Monday 26 September 2016

Harvest Monday - 26 September 2016

The most significant harvest for me this week has been the Spanish Hanging Tomatoes, about which I wrote a few days ago.


Tomates de colgar - 1.5kgs


I also dug up the last of my container-grown potatoes. These are "Pink Fir Apple".



This was the least good of my 4 pots of PFA. Several of the tubers had worked their way to the surface and gone green, but even more worrying, some tubers had gone soft and mushy. When the rejects had been discarded I was left with a mere 547g.




The chillis are ripening nicely now (I just hope the weather holds), and I have picked and dried a few more of most types.


In the photo below you can see one big "Alberto's Locoto" Rocoto in the centre, and then around the edge, starting from the 12-o-clock position we have small red "Purira", big round "Brazilian Starfish", one fat "Nigel's Outdoor", one tiny deeply-ribbed "7-Pot Brain Strain", a few slim "Turkey, small red", some of the chubby unknown hybrid a bit similar to "Apache", and finally the yellow "Aji Limon".




On the day I picked those chillis I also got a few Runner and Borlotto beans and some more tomatoes.



As you'll note, I'm picking the tomatoes under-ripe for ripening indoors. This makes them less vulnerable to damage by blight, slugs and weather, as well as speeding-up the ripening. I think that once a tomato begins to turn colour, its flavour will be just as good ripened off the vine as on the vine. It just needs time!


This is my contribution to Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

11 comments:

  1. That's a lovely mix of peppers Mark! I'm not familiar with any of them except the Aji Lemon. Too bad about the potatoes though.

    Dave@OurHappyAcres

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  2. I'm finding that I prefer some varieties of tomatoes a bit underripe so I'm harvesting a couple of varieties with a hint of green. It really varies from one variety of tomato to another, some I prefer fully ripe. Your chillis look excellent and the beans too.

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  3. Lovely chilis. I'm guessing that some, or all, of them are quite hot.

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    1. No, actually they are a mixture - some are quite mild. I prefer taste to heat.

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  4. Your chillies look good ...nice selection! We also grow Alberto's LRs and have overwintered plants very successfully to get a slightly earlier harvest. Shame about your potatoes. Do you think the mushy ones were following slug damage perhaps?

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    Replies
    1. No, I saw no evidence of slug damage. The tubers in question were just completely soft and mushy.

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  5. That's too bad about the potatoes - I'm having a very bad potato year overall, as is evidenced by my meagre harvest last week.

    Our cherry tomatoes are being picked when ripe, but, like you, I'm not waiting on any of the others...they're picked as they start to change colour, just in case.

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  6. Interesting selection of peppers, many I have never heard of. Like the rocoto, that was new for me. They are not well known in the US and only a few specialty vendors carry them, and no one the Alberto. Looks like some of the varieties in Europe got there through Spain and the Canary Islands, while for the US it was Mexico and the Caribbean, so different varieties from different parts of South America.

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  7. Lovely harvests! That's a good idea to pick the tomatoes early- it seems that everything wants to eat them when they get ripe.

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  8. Do you think PFA was affected by blight?

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    Replies
    1. No, I don't think so. There were none of the usual signs of blight, such as blackened stems and lesions on the tubers.

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