Monday Harvest – Feb 4th 2013

I seem to have harvested quite a lot this week.  This is largely because I finally had a bit of time for a bit of a garden clean up which meant sorting out the potato bed amongst other things.

I grew Dutch Cream, Kipfler, another unidentified white variety and Purple Congo this year.  I have to say I’m not really convinced about the merits of Purple Congo.  They look interesting but they are really difficult to find at harvest time.  The purple of their skins and the dirt in my garden look remarkably similar.  The flavour isn’t sensational either, or at least it wasn’t for the first lot I cooked.  Oh well, a fun thing to have even it proves to be the last year I bother with them.

One thing I will continue with is ‘Wild’ rocket.  I’ve loved having it this summer – a constant supply of greens in a year when the lettuces have struggled a bit is really useful.

During the course of my clean up I pulled most of the remaining red onions.  Every year I spend most of the year wondering why I bother growing onions and then comes harvest time and I’m really glad I did.  Note to self: buy more seed and come next Spring try not to whinge about how long onions take to mature.

In stark contrast to the slow maturing onions we have zucchini which has to be the quickest developing fruit there is.  One moment there are none or at least you think there are none but have another look and you could swear a new one has grown before your eyes (alternatively this may just be a symptom of deteriorating eyesight).  Its a shame my family aren’t convinced of its merits because I am having a lot of fun trying new recipes with it.

Also ridiculously quick to mature are cucumbers.  These Summer Dance grew to a very cool 30 cm with what seemed like a few days.  The lemon cucumbers are much slower on the other hand.  This is my first time of growing them – does this one look right?  Or have I left it too long?  Or harvested too soon?  Its in the fridge – I really should eat it but I am groaning under the strain of too many cucurbits at the moment.

I harvested the first Borlotti  (or maybe they are Tongues of Fire) beans this week.  Pretty aren’t they?

Most of the pods were drier than the brightly coloured ones shown.  I love the variation in bean size by age of the bean, as they dry they shrink, considerably in some instances.  I guess it just shows how much water they contain.

I also harvested my first capsicum of the season this week.  A sweet mama from a plant I bought as a seedling.  The plants I sowed myself have set fruit on most varieties but they are still green.

All except for the Mini Mama Capsicums.  The ones below are from a plant I overwintered that was bought as a seedling last year.

The green tomatoes should be red but I decided to pick some of my slicing tomatoes green in an attempt to save them from the dreaded rodents.  I’m not sure how well they wil ripen but its better than watching them either being slowly devoured or alternatively disappearing completely overnight.

As always head over to Daphne’s Dandelions for all things harvested related, and I will be back tomorrow with a Top 5 post.

For those of you who are wondering why I have added a Captcha code to the comments section, it is due to ridiculous volumes of spam: 35,000 in the last couple of months.  If anyone has difficulties with the code then please let me know and I will look into changing its format.