As you can see from modern-day-day Google Doodle, that is the reliable first day of fall, marking the stop of a completely prolonged, warm, dry summer time. Sadly, all this warm temperature hasn't agreed very well with our garden. In previous years, we've got were given had masses of tomatoes by the time fall rolled spherical, but this yr, we've only a scant few handfuls. These are kinds which have produced nicely in the past, so I'm guessing the weather is responsible. We've watered the lawn diligently all summer time, however possibly we really did no longer give it sufficient extra water to make up for the shortage of rainfall.
We do have plenty of basil, and the pepper vegetation we offered on the Rutgers plant income this spring are generating higher than any of those we have were given attempted starting from seed (even though the peppers are nonetheless green, for the most element). But there may be satisfactory one crop inside the garden it without a doubt is honestly producing an outstanding yield...And it is one we did not clearly intend to plant.
A little bit of records here: approximately 5 years inside the past, a volunteer butternut squash vine popped up next to our compost bin. It grew vigorously, sprawling out until it more or less took over the entire facet backyard, so that you needed to kind of tiptoe around it to move from the the front yard to again, which turn out to be a main problem...However it additionally produced vigorously, giving us about a dozen right-sized, flavorful squash. However, the volunteer flora we've got had in the side outdoor due to the reality then have been some distance a good deal less efficient and every bit as bulky, so I subsequently declared a moratorium: no more volunteer plants. They simply have been no longer in reality well worth the problem.
However, even as a volunteer popped up this spring subsequent to the bin that regarded similar to some other butternut squash plant, Brian definitely could not convey himself to tug it out. Memories of that large butternut squash vine persuaded him that this interloper could earn its preserve, and I reluctantly gave in.
Unfortunately, the vine in question grew to become out now not to be a butternut squash in any respect. Instead, the squash on it have been Jack-be-Littles, the ones little gourds that look like miniature pumpkins however seemingly are extra closely related to acorn squash. I habitually buy a few of these every fall as decorations, leaving them up from the begin of October through Thanksgiving Day. By that factor, they are no longer searching a chunk squirrel-gnawed and no longer really suit to eat, in order that they simply pass into the compost bin. And reputedly, a number of the seeds from final year's gourds survived and modified into this whopping vine, encumbered with tiny pumpkinettes.
Nor is that this the best volunteer Jack-be-Little plant in our backyard. We have one inside the garden as nicely, which we additionally mistook for a butternut squash and determined no longer to uproot. By the time we'd determined out our mistake, it had already made itself at home, nestling in alongside the adjacent pepper plant so that it was almost now not feasible to get rid of without damaging its neighbor.
So we now have absolutely loads of these little gourdlings, and we have to figure out what to do with them. I've done a bit of research and found that, although they're used mostly for decoration, they are actually quite edible. Martha Stewart has a recipe on her site for Candied Jack-be-Little Pumpkins, which looks tasty, but also extremely elaborate. (Any recipe that contains "Make the pots de creme" as a separate step is just too complicated for me.) But this recipe from Pumpkin Nook is a lot simpler: just scoop them out, bake them, and stuff them with the filling of your choice. Our little Easy Vegetarian Dishes cookbook has a recipe for Peppers Stuffed with Cinnamon Bulgur, and I think that savory-sweet mixture would work pretty well stuffed into a Jack-be-Little as well.
So, given that we have so many of these little suckers, I'm sure we'll be trying that recipe at one point, and possibly a bunch of variants as well. But in the meantime, I'm celebrating Harvest Home by using the Jack-be-Littles in my usual way: as fall decorations. I harvested the four biggest, plumpest gourds I could reach, putting one on each step of the front stoop (instead of being limited to the top three steps as I usually am, since the gourds are three for $2 at the farmers' market, and I don't want to buy six of them). It's a little earlier than I usually put them out, but I think it makes an appropriate welcome for autumn, whether the weather is cooperating or not.
