Once again it’s time for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. With colder weather and more frost predicted, my first order of business last week was to get the sweet potatoes dug. I did this in three sessions. The Saturday session was the longest, when I dug 20 hills and hauled in over 50 pounds of sweet potatoes. Centennial is one I haven’t grown in many year, and it did quite well for me. I’ll do a full review of them all later. It would apprea we will be well supplied with this starchy staple though!
Centennial sweet potato
I got another cutting of kale last week, this time the Wild Garden Mix kale. Some of this wound up in soup and some in a side dish. I love this ‘mother gene pool’ mix of kale. The plants are all different, but all are tasty and productive for me here.
Wild Garden kale mix
Fall is truly the season for greens here, and I made another cutting of collards too. This is White Mountain Cabbage collard, a family heirloom from South Carolina. The leaves were tender and mild tasting. We love our greens, and my wife and I are both really enjoying the collards.
White Mountain Cabbage collards
In other news, I pulled a lot of green and ripe hot peppers to smoke and dehydrate. The first batch was jalapenos, and a later batch was Anaheim types like Biggie Chili. After drying I grind them up into a smoky chile powder with mild heat that I like to use for seasoning.
smoking jalapeno peppers
smoking Anaheim type peppers
And I made the first cutting of the Apollo and Artwork broccolini plants. I set out four plants of each variety, so there are more to come. This batch got roasted, which is our favorite way to prepare them.
Apollo and Artwork broccoli
Despite a couple of frosts in the garden I found a few eggplants that had set on. The plants themselves are still alive so it’s possible there might be one or two more before a freeze does the plants in. Eggplant this time of year is a real treat. I took the biggest of these and grilled slices for an open-faced eggplant sandwich. I also roasted a few of our sweet peppers to go on the sandwich, which I topped with melted cheddar cheese.
Dancer and Nadia eggplant
eggplant sandwich
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!
We’ve started to harvest some of our tree kales this week, they look very simillar to yours. We have two perennial types and Thousand Head and Hungry Gap kale, all three are especially good in early spring when everything else is covered in florrets. All of our peppers are finished now, except for those in the conservatory which will ripen for Christmas (hopefully) : All the best – Steve
i wish that we could grow sweet potatoes. Do you usually have a frost so early?
You certainly will be “well-supplied” with sweet potatoes. Fifty pounds is more than impressive! I was going to ask you to describe your hot pepper smoking process, but I decided to search your site first. I found all the information I need! I have quite a few hot peppers in the fridge that are just itching to be used.
I got my idea for smoking peppers from Michelle (From Seed To Table). She used her Big Green Egg, but I get good results using my Weber charcoal kettle grill.
I do like the sounds of mixed kale, giving lots of variety in a staple like that. I tried again with sweet potato this year, in the tunnel, but I am not holding my breath as the plant grew very poorly despite plenty of water and being quite warm. Oh well, have to stick with more UK-suited veg I guess
I had sweet potatoes for dinner but wish they were my own. Fifty pounds would keep me happy. Glad your broccolini has done well. I grew it last year and was unimpressed so back to all Premium Crop this year.