Squash (and Pumpkins)

When choosing what to plant in the garden this year, I was inspired by the Three Sisters garden. The three sisters of indigenous tradition are corn, beans, and squash. This post is going to be all about our various "squashes." We planted two types of summer squash, one summer/winter squash/gourd, one winter squash, and one pumpkin.

Two blue Jarrahdale pumpkins and a Patisson Strie Melange squash.

First up is the most common: zucchini. There is the old trope of gardeners desperately trying to get rid of zucchini because they are overwhelmed by the huge numbers of fruit produced by a single plant. How I wish that would happen to me! I love zucchini so so much, but I just can't get it to grow very well here. Back when we lived on the mountain, we actually had to buy a chest freezer to preserve all the zucchini we grew (thanks to Chloe and the girls). Despite years of being told by our garden that it did not like to produce zucchini, I planted some this year. I planted one black beauty and one golden zucchini. The black beauty seeds never sprouted, so I split up the golden zucchini seedlings so we'd have two plants.

Zucchini in a shared bed with a volunteer dill plant.

Once again, I was very clearly shown that zucchini will not succeed in this garden. The plants were lovely, but only one ever put on any fruit. That one plant made two full grown golden zucchinis and then seemed to give up. Just last week, I saw it was trying again, though. It had four tiny little fruits. Within days, however, one of them began to turn brown. So, I picked the two largest remaining. They were still tiny and skiny, but they were a nice addition the my scrambled eggs and veggies yesterday morning.

Tiny and tasty with eggs and other veg from our garden.

Next up are the semi-summer squash that are also winter gourds. Just for funsies, I bought a pack of Patisson Strie Melange squash. This French heirloom squash is the best of both worlds: the young pattypan squash have a mild taste and lovely smooth texture when cooked, and the older ones left on the vine turn into freaky, bumpy gourds that are perfect for fall decor.

Two different types of squash for the price of one!

I planned on four plants in one bed, not realizing how large those plants would grow. Fortunately (?), they sorted themselves out when two of the plants died off. 

That's a lot of squash plant!

From the two that remained, we got nearly a dozen pretty little spaceships to eat fresh. I decided to leave two on the vine to see what happened. I was not disappointed! One turned into a perfect warty masterpiece. 

The texture! The colors! Gorgeous!

The other one is still on the vine waiting to turn bumpy. Squash bugs have found it, but I don't really mind. It's the only fruit I found them on and we don't plan on eating it anyway.

Squash bugs, or alien insects on their U.F.O.?

Next up, is our winter squash. I'm a huge fan of all kinds of winter squash, but when I tasted a Honeynut squash for the first time last fall, I knew what I wanted to grow this year. The super sweet, smaller versions of Butternut squash grew very well. We had two plants in one bed, which seemed just fine since they have short vines. 

Two, two Honeynut squash plants (ha ha ha).

They set fruit fairly quickly, but it took quite a while for them to start turning orange. I made sure to check on them often for fear that squirrels might sample them. One did get gnawed on a bit, but the tree rat apparently didn't find it very palatable. 

Honeynut squash on July 25.

Honeynut squash on August 22 that has been slightly sample by a squirrel.

Honeynut squash ready to pick on September 12.

We have harvested six little squashes in total so far. There are still some green ones on the vin,e but I don't know if they'll have a chance to fully ripen before the end of the season. The smallest of our harvest is just 9 ounces and the largest is just over a pound. Even though they are naturally tiny compared to other winter squash, I think I will grow them again next year.

These are going to be so nice roasted.

And finally, we planted blue Jarrahdale pumpkins for the second year in a row.  Last year, we had two plants and got two pumpkins. This year, we had two plants and got two pumpkins. I'm happy with that. We put them both in one bed at the back of the garden knowing that they would grow along the fence. They put out very long vines! 

I picked this garden bed knowing Jarrahdale pumpkins cannot be contained.

Fortunately, one plant went in each direction, giving them plenty of space. The fun part was hunting for the pumpkins. One was hidden among the morning glories on the garden's eastern fence, and the other found a place behind the corn beds at the north of the garden.

