Harvest Monday November 15, 2021

Posted on November 15, 2021 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. The harvests were a bit slim last week, as we used up veggies from the previous week’s harvests. I did pull up a few more kohlrabi, as we needed some for a Thai dish that featured the stir-fried kohlrabi and sweet peppers. There’s a few more peppers in the refrigerator but they are almost all gone now.

kohlrabi harvest

I did get a few hot Thai peppers from a container grown plant in the greenhouse. This strain came from the Seed Savers Exchange, and the peppers are a bit bigger than the one I have been growing for some years now. They are quite hot, and one goes a long way in adding heat to a dish.

Thai peppers

It was also time to harvest the turmeric plants I had growing in containers.  They did quite well that way, and I took out the biggest rhizomes and replanted the rest for next year’s crop.

turmeric in container

I had three varieties growing from seed stock I have bought over the years: Indira Yellow , Hawaiian Red and White Mango. All have different flavors, with White Mango having a mild taste and Indira Yellow being quite pungent. Indira Yellow had the biggest yield this year for me. Whenever we visit Hawaii, the farmer’s markets always seem to have big piles of the Hawaiian Red for sale, so it must enjoy the climate and long growing season there.

turmeric harvest

I also cut a few Mizuna greens for use last week. It is soup weather here, and these went into a mushroom and noodle soup. It was seasoned with ginger, soy sauce and sesame oil with soba noodles, carrots and chicken. We topped it with some of our flat leaf chives from the greenhouse.

Mizuna Central Red

Mushroom Noodle soup

I also cooked up a pot of chili con carne that featured our tomato sauce from the freezer. It was seasoned with lots of my homemade chile powder I make from the guajillo peppers I grow. I used bison meat for that along with both red and black beans.

Chili Con Carne

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!

 


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Harvest Monday November 8, 2021

Posted on November 8, 2021 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. Last week here was pretty much all about harvesting the tender crops before the freezing weather came. We had below freezing temperatures four days in a row, which killed all but the hardy vegetables. Before it happened, I brought in a lot of peppers, mostly hot ones. I found enough Peppadew peppers to make two quarts of pickled peppers, which we use in a number of dishes including on pizzas. I also found a few eggplant to harvest, which is amazing here in early November.

pepper harvest

November harvest

I began fermenting five jars of the hot peppers, including Aji Golden, Aji Angelo, Sugar Rush Peach and Aji Rico. The Aji Rico peppers did great this year, with one big plant giving me over three pounds of ripe peppers this week before the freeze came. This 2017 AAS Winner has crunchy, mildly hot peppers with a sweet citrus flavor. They make a tasty hot sauce, which is what I’m doing with most of these. This year I want to try single variety hot sauces to do taste comparisons. I usually just blend them all up into one mixed sauce, but since I have so many this year I though it would be fun to keep them separate. I’ll let these ferment for a week or so before turning them into sauce.

Aji Rico peppers

fermenting hot peppers for sauce

I did find a few sweet peppers too. A few weren’t totally ripe so I left them sit out to finish the process. It’s been a great year for peppers here and I will miss having them fresh.

sweet peppers

The fall kohlrabi was finally ready, so I pulled several of those as well. I planted Kolibri and Terek this fall, and the purple skinned Kolibri was ready first. We are eating these raw, stir-fried and roasted.

Kolibri kohlrabi

I pulled a few more baby Hakurei turnips, plus I cut enough of the All Top greens to cook up with the turnips. All Top has big leaves and a mild taste, and I’m just cutting the larger outer leaves and leaving the plants to make more. We ate on this batch for two meals. I planted a lot of greens for fall, and now that they have been frosted on they should be even more tasty.

turnips and greens

In non-harvest news, I had a couple of container-grown coleus plants I brought inside to overwinter. I also took a few cuttings to make new plants. Main Street Beale Street has dark red leaves, and doesn’t flower until late in the season. Our plants required no pinching or pruning during the growing season, which made them easy to grow compared with many older varieties I have grown in the past. This one was a 2020 AAS Winner, and I look forward to growing it again next year. It added color all summer long to our sun garden.

