Grow – Cook – Make

Here in the basket I have some tomatoes, peppers and eggplants, the leftovers from my summer crops. The quality of these late season crops is not as good as it used to be a month or two ago, but I am so happy to have them right now. They make good company for the abundant kale that we’ve been eating this week but I repeatedly forgot to photograph.

This year is a perfect treat for me to have these plants still so productive since I’ve planted a very small fall garden. In three weeks I will start remodeling my current garden, I hope, to get more growing space and better critter protection so it didn’t make sense to fill the garden with crops that I would have to rip up before maturity. I am in love with my summer nightshades, they manage to stay productive even though the nights are getting cool around here. They are making the most of our periodic heat spells. I hope they can get going just a little bit longer.

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.

Let’s start with some background. My peppers plants, planted back in April are still going strong. They have a lot of green fruits on them which are ripening slowly but surely. It’s been hot lately, but it was pretty cold a week ago, so they have seen quite a range of temperatures. Most of them are Corno di Toro and Jimmy Nardello, two Italian sweet pepper heirloom varieties.

Here I am happily chopping some Corno di Toro for a stir fry. As I am chopping I take a bite, I taste the familiar sweetness of these Italian peppers and then, ouch, it burns? Wow, this thing is hot! Hot like a New Mexico chile. But it doesn’t taste like a chile, it tastes like a sweet Italian pepper. Sweet and burning hot all at once. What’s wrong with these peppers?

I have been harvesting for a few months now from these very same Corno di Toro plants, and not once I got a spicy pepper. Not once. Actually, I’ve grown this variety for several years now. Never got even a hint of spiciness from them. So I am really surprised. Is it this bouncing from 50 degree days to 90 degree days we’ve been having this fall? Or maybe the shorter days of fall?

In any case, hot peppers make a great addition to any stir fry so after the initial surprise into the wok they went. Dinner turned out great and now I know not to take a big bite from my formerly sweet peppers.