winter squashes

Jarrahdale pumpkin (Botanical Interests)

Waltham Butternut and Baby Pam Pumpkin

This year I'm growing 3 types of pumpkins: Baby Pam, Big Rock and Jarrahdale. Also two winter squashes: Butternut and Lakota.

I have lots of Butternuts so far! Maybe 8 or 10! Very exciting. Also several Baby Pan Pumpkins. The big squashes are just starting to bloom and set fruit. I have a couple Jarrahdales that have set fruit. I'm keeping an eye out for Big Rocks and Lakotas.

I planted too many big squashes for my little plot. The vines are overtaking more beds by the day.

popcorn ears

I'm really pleased with how my popcorn is looking. 2 or 3 ears per stalk now. I have 3 8 foot rows with about 20 stalks per row. But I'm not going to count the ears until I harvest them.

I was talking with a real farmer yesterday who said to make sure I let the popcorn stay on the stalks a long time - until the silks are fully dry. She said this is the main mistake people make with popcorn. The trick she said is to pick it just before the critters find it. Funny...

at last - its tomato season!

I have lots of Sungold cherry tomatoes now (from two plants), and a few ripe New Girl and Orange Blossoms too. Big Beef are ripening fast. The heirlooms are sizing up: Brandywine Sudduth strain, Giant Belgium, Purple Calabash, Box Car Willie, and Mortgage Lifter.

Tomato varieties I've lost to Late Blight so far are: Pink Beauty, Cherokee Purple, Opalka, San Marzano, Early Girl and Hillbilly.

Tomorrow I think I'll check on my recollection of which varieties I have left and take a photo of the best tomato on each plant. I like to keep a record of what they look like.

wild tomatillos, groundcherries or poisonous nightshades?

There are all sorts of plants growing wild in the grassy paths of our 50 year old community gardens. One of these looks like little wild tomatillos.

Soon after I first got my plot last year, I dug up a few of these and added them to a corner bed. They reseeded themselves and I have twice as many this year. They get little yellow flowers and small husked green fruits. Like cherry tomatoes - Cherry tomatillos?

This year I have many fruits sizing up. I was wondering if I should look for a recipe for tomatillo salsa. But it was suggested that these are probably groundcherries, a sweet relative of tomatoes, tomatillos, and poisonous nightshades that are better suited for pies. I think next year I may look for some real tomatillo seeds.

(PS. How about those nails! This photos is from Wednesday. I got them really clean today and dressed in white jeans and went up to visit my parents. Well, we decided to dig a few potatoes just to check on them. So much for the clean nails and jeans. I give up!)

skippy

Yours truly takes a break from chasing rabbits. So cute, under the Queen Ann's Lace and through a fogged up camera lens. I had to go replace my cell phone today, because all the humidity on Wednesday corroded the battery contacts. But my camera seems none the worse for the wear.

harvesting my first cabbage

More photos I took with my foggy lens. I mostly grew cabbage because they are such beautiful plants. This is Super Red 80 from seed from Johnny's.

I'm also growing Alcosa, a blue green savoy type, also from Johnny's seed.

harvest

Foggy photo. Its such a hot and humid day that condensation has collected inside my lens.

This is my first cabbage ever and my first big head of broccoli. I'm feeling very accomplished!

garden work

A fantastic day in the garden.

- I picked a handful of tomatoes in my home garden. Lots of cherries and my first two big ones: New Girls - picked on the orangey side to ripen inside because I'm afraid late blight could hit them any day now.

- I bagged the top half of my compost pile, getting rid of all the tomato and potato waste that is contaminated with late blight. Interesting to see what/who was living in the pile: lots of worms and a very bug garter snake.

- I removed one more tomato plant from the community plot. I should remove them all, but couldn't bear to. All are showing signs of late blight, but plants are so big and green I thought I'd give a few more days. (Someone today told me they are just cutting out the blighted half of the tomatoes and eating the good half. My blighted ones are going in the "blight bag".)

- Harvesting: a beautiful head of purple cabbage, a big head of broccoli, 5 or 6 summer squash, a small cucumber, and 3 big purple zinnias.

- Then I took 131 photos: photos of all the flowers in the garden, my little wild tomatillos, my 7 foot tall popcorn, and lots of little winter squashes and pumpkins.

- And last, lots of weeding.

