It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. We’ve been enjoying the summer planted lettuce, and last week I cut a big head of Slobolt leaf lettuce for use in our salads. This is a dependable performer for me here in all seasons, and it has held up well in our recent hotter than usual fall weather. The green leaves are big and tender, and we use it on sandwiches as well as in salads. This variety was introduced in 1946 by the USDA, and has been a favorite of home gardeners and market growers ever since.
Slobolt lettuce
Hot peppers are still ripening for me, and I got a good selection of Sugar Rush Peach, Aji Colorado, and Aji Dedo de Moca Yellow. It’s been a good year for hot peppers, and I have harvested over 25 pounds of them so far.
assorted hot peppers
I dried the Aji Colorados for chile powder. I’ve also been drying the guajillo peppers of late but they were camera shy this week. It does take a lot of peppers to make a decent amount of chile powder, and I use a quite a bit of it throughout the year for various dishes.
dried Aji Colorado peppers
I also got the first big harvest of Flaming Flare for this year. Flaming Flare is a Fresno type pepper with medium heat, and a 2015 AAS Winner. I’ve got these fermenting for hot sauce, and they make a tasty sauce indeed.
Flaming Flare peppers
I did find another bit mature Centercut squash last week, this one weighing 7.6 pounds. Centercut makes a rich and sweet tasting puree when baked, and we use it mostly in pies and other baked goods.
mature Centercut squash
And last but certainly not least, our small but mighty persimmon tree is loaded with fruit this year. This is the Nikita’s Gift cultivar, which is a hybrid cross between an Asian variety and the native American persimmon that is self-pollinating and hardy to USDA zone 5. Last year we harvested 25 pounds of them, and there should be at least that many this year. The first one tasted especially sweet to me, and more will soon follow as they ripen and get soft enough to eat.
Nikita’s Gift persimmon
persimmon tree with fruit
In non-harvest news, since the pole beans are done for the year we used some of our frozen beans for dinner one night. I also grilled some steelhead trout, and baked a big Jester squash we got from our volunteer gig at Nourish. We’ve enjoyed the Jester squashes so much I am planning on adding them back in the lineup here next year.
dinner with green 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!
I do like persimmons but I’ve never seen any growinf here,
Nice autumn harvests. I’m guessing the persimmon is a dwarf variety. I remember the full-sized persimmon trees from living in California, and they would give more fruit than anyone could use in ten years.
Our tree is about 10 foot tall Will, and it certainly gives us a lot of fruit!
Gosh I love a good persimmon. I intend to plant some when I get more of my garden spaces situated. Wow that is a lot of peppers! I don’t remember hearing of Slobolt before, I will have to try some. It’s pretty much impossible to grow lettuce past midMay here because we get so hot it just bolts and gets bitter. Tho I’m sure if I put up some shade cloth and was better about watering I might get some a bit later than that. Thanks Dave, for hosting this blog hop. I enjoy seeing everyone’s stuff.
Your persimmons look wonderful. Do you eat when soft? Are they astringent? How do you use them? Thanks for keeping Harvest Monday going.
We eat them out of hand, freeze to use in fruit smoothies, and I hope to make some cookies soon. They are astringent until soft, and do have a few big seeds inside.