Broadsheet #16
what's in your share / what's in season
fruit 'Golden Anne' raspberries
fruit tomatoes
('Black Krim', 'Hawaiian Pineapple', 'Kellogg's Breakfast', 'Ruth's Perfect Red', 'Aunt Ruby's German Green', & 'Thessaloniki')
fruit cherry tomatoes
('Lollipop', 'Sweetie', 'Pearly Pink', 'Sungold Select X', 'Principe Borghese', 'Black Cherry' & 'Aunt Ruby's German Green X')
fruit salad tomatoes
('Bloody Butcher', 'Sungold Select X', 'Aunt Ruby's German Green X', & 'Pearly Pink')
root carrot mix
('Yellowstone', 'Chantenay' & 'Red-Cored Chantenay')
herb parsley
vegetable kohlrabi
('Superschmelz' & 'Early Purple Vienna')
vegetable cauliflower
'Green Macerata'
vegetable serrano peppers
vegetable Italian frying peppers
'Jimmy Nardello'
vegetable 'Italia' sweet bell peppers
+ + +
Use first Raspberries, ripe tomatoes,
Best keepers Carrots, kohlrabi
Room temp to 50degF All tomatoes & peppers
Refrigerate Carrots, parsley, kohlrabi, cauliflower
Dry it Parsley
End of season Yellow-and-red sweet bell peppers
Quick Picks
Thai carrot-tomato bisque Carrots, orange tomatoes + coconut milk, ginger, garlic & onion
Stir fry Kohlrabi, carrots, cauliflower, serrano, sweet bell pepper, frying peppers, salad tomatoes + rice, tamari
Giardiniera pickles Kohlrabi, carrots, cauliflower, serrano, sweet bell pepper + salt & water
Raw-pack canned tomatoes Tomatoes + salt, lemon juice, jars and canning equipment
Seared cherry tomatoes Cherry tomatoes + garlic, butter, red wine vinegar, salt, herbs, & spices
Raspberries should be eaten while reading this sentence - a handling accident means they will probably only last through this day. In a way, we're thankful for little disasters like that because these raspberries are melting and somehow creamy. In growing perennials, it is often said that the first year they sleep (establishment year), the second year they creep (slow growth with some yields), and the third year it leaps (rapid growth and mature yields). Raspberries will have their own 'leap year' in 2015, and they fill a delicious spot for fruit as the summer heat dissipates and slight frosts roll through. Also cool about this variety is how the leaves curl around the berries, protecting them from frosty wind and dripping autumn rain.
A week of 80degF in October means tomatoes are having their anticipated ripening bonanza. The slight frost indeed killed back some leaves, exposing unripe fruit to waning sunlight. In places, the stupid jute and sisal trellises have sagged to the ground, with tomatoes in a substantial linear piles. The result was more tomatoes than we have ever grown, in any season. This week's harvest beats pretty much all the growing seasons we've ever had, almost all together. Cases and cases and cases, to the point where the entire pick-up bed was filled.
So what to do with it all, besides all the choice fruits going to you lovely folks? Besides having salad tomato wedges with the co-op's bulk salad green and searing cherry tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we have been doing some canning. Green salad tomatoes got pureed with apples and tomatilloes for an unusual fruit ketchup, with a lemony undertone coming from Sichuan peppercorns - this ketchup is amazing with pork brats and will be enjoyed alongside many beef ring bolognas. Tomatoes of all sizes get blanched, peeled, and stuffed into sterilized jars with salt and lemon juice at the bottom. Tomatoes go in raw and get boiling water bath canned for 85 minutes. The house fills with steam, the water runs down the windows, and the jars come out looking like kaleidoscopes.
As for the rest of the share, our parsley is holding the line while other herbs bide their time ahead of the upcoming freezes. Also in the share to represent green are our brassicas - also known as kohl crops and cruciferous vegetables. They've done relatively terribly this year, but we are encouraged by the Green Macerata cauliflower, which is the first cauliflower we have gotten to head up. Kohlrabi is cropping again, too, and we have a tidy mix of stem bulbs.
Peppers won't survive more super cold, so we have been stripping them - a few serranos, the last of the Italia sweet peppers, and the only crop of our Ark of Taste heirloom Jimmy Nardello peppers.
Preview of next weeks Pumpkins, winter squash, Silverton Russet' potatoes, more tomatoes, more tomatillos, Wolf River apples, groundnuts
- Barrett Johanneson