- Then I walked around a bit while Skippy chased rabbits.

what to do with zucchini (and other summer squashes)

My summer squash are coming in so fast I thought I'd get a list of ideas together of things to do with it.

- grilled, with olive oil and herbs
- grilled, chile-coated with honey lime dressing (Dan's post with photo)
- grilled with olive oil, salt and pepper (roasted or fried in sunflower oil works too), with a yogurt-garlic-dill sauce (a Bulgarian classic from Svetla)
- zucchini risotto (I'm going to try this tonight and I'll add the recipe!)
- fried zucchini (maybe Friday night...)
- squash carpacchio (raw zucchini with goat cheese)
- stuffed zucchini (a full meal)
- raw for snacks or grated in salad
- sliced in quiche
- casserole: layer blanched slices alternately with chopped onion and buttered bread crumbs, repeat 2-3 x and top with butter, cook at 350*F til hot and bubbly (ahhh! Saturday night)
- another casserole: new potato and summer squash casserole
- Squash bread (one of my favorite recipes, works well with grated frozen summer squash)
- dry them
- zucchini cake (sounds so yummy!)
- chocolate zucchini cake!
- appetizer: stuff blanched tiny baby patty pan or other squashes with buttered fresh bread crumbs sauteed with garlic and fresh herbs, heat through and serve
- add refried leftovers to omelet or frittata
- grate and freeze for winter recipes
- sneak it onto your neighbors porch at night (or, my mom's trick, into a car with an open window)
- and, last resort, "compost the buggers".

my favorite summer squash - sunburst patty pan

This is my favorite summer squash. Sunburst. A yellow patty pan. Its delicious. And this year is producing a very heavy harvest. I have two nice plants and am able to pick almost a squash a day. Like zucchini, I have to keep an eye on them or they'll turn into giants.

Someone asked me recently about the difference between male and female flowers and the lower photos show both pretty well. I bet anyone can figure out which is which. (Hint: females have a squash below the flower.) The photos don't have the best focus because the mosquitoes were so bad last night. I'm still itchy.

late blight continues to kill tomatoes

On yesterday's visit to my community plot I found late blight on all of my remaining tomato plants. My next chore will be to remove them all. Bag and dispose in the trash. I was hoping a few of my plants would have survived, but all have succumbed. 16 plants - 11 varieties that I babied since March.

I also had a sad note from the New Hampshire Farm that I distribute CSA shares for. Its a long but very interesting note so I'm posting most of it here. Very sad to think of all the lost crops for local farmers.

I'm nervously watching my little patch of 8 tomato plants tucked in next to my house. But, with fingers crossed, they look fine so far. I make sure not to go near it after being at the community garden. Looks like another day or two til the big tomatoes ripen.

Late Blight appeared on our farm last week. Thursday, in the cherry tomatoes, enough small lesions that we took out the entire planting immediately, with the hope of preventing spread to our main tomato and potato fields. With several advisors from UHN Agricultural Extension, we examined our main season tomatoes and potatoes, and found no sign of Late Blight on Thursday. But by this morning, I found blight lesions in various places in the tomato field, including on one ripening tomato.

The quick summary for you again: Late Blight is a fungus endemic to the southern U.S. that, in wet years, makes its way north to New England. This is usually in September or later, and affects a few potato and tomato fields after the main harvest is concluded. It is not harmful to humans, except in terms of crop loss. It's not normally (never before this season) a big deal for most NE farms. This year, it seems that a single nursery from the south distributed infected tomato seedlings to Wal Mart and Home Depot, among others, who sold those plants to home gardeners across the Northeast. Once these plants were planted outside, the fungus began spreading across our region, some three months ahead of the typical schedule and in time to do serious damage to the harvest of both gardeners and farmers alike. Weather conditions suited the Blight perfectly - cool and wet - and we haven't yet seen the long stretch of hot and dry that might put the Late Blight in check. This week may be the dry and warm we've all been hoping for, though it's probably too late for the tomatoes on our farm.

There is no organic control for this fungus once it appears, and conventional sprays have limited effectiveness as well. The organic copper fungicides that we have used over the past 6 weeks may have some preventative effect, but because they are washed off in every rain, this has been a challenge. With the blight on our farm, the only options are to burn, bury, or discard affected plants to try to slow the spread through our farm and to other growers.

