Harvest Monday Virgin

So here I am, in all my newness being new, doing my first Harvest Monday ever. Daw.

I actually posted today already, but then I stumbled on this "Gather ye Veg and posty about it" thing everyone was doing and, naturally, I wanted to play. 

Here's today's spread:

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: Herbs, Ajvarski Peppers, Corbaci Peppers, Georgescu Chocolate Pepper, PASS pepper, Rainbow Chard, Casper Eggplant, Mitoyo Eggplant.

(I'm unsure if the harvest has to come from just Monday, or if it can be from the whole week. So just in case the blog cops are on patrol, I decided to post only what was harvested today.)

Here's the breakdown:

HERBS

Left to Right to Bottom: "Argenteus" Thyme, "

Icterina

Read more at Gardening Know How: Golden Sage Care: How To Grow A Golden Sage Plant https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/sage/grow-golden-sage-plant.htm

Icterina" Sage, Common Variegated Thyme, "Aureus" Rosemary

While I find herbs lovely, I don't cook with them much. I don't 'cook' much in general, actually. Though when your kitchen is the size of mine, cooking anything more than a fried egg is an adventure in creative contortionism. Because this is literally my kitchen.

Regardless, these herbs help make my attempts at grown-up dinner time a more pinterest-y perfect affair, instead of just hungry hot yoga. While I originally bought them for ornamental and aromatic purposes, they've definitely pulled their weight in the pan.

SWEET PEPPERS

Booty-burned Ajvarskis

I really, really, really, really DON'T like green peppers. I'm a bad American. Unfortunately, due to a weird gap in my pepper bed, the Ajvarskis are prone sunscald. I've also got issues with blossom end rot, on top of that. So the constant battle is whether or not to leave them on the plant until ripe, then cut off the yuck bits, or cut them green and let the plant put it's energy into better fruit. Today, it was cut.

"He went that way!"

This is my first ripe harvest of peppers all season. I've strugled through a few salvaged green ones like those Ajvarskis, but these Corbaci will be the first I'm actually looking foward to eating. And while I'm a HUGE raw sweet pepper fan, these have very thin walls and lots of seeds and are supposed to be better grilled or fried. So, after an obligatory raw nibble, I'll commit the rest to the pan and see where it leads.

derp. 

My first ripe Georgescu of the season... a feast for kings. A king. One very tiny king. While I'm excited to try this pepper, I was sorta hoping I'd have a bit more to, you know, try. Luckily, there's a ton still ripening that are of a more substantial size on other plants. The plant this one came from is also quite short. We'll have to see if it's just slow to mature, or if it turns out to be rogue. Here's to hoping for a wee Georgie.

He's sad I picked him.

Like the Ajvarski peppers, I've had to eat a lot of green PASS peppers (hover for the full mother of dragons name). These plants are on the end of the pepper pit, and also have a habit of thrusting their fruits ass-up toward the sun. Yet, while these peppers ripen to yellow, they seem to be veeery slow in doing so. One of the first plants to set fruit, they've been taking their sweet time thereafter.

This will be the first Mitoyo eggplant I've harvested. For the record, they apparently get a lot bigger than this. I picked it small because it was growing close to the ground, and I didn't want any of the other garden denizens to eat it before I could. I'm also still deciding it I even like eggplant, so I figured I'd ere on the side of caution and ensure it was 'young and tender' for my first go.

Spoopy.

I picked the first Casper of the season last week and accidentally cooked it to mush. So I'm not really ready pass judgement on its flavor value just yet. Decent mush, though. I mixed it into a last minute butternut curry thing and had no complaints. Which may have been because I didn't taste it. Regardless, I'll have another go with these three hooligans, and I'll be a little more diligent with the cooking this time.

a weed in beets' clothing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with chard. But after devouring my way solo through a 3x5 beet bed earlier this month, I'm really regretting growing as much Rainbow chard as I did. On the bright side, the bugs love it too. And, segue from that, so does the compost. While three nearly flawless leaves rest before you, it took about ten rejects to get there. Luckily, this chard is both prolific and scrappy - this won't be the worst haircut it's bounced back from.

That's it for this week!

Since my garden functions mostly as a veggie hacking/breeding ground (not a kitchen garden) my harvests are usually failures or side effects of growing out rogues and regetables. Hopefully, that will make for some fun (if meager and infrequent) Harvest Mondays in the future.

If all this harvest nonesense has got you confused, head over to Dave's blog at Our Happy Acres - there you can see his own harvest, as well as links to everyone else participating this week. Happy ogling!