Harvest Monday - 19th September 2016

By Mwillis
Last week I said I hoped I would soon be able to report harvesting ripe chillis. This week I can.

Actually, those are not the first ones to be harvested. Jane wanted some to make pickled green chillis, so of course I obliged. Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to photograph that occurrence. Suffice it to say that although 165g doesn't sound a lot, when it's 165g of chillis, then it IS a lot.
The ones in my basket include the yellow "Aji Limon", a couple of "Brazilian Starfish" (foreground, red), one of those weird "Not Gusto Purple" ones, three fat red "Nigel's Outdoor", four thin red "Purira" and one solitary purple No-Name Hybrid. The green thing is not a chilli at all, it is a Turkish Sweet Pepper (a very small specimen, even by the standards of this modestly-proportioned type!).
My batch has been turned into dried chilli flakes, with the help of my dehydrator:

In other news, the "Boltardy" Beetroot is conveniently still continuing to mature a few at a time.


I haven't mentioned Raspberries much this year, because I pulled up most of my plants last Autumn and now only have a few of them. They are "Autumn Bliss" ones.

Every now and then we get a little batch of fruit - just enough to enhance a bowl of ice cream.

My mystery cucumber plant has delivered another fruit this week, its fourth of the season. They are really heavy, dense fruits. I'm not keen on eating them raw in a salad like "normal" cucumbers, but I quick-pickled this one in white wine vinegar, with lots of salt and white pepper and it was very nice indeed. It softened slightly, but still retained most of its texture and crunch.

The skin of these cucumbers is a bit tough and prickly, so before pickling, I removed it.

The Cucamelons are beginning to drop off the plants of their own accord, so I think they must be fully ripe.

I have to say though that I'm not that keen on eating them. The skin is quite tough, they are full of seeds and the flavor is not much to my liking. Still, I can honestly say that I have tried them! I plan to keep these ones in the fridge until next time we see our granddaughter Lara, because she seems to like them.

If you read my blog regularly, you will have seen that I picked a batch of Borlotti this week, amounting to 325g. If you want to read more about Borlotti, there is a link to my post HERE.

My Spring Onions have done spectacularly well this year (by my standards, anyway), and we have been using lots of them in little batches. This particular batch went into a Chinese-style beef and tomato stir-fry dish that Jane made.

This week I have continued to harvest tomatoes - usually a few every day - but I expect that by now you are bored of seeing photographs of tomatoes, so I'll just include this one. It's of "Cherokee Purple" harvested green (just beginning to turn colour) because their parent plant is showing signs of blight infection again. I'm fairly sure they will ripen OK indoors, unless they are already infected.

This week I also want to report one failure. I cut the second of my two big "Gunma" cabbages, but I had left it too late. The inner heart was brown and mushy and had begun to develop its flower! It was so disgusting that it went straight in the compost bin. It should have been harvested two or three weeks ago. Anyway, looking on the bright side, its departure means that the nearby Brussels Sprouts will have less competition now!
This is my contribution to the weekly Harvest Monday link-up, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.