The morning glory vines may have provided some support.

Sneaky pumpkin behind the corn.

As with the Honeynut squash, I watched these carefully for signs of rodent sampling. I even sprayed them with hairspray and sprinkled them with cayenne attempting to keep the squirrels away. I don't know if either of those did deter the animals, but both pumpkins were unscathed when I finally harvested them. They are so lovely! I'm still debating whether I dare risk using them as outside decor with the danger of squirrel chewing still out there.  

So beautiful!

Next year, I would love to plant even more pumpkins and varieties of winter squash, but the space inside our garden fence is limited. I've considered allowing them to take over part of our back yard, but I fear our neighborhood deer would destroy them. They managed to decimate my rhubarb and asparagus this spring and severely stunted my tomatoes with their browsing. So, perhaps a garden annex is in order for next season. 

Strawberry Popcorn

We grew strawberry popcorn this year. It was the corn in our Three Sisters bed. This area is good for corn, but, as a home garden, I wasn't expecting to get much from our little 4-foot by 11-foot bed. I was actually delightfully surprised!

We planted the shiny little red kernels on May 25 with the rest of the garden.

And then we waited. A week later, we had rows of perfect blade-like seedlings.

Two weeks later, the whole bed was really starting to look like something. 

One more week and everything had more than doubled in size.

July came...

...and we just kept waiting. There really wasn't anything else to do. By then, the weeds had slowed considerably so daily maintenance wasn't necessary. When there was heavy rain and/or high winds, we sort of pushed the flattened corn stalks up again, but they more-or-less straightened themselves on their own.

By mid August there was definite progress in ear-development.

Some of the ears seemed odd to me (three in one spot?), but what do I know? This was my first time growing popcorn. A green stink bug seemed okay with it.

As did the bees.

And so there was more waiting as the stalk and ears began to dry.

By early October, I was tired of waiting. Though my patience has greatly improved as I've gotten older, I hit my limit. The majority of the ears were nice and dry so I went for it.

I am now putting shucking popcorn right up there with - well just slightly lower than - shelling beans. It was a beautiful day as I sat on our concrete patio, pulling back the dried husks, and revealing shiny, gorgeous, tiny, red ears of popcorn.

And after shucking ear after ear, I had a lovely surprise: an entirely white ear!

I got 21 shiny ears of strawberry popcorn in all (just the one white one). I strung them up with twine and hung them on our porch so they could dry further. 

I read that it would take about two weeks to fully dry. Of course, that varies by location and weather conditions. So, eight days after hanging the ears, I pulled one down to give it a try.

It was a bit of a struggle to pull the kernels off the cob, so I only did half of the tiny ear.

I put the loose kernels into a paper bag and microwaved them for about two minutes. I could hear tiny explosion but was disappointed by what I found when I opened the bag. The kernels had split open but that was it. My impatience was not rewarded.

So the half-ear of popcorn sat on our kitchen counter next to the last of the season's tomatoes until last night when I decided to try again. This time the kernels practically fell off the cob and made wonderful popping sounds in the microwave. And, lo and behold, we had popcorn!

I plan to leave the other 20 ears hanging on the porch for the next couple of days since we are experiencing 80 degree weather (yuck! The time of summer has past; it's fall now!). If the kernels come off easily, I know they're ready. If not, we'll hang them inside as temperatures will be falling back into the 50s by the end of the week (yay!).

In case anyone is wondering, the corn stalks became fall decor along with some pumpkins and a giant mum I got at my favorite pumpkin-and-mum-buying spot.

The popcorn harvest was just the start of putting the garden to bed for the winter. It's always a bit sad to see the end of fresh veggies, but I'm ready to be done for now. Some locals are not as pleased by the end of our growing season. But that's a story for next time....

Oh Deer!

Our August Garden

My middle name is Augusta. Or at least it was until I got married many years ago and the Social Security Administration decided that I could only have one middle name so now my maiden name is my middle name. In my heart, it's still my middle name, though. It was a good choice for both sides of the family - my mother's maternal grandmother and my father's mother were both named Augusta. One would think that I would have some sort of special affinity for August because of my name but I don't. I actually didn't even think of the connection at all until this last week as I considered writing an update on our garden here. 

