Squash harvest

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I pulled up most of the squash vines even though we haven’t had a killing frost yet. Or any frost. The mild weather makes me uneasy as it brings global warming home to my yard and garden.

I think I’ve had more squash in past years. This year we got a lot of rain. I wonder if that made a difference. Four pumpkins (New England Pie) from the Community Garden, and two from home (Winter Luxury, I think). There are several more pumpkins in the home garden that have not turned orange yet. What are they waiting for?

Some nice buttercup, very substantial. And a few Red Kuri, so bright and shapely. The delicata and butternut harvests were definitely sparse. Not that I’m wishing for tons of squash like I had cucumbers. But the productivity of the garden plants is something to ponder.

Most of the winter squash

Apple foraging

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Sam has been bringing apples home for awhile, but recently we got serious about the fall apple harvest. He picks from local trees that seem otherwise ignored. We don’t like to see the apples going to waste. Here are the six types he brought home recently.

Foraged apples with location noted
Tasting slices – note the reddish interiors of the ones on the right

I made an apple crisp with these after cutting into them for a taste test comparison. The apples with the reddish flesh (right) are my favorite. Tart and crispy. But they’re all good. The variety on the lower left is HUGE, the size of my fist or bigger. Not a superstar for flavor, but nice white juicy flesh. They were all juicy, probably because they were fresh picked. I wonder how they will store.

Today we went back so I could photograph the trees they came from, and also picked some more. The photos are in the order of the apples laid out above, going clockwise from top left:

Behind town hall, back left
Behind town hall, right
Across Point Road from the town hall – these are almost all gone now
On the roadside past the small yellow house on the east side of Point Road – very delicious apples
Across Route 1
Across Route 1 detail – hanging in thick clusters like grapes
Behind town hall, left (the huge red ones)

Celery leaf

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I harvested all of this Afina leaf celery. It seemed like a small patch, but there is lots of it. A pound and a half of fluffy leaves took up the whole counter. I triple-washed them and was trying to dry them somewhat before packing them in freezer bags and popping into the freezer. I had already de-stemmed them, washed the stems, and frozen them in separate bags.

We don’t eat a lot of celery. But this is easy to grow and has good flavor. This was the only plant that thrived in the rather shady spot under the cucumber trellis. I tried cilantro there, and lettuces, carrots, kale and fennel – they all missed the full sun and grew halfheartedly.

This makes an excellent addition to vegetable stock and is a good parsley substitute. This year I barely grew any parsley and I’ve missed having it around.

Someday I will have a dehydrator. That would work better than the freezer for this leafy stuff, I think.

Covering the hoophouse

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I noticed the carrot tops looked significantly less bushy in the hoophouse bed. Sure enough, something had munched them down. And sampled some spinach and arugula as well. Rabbit or porcupine? Bigger than a vole, smaller than a deer. Possibly nocturnal.

This loss caused a reaction. First I harvested the carrots. A modest amount of short roots that will keep in the fridge for awhile.

Then Sam worked to put the hoophouse covers back on. Front, back, and sides. And semi-secured the edges to avoid more marauding pests. More work is needed to deter the voles that wrecked (ate) most of last winter’s greens.

Fall chores

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My to-do list is really long and I’m not making very fast progress. There is so much to do in the fall. It’s better to slow down some and enjoy these small steps in a positive direction.

Planted the last of the Wild Seed shrubs today at camp – a bush honeysuckle.
Harvested the last of the bumper cucumber crop. So many cukes. I pulled out the vines as well, which were mostly dried out.
Resina calendula, planted July 28. Many flowers.
Zeolight calendula, planted July 28. Just one bloom on these.

Ground cherry

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Ground cherry is producing prolifically in the community garden plot. Not so much in the home garden. I really like it for snacking. The little morsels are so sweet and tasty.

Ground cherry with skeletonized husk
Ground cherry spreading out

Planting and uprooting

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Some new plants have arrived. Other overly enthusiastic plants have to be removed. That’s the way it goes in my garden.

Here’s what we dug up:

Horseradish
Comfrey
Rudbeckia laciniata (cut leaf)

I feel pretty sure I have not seen the last of these plants since they grow so enthusiastically in the garden from just fragments of root. But I’ve made a dent in the amount of space they take up. And I can keep after them more easily with the big bulk of them gone.

Goodbye gooseberry

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I’m sorry to have to say this, but we eliminated the gooseberry bush. It was so overgrown and intertwined with grass and it barely produced any berries. We enjoyed the neighboring blackberries so much that we decided to create more space for them to spread into the corner.

The raised beds may eventually be eliminated (or expanded? joined?) but not sure yet.

Blackberry (left) and empty gooseberry bed (right)
The gooseberry uprooted

Nest with raisins

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We actually don’t eat many concord grapes, so a lot of the production of this row of grapevines goes to waste. I’m still trying to figure out how to use the vines for projects like basketry. I use an occasional leaf or two to cover up a ferment. The leaves contain tannin and are supposed to help keep fermented pickles crisp.

A few weeks ago I was exploring the vine jungle and found this nest, with a cluster of grapes resting in it. I just left them there, not thinking too much about it.

Today I was cutting back and cleaning up the tangle of grapevines and found the nest again. This time with a handful of raisins in it.