Summer is still elusive. Nighttime temperatures are dipping into the lower 50′s, while daytime temperatures stay close to 70. The Frost peach tree is moving ahead anyway, doing its best to ripen its fruit without summer heat.
This is the first year we get any fruit from this tree. So far some peaches have been excellent, others not so good, not as intensely flavored as I was hoping. This is not a good year to be critical, though, too cold. The tree is doing what it can, next year hopefully the weather will be more typical for this area and we will be better able to evaluate the fruit’s flavor. We are mostly eating them fresh but I am seeing a peach cobbler in the next few days.
I have a large pile of shallots drying in the sun. I guess it would be better if I didn’t pile them like this. Too bad, there is no room to dry them in one layer. I’ll leave them there for a day or two and then clean them up and bring them into the crawl space for storage. Shallot vinaigrette with aged sherry vinegar anyone? That’s my number one use for shallot, although I also love to use them as aromatics in all sorts of stews and sauces.
Jimmy Nardello peppers are always the first to turn red in my garden. They are thin walled peppers, sweet and pungent at once, rich. It is easiest to fry or saute them, but they are best grilled if you keep an eye on them and take them out of the fire as soon as the first hint of charring appears. If you get distracted you’ll soon end up with a bunch of carbonized peppers. The reward for attentive grilling is red pepper paradise. The absolutely best tasting pepper I have ever eaten. I have to plant them every year. I just picked these, haven’t gotten around to cook them, so I don’t yet know how this year’s cool temperatures have affected their taste.
I’ve also been picking lettuce and greens, a few not quite ripe tomatoes, eggplants, some zucchinis, lemons, nopales. Enough to eat every day, not enough to preserve for the winter yet.
For more delicious pictures and stories of harvests and to add your own, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions, host of Harvest Monday, and take a look at what other gardeners have been up to this week.
August 9, 2010 at 10:16 am
I hear ya, this pseudo-summer that we’re having is really having an impact on the harvests. I’m also picking just enough tomatoes for fresh eating, no excess to deal with at all. The weather forecast in the paper seems to be stuck on “Fog and drizzle, clearing inland”.
Your Jimmy Nardellos are looking good! I do love a good frying pepper like that. Somehow I didn’t get one into the mix this year.
August 9, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Pseudo-summer it is, what a good way to put it. I still have hopes for a long a warm fall…
August 9, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Angela, everything looks yummy! Want to try and grow those chilis next year.
August 9, 2010 at 11:41 pm
Thanks:-) They are not chiles, they are sweet peppers. My chiles are slowly coming a long but not quite there yet.
August 9, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Oh, the shallots. My aunt grew them for over 40 years in her back yard. Every year there would be bunches of them all over the yard. I got some from her a couple of years ago, but I didn’t take care of them. I recently went over to get some from her and there is not a one in the whole yard. I was totally shocked. She’s gotten up in age and had to give up gardening and her son has been mowing the yard. I guess he didn’t know what they were and pulled them all out.
August 9, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Oh no, that’s so sad! After 40 years those shallots must have gotten so well adapted to your area…
August 9, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Your shallots are wonderful! Mine rotted in the ground over the winter.
August 9, 2010 at 11:48 pm
How did you plant your shallots? If you plant them in the ground like you would onions they are prone to rotting. I just lay mine on top of the soil, with the root end pointing down, and they grow roots and hold themselves down on their own…
August 9, 2010 at 6:30 pm
We have the same varietal of peach! Our Frost Peach set a lot of fruit this year, but we pulled most of the fruit in spring as the tree is young, and we wanted it to concentrate on setting strong roots. However, I overlooked a few more fruits than expected. Ours were a bit small this year, and like yours, not as sweet as they could have been. They were ok to eat fresh, but, as I posted today, we turned most of ours into a tasty peach jam! I agree, with our weather this year, we can’t be too critical. I expect as our trees mature, in a normal summer, they’ll make much better peaches.
August 9, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Oh how funny, we have the same peach. I also expect better peaches, and I hope they’ll come. Otherwise I’ll need to plant another variety and I am running out of space!
August 9, 2010 at 7:12 pm
I wish I could share some of the heat that I’ve been experiencing lately – 105+ degrees in Texas, and 90+ degrees in Indiana. Then we could all be one big happy cooler(us)/warmer(you) gardeners!
Your shallots look beautiful, as do your peppers!
August 9, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Yep, the weather is crazy everywhere this summer it seems. It is also hard to grow veggies if it gets too hot, they just shut down and wait for better temps…
August 9, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Love the first 2 pictures, they are so pretty. I grew Jimmy Nardello last year and love it. This year I grow 3 varieties of Hungarian paprikas but the labels got blown away, now I don’t know which is which, none of the seed packets have pictures on them.
August 9, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Oh no, images on seed packages should be mandatory. But some times what you get doesn’t look like the package at all. I hope the mystery paprikas are turning out delicious.
August 10, 2010 at 12:56 am
My favorite thing about fruit harvests is canning them for winter. There is nothing like opening a can of preserved plums, peaches or apples on a cold winter day.
I love grilled peppers!
August 10, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Some day this tree will be large enough that I will be thinking about peach caning. Hopefully soon! Meanwhile I’ll try to remember the taste of fresh summer peaches on a cold winter day.
August 10, 2010 at 6:21 am
The peaches look very tempting! Peaches just say “summer” to me and opening a jar of canned peaches is like bringing a bit of summer back in the dark days of winter.
Suffering from the cool summer here in the pacific northwest too. I fear I will never get any substantial tomato harvests at this rate.
August 10, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Let’s hope for a little heat coming out way. Not so much that it will shut the plants down, just enough that it will ripen the fruit and make them very productive.
August 10, 2010 at 10:05 am
The peaches look wonderful. I so love a good peach . I’ve been buying them at the farmers market whenever I can.
August 10, 2010 at 10:44 pm
I too love a good peach. Soon I’ll be buying them too, since my tree is still very young.