The fall equinox, or Harvest Home, might in all likelihood simply be my preferred gardeners' tour of the yr. The tough paintings of planting and weeding and watering is widely speaking done, and the fun element?The harvesting?Is in full swing. Of direction, the harvest has been going on for months already, and other gardeners' holidays additionally rejoice it, however most of them have a tendency to popularity on one unique crop that is producing abundantly at a given time: rhubarb or asparagus in May, berries or plums in July, butternut squash in overdue October. But in mid-September, there can be a huge type of flowers generating in abundance, along with summer time plant life which can be clearly winding down and fall ones which is probably virtually gearing up.
Here's a sampling of what our garden has produced in the past few days. Those tomatoes in the colander are a mix of several varieties. The smaller cherry tomatoes are mostly Sun Golds, with a few Honeydrops. These have been much less prolific than the Sun Golds this year, and we'll most likely drop them from next year's planting. However, the larger tomatoes in the basket are Premios, a new early variety we tried this year, and it's a definite keeper. They started producing even before the Sun Golds did, and since then they've kept up a steady stream of medium-sized fruits (42 to date). We've also harvested seven nice big fruits off the Pineapple vines this year, much to our relief after last year's disappointing performance. (You can't see any of them in this picture because they all got used in a roasted tomato fettucine, one of our favorite recipes from The Clueless Vegetarian, earlier in the week.)
The green beans you see nestling alongside the tomatoes inside the colander are not our trusty Provider beans, which finished producing per week or so within the beyond; these are the effects of our successful try at growing Climbing French beans. Last yr, we placed that in among our Provider bush beans, a thriller bean plant of the pole variety had sprouted and twined its way up the trellis, where it proceeded to deliver in particular smooth and scrumptious beans lengthy after the Providers had petered out. We glaringly did not apprehend what range it changed into, but a few photo searches counseled that it modified into a Climbing French bean, so we determined to take a chance and buy some seeds from that range to plot this 12 months. Only we bumped into a snag; our everyday seed issuer, Fedco, does now not convey this variety, and ordering a packet of them from every other agency could have value us approximately three instances as a good deal for the shipping as we might pay for the seeds.
However, Brian had saved some of the seeds from last year's harvest, and primarily based on my research, the Climbing French bean regarded to be an open-pollinated variety that could breed right, so we determined to just plant them (inside the spot formerly occupied via lima beans, considering the reality that we were not getting very some of the ones) and wish. And with the aid of way of golly, it labored! We now have one trellis covered with lush inexperienced vines, and our first harvest, approximately seven oz, got here in this week. And if last 12 months's revel in is something to move through, we have to be persevering with to reap these for the the rest of the fall.
The two peppers established right here are each different new range we tried this year, a chili called Caballero. These are the primary peppers we've got harvested off the plant, and we haven't tasted them yet, so we do not realize simply how heat they're (now not fairly so, consistent with Fedco). But regardless, they should paintings great in a salsa or any other dish that calls for a warm pepper; all we ought to do is modify the amount we use. And if we can't use them up this week, we're able to just freeze them. (We've also been getting masses of frying peppers off our Carmen vegetation, however the Jimmy Nardellos have so far given us not anything. We'll maximum probable drop this variety subsequent yr and upload yet another Carmen.)
The last item in the display, the raspberries, doesn't look like a particularly impressive harvest, but that's just what I gathered today, after having also harvested berries yesterday and the day before. The raspberry canes are now well into their second crop of the year; they produced bountifully all through July and into August, took a short break, and then returned quickly to full production, yielding us half a cup to a cup of berries every day or so. We've harvested a total of eight quarts of berries so far this year—which, when you consider that Trader Joe's charges six bucks for a half-pint container of organic raspberries, means that in this year alone, we've collected a $364 return on our initial investment of around $60 for the canes. Even counting the additional money we've spent on such things as mulch and the components for our raspberry trellis, that's one hell of a return.
Tonight's dinner, a Skillet Kugel, can also even consist of one greater object now not proven in the image: four small leeks, the primary we've got got picked this 12 months. Try as we would, we will in no way appear to grow large, fat leeks like the ones you may buy in the shop, but even our spindly ones art work simply exceptional if you use enough of them. And we'll in all likelihood cook dinner up the rest of those inexperienced beans to experience on the side.
Happy Harvest Home to all, and to all a tremendous meal.