Coleus Main Street Beale Street

Lately I’ve been experimenting with using Durum wheat in bread. Durum is mostly used for making pasta, but I also use it for pizza crust as well as for bread. My latest crusty sourdough bread is 100% Durum, with 20% whole grain flour I ground myself and 80% Italian durum flour (aka Semola Rimacinata). A long, slow ferment (20 hours) and baking in a clay baker made for a tangy, crusty bread that went well with soup. I sliced up the leftovers and they went in the freezer for later meals.

sourdough bread made with Durum wheat flour

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!

 


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2021 Sweet Potato Review

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Dave @ HappyAcres

The sweet potato harvest is always a big event here at Happy Acres, and this year that was perhaps even more true than usual. Last year the sweet potatoes did not do well, which I attributed to a lack of rain while the roots were sizing up. The 24 slips I planted produced just over 40 pounds of sweet potatoes for an average of 1.74 pounds per plant. This year wes had ample rain, regularly spaced out in the summer months, so I had high hopes for the sweet potato yields. The vines grew long and lush, venturing out into the neighboring beds and vining up the cages I use to support peppers and tomatoes. When the digging was done, I was not disappointed, and I hauled 90 pounds of them into the house to cure.

sweet potato vines before harvesting

I set out the same number of plants as last year, and the same varieties. This year the average yield per hill was 3.7 pounds, which is more than double last year’s yield and one of the best since I’ve been growing them here in this garden. The best performer this year was Murasaki, which is a Japanese variety with reddish purple skin and creamy white flesh. It has a nutty, sweet flavor and the flesh is drier than most sweet potatoes. It makes for a good all-purpose sweet potato, tasty when baked up whole or when turned into hash, oven fries or sweet potato chips. The 5 hills of Murasaki made a whopping 20 pounds, outperforming even the very productive Beauregard.

Murasaki sweet potatoes

typical Murasaki sweet potato

Speaking of Beauregard, this dependable variety produced over 18 pounds from 5 hills, which is also a great yield and better than usual. This variety has moist, orange flesh and is much like most of the sweet potatoes you would find in the grocery here in the U.S. We often bake these whole, or use them for a side dish like Rosemary Roasted Sweet Potatoes. The sweet potatoes have tender skin right after digging, so I don’t clean off the soil until it’s time to cook them.

Beauregard sweet potatoes

baked Beauregard sweet potato

The second most productive variety this year was Bonita, which usually does well for me here. 3 hills made just a bit less than 12 pounds of roots, which was only a bit less yield than the Murasaki. Bonita has a pinkish tan skin and moist white flesh, and is one of my favorites for baking whole.

Bonita sweet potatoes

baked Bonita sweet potato

Korean Purple is another one of my dependable performers, and as the name suggests it has purple skin with a dry white flesh. It is truly one of my favorites for making hash, oven-baked fries and sweet potato chips. The sweet flesh crisps up well and caramelizes in the oven for a real taste treat. The 6 hills made just over 20 pounds of potatoes, which should keep us well supplied!

Korean Purple sweet potatoes

And last but never least, the purple skinned and purple fleshed Purple did quite well this year, with 6 hills making 19 pounds of potatoes. I’ve been growing it for several years now, after Norma (Garden To Wok) shared some planting stock with me. Its fairly dry flesh is great for the same uses as Korean Purple, and the two work well together in those dishes.

Purple sweet potatoes

Purple sweet potato slice before cooking

I will let the sweet potatoes cure in a warm place for several weeks before we begin eating them. The basement is the best place we have for curing, and I spread them out in a thin layer in cardboard boxes. As they cure, the skin toughens up and the starches convert to sugars. After curing, they will keep until next spring.

