I've simplest been a gardener for about 8 years now, however there may be one thing I've already determined: no longer whatever is genuinely predictable.
For instance, presently of twelve months, manufacturing in the garden is typically shifting over from the summer season plant life to the fall plants. The summer time squash and cucumbers are completed out, and the tomatoes and peppers have just a few lingering culmination. So at the same time as there is however produce to be picked in November, it's widely talking the later-ripening vegetation: wintry weather squash, fall greens, lima beans, leeks, Brussels sprouts, and the previous few hardy, cussed stalks of rhubarb.
But this yr, summer season has been placing gamely in there. Though we have were given had a few days of hat-and-coat weather, they were interspersed with others wherein even two layers are too many. And absolutely last week, Brian got here in from the lawn bearing an top notch late presenting: one final huge zucchini, and further sudden nevertheless, 3 smallish cucumbers.
On top of that, our pepper flowers are stubbornly persevering with to offer. Brian picked all the appropriate-sized end end result earlier than the primary frost, but new ones are though performing: thin green fingers on the Jimmy Nardello plant, and little white globes at the Klari Baby Cheese. So if the subsequent frost holds off for some other couple of weeks, we'd yet have the ability to tug in a 2d harvest of those.
This sudden bounty allows especially to make up for the fall flora, that have been a piece bit disappointing. Our trusty Waltham and Ponca Baby butternut squash vegetation have completed quite nicely, offering us with ten squash to this point, plus a few more although ripening at the vines. But we've got best harvested about a pint of lima beans in overall, and the most effective last leek that Brian simply added in from the lawn brings our basic harvest for this yr to 4. As for the Brussels sprouts, no matter our exceptional efforts, there is still no longer some thing on them massive sufficient to pick out. We started out out them interior way back in mid-March to offer them an first rate head begin, and due to the fact the vegetation grew, Brian plucked off their decrease leaves to present the sprouts more daylight...But all that did, reputedly, was purpose the stalks to come to be top-heavy and flop over. The sprouts stay the size of marbles, with little wish that they'll attain an low priced roasting weight earlier than the snow flies. So I wager at this thing we should be given defeat in this precise crop and renounce ourselves to relying on Trader Joe's for our sprout deliver.
Fortunately, what we have is still enough to celebrate the fall harvest with. In fact, we're spoiled for choice. For tonight's harvest feast, we considered making one of our favorite butternut squash recipes (soufflé or lasagna), or perhaps combining the butternut squash with our last zucchini to make squash and zucchini fritters from a recipe we pulled out of Savory magazine last year. (This is a freebie you can pick up at Stop & Shop stores. I searched for the recipe on the Stop & Shop website, but it doesn't seem to be there anymore.) But since we needed something that would give us leftovers for tomorrow's lunch, we decided to keep it simple and just use the last of the garden leeks, plus one additional one from the H-Mart, to make frizzled leeks. We're serving those over some spinach gnocchi we picked up on whim during a recent Aldi trip, topped with mozzarella and accompanied by a basic green salad.
And, since our new rosebush is also continuing to bloom even as November approaches, we'll have fresh flowers to grace the table as well.
