The garden is bursting with fresh produce that would make most McDonald’s lovers weep. Every night, we toss freshly torn basil with a different assortment of beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Green tomato salsa has adorned cheese and bean filled quesadillas. Tonight we will slice melons – cantaloupe or watermelon, I can’t be sure yet.  There is an abundance of flavor and goodness. Eating well makes us feel good.

But the other day, I was thinking about how much I like French Fries. At first, I was searching for a recipe to make squash fries. So I really started out with good intentions. And I found some reviews of Butternut Squash fries that looked okay. I had a squash (not butternut) sitting on the counter that I wanted to use. It was an accidental pick about a week ago – sometimes fruit falls off when weeding or manipulating vines. So, I cut it open — It wasn’t ripe. Disappointment. The flesh was so thin it wasn’t going to work for fries. And by this time, I really wanted some fries.

Lucky for me, I had some potatoes sitting on the counter too. They were starting to green a bit from the morning sun. I read somewhere that green potatoes are poisonous, but then I thought that might be a myth and these weren’t that green yet anyway. So I peeled and sliced them, tossed them in a bag with olive oil and kosher salt, spread them on a cookie sheet and tossed them into a cold oven and then cranked the heat to 425. They took about 30-40 minutes and I did flip and stir them a bit every 10 minutes or so. They were the most amazing fries ever! And honestly, they aren’t so terrible nutritionally speaking, right? Especially if we don’t count the ketchup.

We were doing a little garden cleaning and this kiwano horn melon was sacrificed for better garden path clearance. The lemon cucumbers are perfectly ripe and so abundant it’s almost comical.

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The vines of the Kiwano’s have grown considerably well. They really want to ramble and climb. Much like the banana melons in this regard. I really should have given them more to climb on, but they managed to make their own trellis of the sunflower stalks and asparagus. The horns of the horn melon are indeed rather pointed. But even more of a nuisance are the fine spines along the vines and leaves. It is almost a necessity to wear gloves when checking on these plants. Otherwise I can expect to spend some time extracting the fine hair-like needles from my fingers. I have sensitive hands.

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At this yet to ripen stage, they taste like cucumbers. Nothing very exciting. When ripe I understand their flavor resembles bananas. If any ripen I will post again.

Close readers will remember we planted a few new melon varieties this year. I don’t expect we have any really close readers, so to recap, we planted MN Midget Melon, Pepino Melon, Kiwano Horn Melon and Banana Melon. All but the Pepino have more than taken their fair share of garden space. The Pepino have suffered in the shade of several tomato plants. Sorry Pepino.

We’ve had MN Midgets before, so while they are not new, they are a favorite. Perfect size and flavor. A small cantaloupe with super sweet flavor.

But now we have something new. Or new to us anyway. The Banana Melon.

Turns out this variety was popular back in the late 1800′s. It was in the seed catalogs of the day, so I’m guessing it enjoyed some level of popularity. Either that or some clever marketer realized we gardeners enjoy planting different varieties and was trying to sell us on an oddity. I know that’s why I bought them.

They are large. Much larger than I would ever have expected. This one was about 13”, but I gather they can grow close to 2 feet. I picked it slightly immature I think, but there was a little soft spot, so rather than let it rot, I thought we should try it.

It’s pretty good. The taste and texture is much like a cantaloupe. It was not quite as sweet as our MN Midgets, but maybe that was due to immaturity. The vines love to climb, and it appears to be a heavy producer – if only we had a longer Summer. And not to be a complainer, but many sites and catalogs claim this melon’s name is derived from it’s shape — sure, it’s oblong like a banana, but it doesn’t have that quintessential banana curve to it. I vote for renaming this the Yellow Mellow Melon.

I sure do like blueberries. Our bushes are still very small, yet some are heavy with little fruits. These shrubs grow painfully slow, and probably need more attention than they receive. Lately, I’ve been saving coffee grounds and yesterday I added a top dressing of filters and all to several of our shrubs. The coffee grounds are supposed to add acidity to the soil, and blueberries apparently like acidic soil. Iowa soil is typically not very acidic. One of these days I should invest in a little soil test.

Blueberries

Happy Independence Day everyone!