So right now, we are facing limited choices and a mountain of work. The sunny weather will be on our side as we proceed. In the tomatoes, the cherries are already untrellised and tilled in. Because the main season crop looks beautiful and is just beginning to ripen, we're going to try pulling out infected plants one by one, as well as using our hand-held flame weeder to burn infected leaves. Honestly, we're not hopeful, particularly because other farmers who are further along with the blight aren't reporting great success with these "pruning" strategies. We'll try this approach for a few days. Of course, we have a whole farm to care for, so cannot let everything else go for a potential fool's errand in one crop (even one of the favorites).

Potatoes, we are thanking our lucky stars that we already have a reasonable crop underground - blight notwithstanding, it's been a great potato growing season. However, the Late Blight spores can quickly travel through the vines and rot the potatoes underground. We've decided to kill the potato vines, and enjoy the harvest that is already sized up. Up and down our valley, farmers are doing the same. Conventional farmers use an herbicide for vine kill, and it is certainly disconcerting to see dead potato fields all over in early August. As organic growers, we have a harder road to hoe, as we attempt to mechanically kill all of the vines without damaging the potato hills underneath. First, we've been mowing the field. Later today we'll go through with weedwackers (yes, that's 8 miles of weedwacking!). When that's all done, we'll sweep through with the crew and loppers, knocking back the last remaining living stubs. We're learning that there's no such thing as "overkill" when it come to late blight. We'll see a smaller yield, as some spuds would have continued to size up over the rest of the summer. And we're uncertain if we'll lose some storability with such early vine kill - the potatoes have to store underground for at least two weeks after the vines are dead, to set the skins for storage. We'll see. But plenty of mashed potatoes remain in our future this season!

Of course, we're disappointed about (likely) losing the tomatoes, as we know you are as well (why couldn't it be the turnip blight?!). The epidemic proportions beyond our farm, as well as the connections to large-scale, industrial agriculture, make the blow a bit harder to swallow (or not swallow, as the case will be). We are so deeply sad for many other farmers who are seeing serious financial losses due to the blight. We hope you understand that there is abolutely nothing that we can do to have this crop for you this season. I really, really, really wish we did (can you hear me stomping my feet now?). Of course, everyone knows, not just farmers, that hard work doesn't always lead linearly to good results. We are affirmed in our commitment to growing for you, through Community Supported Agriculture. We are grateful for your support and understanding.

Jenny and Bruce, Picadilly Farm LLC, Winchester, NH

And another quote added Wednesday, August 5. This from a CSA farmer in White River Junction VT, after blight landed on his farm last week:

"All this reminds me that while climate change is the big cloud hanging over the land, it's actually transportation that has done the serious damage to our ecosystems so far. (Both problems being manifestations of fossil fuel use.) We humans love to travel, and we love to move stuff all over the place for fun or profit or by necessity. This brings new species into contact with one another, often to the detriment of one or both. Most of the damage in VT/NH has been to our forests so far - chestnut, elm, butternut, and beech essentially gone, with ash, hemlock, and possible sugar maple in imminent peril. Agriculture is in less danger, primarily because everything we grow is not native to here anyway. Hopefully in this case, a nice cold winter will wipe out the blight and bring us a fresh start next year."

cucumber taste test

I have a bumper crop of cucumbers this year!

Four varieties from the left are: Tokiwa, Sweet Success, North Carolina Pickling, and Diva. In our taste test last evening the unanimous winner (two tasters) was Diva. I've tried for years to grow Diva and this is the first year I have gotten nice vines and big pretty Diva cukes. Nice and crisp, mild and just overall delicious.

Next were a tie: Tokiwa (delicious and crisp, but large seeds) and Sweet Success (not quite as good taste as Diva and Tokiwa, but nice and crisp). The pickler (which is still fantastic - I love the blocky white fruits with tiny green seeds) was the least crisp and flavorful of the four.

rainy day

Yesterday, Skippy and I got caught in the rain at the garden. A nice warm rain and we just kept on weeding anyway.

august !

Its deep summer. Ahh. How wonderful. The perfect month.

"In summer, the song sings itself."
- William Carlos Williams

ready for the grill

We're now eating dinner almost totally from the garden. Just a piece of salmon from the store. The favas are great grilled whole and then popped out of their shells, like edamame. The potatoes and wonderful sliced and grilled with olive oil and salt. We have a big red Gold and a big Red Norland today - one yellow the other white on inside and slightly different tastes and consistency. And of course a zucchini.