September 2011 MKG Harvest



Sungold and San Marzano tomatoes
Pretty Purple, Tequila, and Hungarian Yellow Wax Peppers, Sunburst patty pan squash
Strawberries, Casper and Diamond eggplants


An odd year in the garden- a very odd year.  September has been the month for tomatoes and they are continuing on into October.  After months of gazing longingly at the green orbs covering the plants, they obliged and turned red, yellow, orange and purple!  The tally for individual varieties will follow, but the grand total of the September tomato harvest is... over 30 pounds of tomatoes!  Um, what?  I have to look back at my records but I don't know if I've ever harvested that many tomatoes before.  What a very odd year.

September 2011 MKG Harvest

1 Tequila pepper
10 Pretty Purple peppers
2 Hungarian yellow wax peppers
~1 pint strawberries
1 Diamond eggplant
5 Casper eggplants
3 Sunburst patty pan squash (2 overgrown)
2 Zephyr squash (overgrown)
1 Cocozelle zucchini (overgrown)
3 Black Spineless zucchini (overgrown)
~7 pints Sungold cherry tomatoes
2 Isis cherry tomatoes
5 Pineapple tomatoes
6 San Marzano  Roma tomatoes
9 Mortgage Lifter tomatoes
13 Black Krim tomatoes
22 Carbon tomatoes
1 Apple

Those items became:

Savory Strawberry Crostini
Sungold Caprese Salad
(a lot of) Gazpacho
Nigella Lawson's Egyptian Tomato Salad
Smitten Kitchen's Lemony Zucchini Goat Cheese Pizza
Lots of scrambled eggs with mixed veggies
Stovetop Tomato Jam
... and eventually... a LARGE supply of zucchini bread

I hope your garden is still pumping out the produce, too!  If not, now is the time to clean up those beds and get some winter vegetables into the ground.

A Plethora of Pretty Purple Peppers

Behold, two of my favorite Bostonians at their first California Farmer's Market-
Santa Barbara, August, 2004:

That is what it looks like when you meet your first purple pepper.

In honor of those two, I've been sure to plant one purple pepper plant every year in the MKG.  The fruits start to ripen and it reminds me of that picture, and those friends, and that summer, and it makes my heart happy. 

This year I went a little crazy and planted TWO purple pepper plants- Tequila, a purple bell, and Pretty Purple Pepper, a teeny purple hot pepper.  I am quite impressed with both plants.  There are a plethora of pretty purple peppers dotting the small plant, and the Tequila pepper ripened quite nicely even in this strange and unusually cool summer weather (p.s. the forecast for today is 95°F... huh?).

The thing about the hot peppers, though, is I am totally scared of them.  I'm a bit of a pansy when it comes to heat and these are supposed to pack a real punch.  I'll have to try them out on my Californian husband- he has a higher heat tolerance than I do.  But if they aren't too bad, can you just imagine how awesome guacamole would look studded with purple onion and purple pepper?  Way more visually interesting than a boring old green jalapeño.  They would also make pretty pickled peppers, but they are so small that one plant would barely provide enough for a quarter-pint.

As for the Tequila pepper, I think a raw preparation would be best to preserve that lovely color.  In fact, I have some blue corn growing that should be ready soon.  Perhaps I will save the pepper so that I can make a blue corn soup, garnished with chopped purple pepper! 

Vegetables are just way more fun when they are crazy colors.  Seriously- take a look at those ladies in the first picture again.  They are having a ton of fun with vegetables.  Awesome.

Mighty Kitchen Garden Update

The garden continues its slow movement into proper summer production.  I am finally harvesting little baby zucchini and a strawberry or two seems to ripen every couple of days.  Before I know it I'll be inundated in squash and drowning in tomatoes.  It doesn't quite feel that way yet, but I know it's coming.  In the quiet before the storm, I thought it would be a good time to show you what's doing what here at the MKG.

The squash and zucchini are looking like the garden monsters they are.  There are lots of blossoms and some baby zukes starting to come in.  In about a week I will have to start on the Daily Zucchini Patrol, lest I miss one and it grows into a vegetable club.  Seriously, you could knock someone out with an overgrown zucchini.  I'm sure I'll have one to show you later in the season.  Also, it's prime time to whip up some stuffed squash blossoms.  Yum!

The eggplants are all sporting their pretty little lavender flowers, but no baby fruits yet.  I think I might need to add some flowers to the garden to attract more bees, they seem less abundant than in years past.



This is a baby Giant Aconcagua pepper.  It's hard to see - look in the center of the picture to the left of the main stem.  There it is!  It should be ready to harvest in about a week.  The only other pepper with fruit so far is the Hungarian yellow wax.  Let's hope the others get their groove on soon.

The strawberries are chugging along one fruit at a time.  I had two for dessert last night and one for a snack this morning.  There's no point in trying to save them up, better to just give them a quick rinse and pop them in my mouth.

Little baby Sungolds!  The all-time tomato favorite in our household.  In fact, I've yet to meet a person familiar with Sungolds who wasn't a huge fan.  This is a stupendously delicious tomato.  Still looking at another week or more until I can eat one- the suspense is killing me!

I won't have to wait long once the tomatoes start coming in though- there are lots of flowers ready to turn into tomatoes.

Last but not least, we have the corn (back) and beans (front).  The corn isn't exactly "knee high by the 4th of July" but I planted them late and they are a dwarf variety that only grows to 3 feet or so anyway.  It's my first year for corn so I'm not holding my breath.  The beans seem to be coming in nicely.  A few more weeks and I will be able to harvest them. 

Come to think of it - I had a dream last night (seriously) that I was picking a purple bean off a plant and realized it had green beans growing below it on the same plant.  And the beans next to it were Borlotti beans.  Hmmm, apparently my subconscious is ready to get this harvest started!

How does your garden grow?