(Did you notice my red-white-blue postings today? Yay!!!! Sing it with me everyone… Ohhh, say, can you see…)

These little cherries are a great garden snack. They aren’t exactly sweet, but they don’t induce a pucker either. The sweeter cherry trees we planted didn’t make it – probably a zone issue, but hitting a young tree with a skid loader is also not good for it. So far, this sour variety has been just as enjoyable, if not more so than its sweeter cousin. We might need another one as a backup.

sweet and sour cherries

I do enjoy berries. They are super delicious, great producers and relatively resistant to disease. I’ve heard Japanese Beetles can be a big problem, but so far, that is one bug we thankfully haven’t had to deal with here.

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My biggest problem is keeping up with production. And it seems to have come on even earlier this year. But everything seems about 1-2 weeks ahead of schedule. Or maybe I am behind.

I have also noticed, on occasion, that the rare berry has a strange grassy taste to it. Is Anne right in thinking that I am crazy? Maybe grassy isn’t right, maybe it’s chlorophylly.

I thought having all the family here would take care of the raspberry picking. Apparently I was wrong. The berries keep coming.

Not that I’m complaining. I love a good berry. They are quite good in scones (although, this doesn’t make use of very many), and in shakes, and in yogurt with a little brown sugar. I froze about four quarts today and tomorrow will attempt to make raspberry jam for the first time. Anne has high hopes for the jam.

The other picking in the garden is bit more nasty.

The cabbage worms have hit us in full force. Either I was blind when they first arrived, or just too preoccupied with other events. Now these little jerks are everywhere and leaving behind piles of worm poo on decimated brussel sprouts.

Anne sprayed some Dipple today – with any luck that will keep them to a more reasonable number. They don’t seem to touch the red cabbage. Our theory is they don’t blend in well enough.

There is a blackberry cache across the road and over the rusty barbed fence, just to the left of the “No Trespassing” sign. The lot across the way has been abandoned for quite some time. Medium-sized trees are growing right next to the foundation of the home that once housed a small farm family. No windows remain and the structure is probably somewhat dangerous. But the old house is not why we ventured across the road. Blackberries and Anne’s wild plum tree brought us over.

“I’ve adopted a tree!” Anne announced as she made her way into our house last weekend. She had been gone for over and hour and returned with another container full of blackberries.

“That’s nice,” I said picking a few juicy plump berries from her bucket.

“You want to see it?” She asked.

“Nah, I’m busy.” 

This reply never seems to work the way I plan. So we venture across the street with pruners and berry containers and the camera. Jake and Buddy follow – they have learned to pick berries too. Jake is very gentle while Buddy tends to strip the entire branch and later hacks up the thorns and leaves and probably the berries too.

Anne’s tree is the first stop. It’s small, but likely old for a wild plum. Anne trims the dead wood and shapes it up a bit. The fruits are small and only starting to ripen. But in a couple weeks, I’m learning to make plum pudding.

There are plums in plum pudding, right?

Things are starting to ripen. Still a bit sour yet, but this is encouraging.

We were not really suppose to let any grapes grow this first season, but it could not be helped. These clusters were concealed within the grow tubes. And it doesn’t appear that the vine’s growth was hampered at all due to these little bunches. Now we just need to keep watch and make sure no deer or birds beat us to the picking.

I also noticed wild grapes on the property are ripening. It will be interesting to compare the taste.

New to the blog! Just added some gallery pages. On the right, there should be a galleries section – click the gallery name to enter. These are some of the same photos selected at random above, but there is no way to view them all from that random feature.

I enjoy harvesting. It typically means eating is just around the corner. But I always feel a twinge of sadness and worry. The sadness, I think, stems from the impending finality of the season that harvesting marks. And I worry the produce will fail to live up to tasty expectations. The acorn/winter squash was especially nerve-racking since it is hard to know if/when it’s ripe. It isn’t winter yet, so it seems a bit premature, but we were not disappointed at all. And with enough butter and brown sugar on top, who cares if it’s ripe! The eggplant is a white variety, so that one is ripe.

Another sure-not-to-disappoint are the cucumbers. I’ve been taking these along with raw beans in my lunch this week. And I think I mentioned this before, but the cucs are a burpless variety. I’ve never noticed that regular cucumbers cause me to burp, but these certainly do not. Perhaps it’s just a marketing gimmick. Seed stores would probably sell more if they labeled everything burpless. Burpless corn, burpless watermelon, burpless greens… When faced with the decision to buy burpy or burpless variety, who wouldn’t buy burpless?!

More on the way. I froze most of the remaining kohlrabi – we shall see how that turns out. Also picked a large turnip last night, along with some potatoes, fennel and carrots. I don’t think I will be planting turnips of this variety again. Not my favorite.