recent harvests

These are some of my harvests from the past couple weeks.

I picked one small but delicious Sugar Baby Watermelon. I was very pleased with this and will plant these again and try to do better next year. I had two plants and will try 6 next year.

The tiny little melon on the plate with the watermelon is the single cantaloupe I got. A Charantais. Unripe miniature and not good tasting. It was not a good year for melons, and I made several mistakes with this crop. I scattered a few plants of different types here and there in the garden, mostly under things. Under the corn, under the squash. They were blocked from the little sun we got. And they probably needed richer soil. I' like to try again, and plant them in very rich soil where nothing will block them.

I've been harvesting a lot of broccoli shoots and a few big heads now and then - still from my spring planting. I think the shoots are like supermarket broccolini, which I've always wanted to grow. I've never been able to figure out what broccolini is.

My husband processed the basil into nice pesto. (Here's our recipe.) That's about 1/4 of my crop. Its been a good basil year.

And my eggplant have beat the Blight and are doing great now. I have big plans for eggplant Parmesan this weekend. (Here's that recipe.)

Finally, the unripe Butternut squash I harvested out of curiosity. It smelled nice, like a melon when I sliced it. Nice tender skin like a summer squash. Faintly greenish orange flesh. Tender seeds. We grilled it with olive oil and salt. The taste - well, bland and mealy - generally not to our liking. I'll wait 'til the rest are properly ripe.