Anyhoo, the garden has been doing well. It's starting to remind me of an autumn garden, though. We had a cold snap last week that has me ready for fall. That may tint my view a bit but the garden is starting to peter out. It's been a couple of days now since we picked any cucumbers. That had been a half-dozen-a-day thing for a couple weeks. The plants are still setting fruit but they look like the last hoorah - tiny and super prickly. The leaves are starting to give up too.

The cucumbers' leaves are getting crunchy.

Overall, it's been a very fruitful season. There's never a huge amount of any one thing at a time, except for the cucumbers, but we've enjoyed a steady stream of fresh veggies. (Look for another post coming soon telling what we did with our produce.)

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

The snap peas had a nice long run and are now providing support for some morning glories that seeded themselves from last year. 

It's fun seeing the peas and morning glories intertwining.

Underground, we had a nice daikon crop, which my husband pickled. We also had a handful of two different types of beets. They are all entirely finished now.

Just one of a dozen or so daikons.

Can't beet this!

On the topside, both the yellow squash and zucchini produced well. I would have liked more zucchini. Maybe because I like it so well, it didn't feel the need to overwhelm us, as is so cliche for zucchini. There are still a few small squash on the vine, so we'll probably get a couple more this season.

Yellow there!

Um...I can't think of another pun. It's a zucchini.

The tomatillos put on flowers like crazy but have only made a few fruits so far. The tomatoes, both beefsteak and grape, have put on fruit like crazy. They're just both taking their sweet time turning red. We've started bringing them in as soon as they start to blush so our lovely summer rainstorms don't make them explode before we can pick them. I think they still taste just a good (much better than store-bought, at least) when they ripen inside rather than out on the vine.

At least the tomatillo plant is pretty.

Tomatoes ripening inside...

...and more still waiting to go.

The Three Sisters bed has been doing it's thing mostly untouched all season. The rattlesnake beans grew well as always. They're just starting to dry on the vine now. Similarly, the turtle beans in a different bed put on tons of beans and are now slowly drying before we can shell them. The popcorn seems a bit odd, making two or three ears in the same spot. I've never grown it before, so maybe that's normal. I'm just glad that after being flattened during several thunderstorms, the stalks straightened right back up again. We're just waiting for it to all dry out now. The Long Pie pumpkin vine has woven its way happily between the corn stalks and up the bean trellis. We've picked two them already and there's a third still on the vine.

I love that shell beans are fairly self-sufficient.

I hope the popcorn is doing as it's supposed to. It looks nice.

Two Long Pie pumpkins curing in the dining room.

One more still hanging out.

I'm not sure if our One Too Many pumpkin plant is actually going to have time to do it's thing. The strong seedling we transplanted in June struggled to establish itself. Perhaps it was a bit resentful. The vine finally had a growth spurt just a couple of weeks ago and has filled the entire bed. It has even put on a couple of pumpkins - one the size of a ping-pong ball and one like a baseball. I'm hoping we've got enough warm days ahead so that they can grow and prosper, but the days are getting noticeably shorter. Like with all the garden, we'll have to wait and see.

Finally, our resentful teen pumpkin is becoming a better-adjusted young adult.

You grow little pumpkin! I believe in you!

Not all has been happy fun time in the garden, however. Somehow, a deer or multiple deer, found their way inside. I'm guessing they accidentally hopped the fence while cavorting in the back yard. The yard slopes slightly so the fence on the north side is shorter than on the south side. Once inside, the deer stomped around in most of the beds, ate many of the leaves off my purple snap beans, and decimated the chard. It wasn't a very good year for the chard anyway. It didn't grow very well, I think because the location I chose for it was a bit shady and damp, and then it got leaf miners and I didn't make an effort to remove them. So, we haven't harvested any of it yet and it looks like we might not get much at all. I guess that's the compromise we make when our neighborhood is filled with deer and we do little to discourage them from getting comfortable.

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

It's kinda nice just hanging out with the local baby wildlife.