For more information about growing sweet potatoes try these sources:

Growing Sweet Potatoes in Missouri

Sweet Potato -University of Illinois

The Sweet Potato – Purdue University

Sweet Potato Growing Guide – Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Grow Sweet Potatoes – Even In The North (Mother Earth News)

 

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Harvest Monday November 1, 2021

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. With frosty weather in the forecast for the coming week, I’ve been busy getting the garden ready and harvesting tender vegetables and herbs. It’s about that time, and actually a tad later than the first frosts came last year. I also made the first cutting of collard greens last week. I think the flavor improves after a few frosts, but these were still tasty enough now.

harvest of collard greens and peppers

Yellow Cabbage Collard leaf

Sweet potatoes are a big crop for us, and they definitely don’t like the freezing temperatures. I saw one good sized one peeking up out of the soil, which was a good sign it was time to dig them. I grow the sweet potatoes in a raised ridge, which lets the roots form more easily in loose soil. It also makes for easier digging, and I was able to root around with my hands and pull out most of them. For the rest I used my trusty digging fork! I am happy to report no one got speared, though one did break in two as I pulled it out. These need to be cured in a warm place for several weeks before eating.

sweet potato poking up from hill

Last year the yields were disappointing, which I put down to a lack of rain while the roots were sizing up. This year they made up for it, and I got 90 pounds of them from 25 hills. That was double last year’s haul, and from the same varieties no less. Beauregard is a variety with moist orange flesh that generally makes big potatoes for me, and it didn’t disappoint this year. I got 18 pounds from 5 hills, and the one in my hand weighed 2.5 pounds. I’ll do a review of the rest of them later.

Beauregard sweet potatoes

My wife and I both love greens of all kinds, with the exception of chard and beet greens. Turnbroc is a green that resulted from a cross between turnips and broccoli. It has smooth leaves that look more like turnips than broccoli, and had a mild flavor when I cooked them up. Frost should improve its flavor too, and I have more growing. I got the seeds from Kitazawa Seed Company.

Turnbroc greens

I have several hot peppers growing in containers. One I’m growing for the first time is Early Thai from Adaptive Seeds. It has done well in its first showing for me, though I haven’t tasted the peppers yet to determine their heat level.  I sometimes put one of the dried peppers in my homemade kombucha to give it a little kick, as well as using them in cooking. These small Thai peppers are usually quite hot, so I am guessing these will keep me supplied for a while!

Early Thai pepper plant

Early Thai peppers

There’s no heat in the Aji Delight peppers though. It is a baccatum pepper with a sweet, fruity taste and crunchy flesh. We use most of these fresh, though I do sometime pickle a few.

Aji Delight peppers

That’s all the harvests I have for the week. 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!


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Harvest Monday October 25, 2021

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. Lately I have been taking advantage of the cooler weather to work in the greenhouse, planting things and getting ready for winter. I have been harvesting a few times each week, sometimes to get something specific we need. We’re still enjoying the abundant harvests of ripe peppers, along with smaller amounts of eggplant.

October harvest

Last week I began pulling the first of the turnips so we could enjoy the greens and the baby turnips themselves cooked together. I’m growing Hakurei this fall, along with Topper and All-Top turnip greens that don’t make edible roots but have tender and mild leaves. This first batch is from Hakurei, and served to give the short row a final thinning as well as to give us something to eat.

Hakurei turnips and greens

I’ve got other greens growing in the greenhouse, including the Tuscan Baby Leaf Kale and the dark purple Miz America mizuna. These add color and flavor to salads and our breakfast smoothies.

mixed greens for salad

The pole beans also gave up one more harvest of pods. I cooked up this batch, and we had enough for a couple of meals. That might be the last of the bean for this year, but we’ve hauled in over 50 pounds already.

another October harvest

I harvested one variety of Guajillo peppers that I save seed from. It’s a good yielding pepper, and the original source of my seeds is no longer in business, so I save them every couple of years to keep them going.

Guajillo peppers

After cutting open the peppers and harvesting the seeds, I dried the peppers themselves in the dehydrator. I grind these up to make a mildly spicy chile powder.

dried guajillo peppers

I also dried a batch of the hybrid Minero peppers, another guajillo type I turn into chile powder. The dehydrator stays busy this time of the year drying peppers, and I keep it on the front porch to keep the heat and sometimes pungent aromas outside!

dried Minero peppers

Ratatouille was on the menu again last week. I roasted the veggies on a foil covered sheet pan for easy cleanup, then served it over rice along with baked fish. This is one of our favorite ways to use these late summer veggies, and we’ve served it over both rice and pasta as well as all on its own. I always use a generous amount of olive oil plus herbs like oregano, basil and thyme.

ratatouille roasting on sheet pan

ratatouille on rice

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!

 


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