggplant that I actually had not thought of. And those baby butternuts are so cute! How many generally grow on one vine?
There were about 8 on the vine, but I lost a couple due to rot.
Eggplant sandwich = yes please!
The paw paws are amazing, I can just imagine the flavour with your description, beautiful.
That’s so cool you have a turtle, it must have been really exciting. I had a hedgehog on my plot a few years ago but haven’t seen any sign of them recently. I have plenty of overgrown areas for them though!
I’ve never tasted a paw paw either. They look intriguing! And hooray for spotting a box turtle- they are adorable. We seem to have several living around here, probably because of the pond, a creek and plenty of woods. I’ve seen several of them making nests and laying eggs, but I’ve never seen any baby hatchlings… yet! Your eggplant sandwich looks delicious and your description of that Aji Panca pepper is enticing.
Your squashes and tomatoes are so exciting. I miss the little tomatoes already, it was so easy to eat just gobs and gobs of them. Your eggplant sandwich looks delicious, I do have some big tomatoes ripening on the counter so it’ll be the perfect thing to try this weekend.
That paw paw sounds wonderful, they’re one of the 3 trees I want to plant someday with the other 2 being Asian pear and fuyu persimmon.
The turtle is so cool, I wish they hung out around my garden. I do see Western Pond Turtles in the Carmel River on occasion. You did have a great week of harvests. 30 pounds of tomatoes from waning plants! Sometimes I feel like I’m in a bit of a time warp here, waiting for maters when others are harvesting and just starting to get my big tomato harvests when others are avout done. And the same goes for most other “summer” veggies, my butternuts and other squash are just developing and the first eggplant was ready last week.
Wow! Your pawpaw fruit sounds *so interesting! I’ll have to look for it just to give it a try!
As always, all of your harvests look amazing! You have much to be proud of this summer, Dave!
That Paw Paw is nothing like the oriental type I am familiar with – also known as the Papaya. Yours reminds me of the “Custard Apple” / Cherimoya. I like the sound of the Aji Panca sauce though – just my sort of thing!