It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I finally got a decent harvest of the sweet Cornito peppers Cornito Arancia and Cornito Rosso last week. The plants don’t look like they will be super productive this year, no doubt due to lack of enough fertilzer at planting time (my mistake). That said, these we got were nice and we have enjoyed using them in various dishes. I also got some Better Boy tomatoes that day, which is a classic hybrid red tomato I’ve been growing for many years now.
pepper and tomato harvest
But it’s still pretty much all about the tomatoes here. Garden Treasure is a variety developed by the University of Florida tomato breeding program that always does well for me here, and makes lots of big tasty tomatoes. Chef’s Choice Orange tomatoes are my favorite orange-fruited variety and a 2014 AAS Winner. It has heirloom tomato flavor with hybrid vigor and disease resistance, and I think the fruits have a good mix of sweet and acid tastes. The tromboncino squash vines are producing lots of long, tender fruits, and we have been using them in the kitchen much like we would zucchini.
tomatoes and tromboncino squashes
Garden Treasure tomatoes
Chef’s Choice Orange tomato
I got more tomatoes from the trial varieties I planted this year, including Hot Streak, Harvest Moon, and Celebrity Plus. I also got more of the 2022 AAS Winner Purple Zebra which is small but has a big flavor. The Celebrity Plus has not been very productive, and I’m not sure it is an improvement over the original Celebrity variety – at least in our garden.
trial tomatoes
Purple Zebra tomatoes
I got several of the Benevento tomatoes last week, just in time for a tasting. I wanted to compare them with Hot Streak, and my wife and I both agreed Hot Streak was as good as if not better than the Benevento. It was just one each of both tomatoes, along with a Purple Zebra, so I look forward to more tasting with the Hot Streak compared to other varieties.
Benevento tomatoes
left to right: Hot Streak, Purple Zebra and Benevento tomatoes
In other harvest news, I got a selection of hot peppers from the garden last week. I use most of these for making hot sauce, and they included Sugar Rush Peach, Pot-a-Peno and Aji Rico. I got a few of the Aji Colorado peppers too, and I dry these for making into a sweet and mildly hot chile powder.
hot peppers
Aji Colorado peppers
And lastly I got more beans from the Turkey Craw Variant. We cooked these up last night for dinner, along with some potatoes.
Turkey Craw Variant beans
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 please check out what everyone is harvesting!
Compared to mine, your tomatoes always look so perfect and unblemished! Even the hybrids I grow get ugly. Nice to see your peppers both sweet and hot are starting to come on for you.
Will, I confess some of the “ugly” tomatoes don’t make it to the photo shoot!
You continue to make me envious of your tomatoes, we’d settle for some ugly ones
Purple Zebra looks interesting. Finding a tomato with heirloom flavor and hybrid vigor and disease resistance keeps us trying new tomato varieties. Celebrity is a popular San Diego variety and some people plant it as a winter tomato in sunny spots. I might look at Celebrity Plus just as a summer tomato and see what the claims are.
I’ve been missing from the blog world for awhile after I started doing a lot of video. Out of the blue this morning I thought about this old Harvest Monday blog hop and I much I enjoyed all the posts. I’m so glad to see it is still around!