If you look closely, you will see patty-pan squash, rond de nice squash, tomatoes (cherry, brandywine?, stupice), beans, lemon cucumbers, lemon peppers (ripened red), okra, brussel sprouts and blackberries. It was a good day for harvesting. Tonight we had a cucumber and pepper salad with mustard vinaigrette along with a tomato and mozzarella plus basil salad with vinaigrette.

We’ve been enjoying bits and pieces from the garden lately. Carrots keep coming, garlic is done, brussel sprouts have begun, a couple of fennel bulbs, a few ripe tomatoes (thanks Jeff!), and I picked the first of what will likely be a good crop of green beans. Anne made some mashed potatoes with the first of the potatoes.

Fennel bulbs are one of those veggies that will stump most employees at checkout. I’m sure they do not sell very many — it’s not a very popular vegetable in the U.S. Then again, I’ve seen zucchini stump some employees, so maybe it’s a question of employee training and/or quality. If you haven’t had fennel, I do recommend it as something completely different from every other vegetable. The foliage smells a lot like black licorice, but you won’t likely find it with foliage on at the store. We often eat it raw, sliced thin, with olive oil and salt.

Artichokes are another good stump-the-checkout-clerk vegetable. We seem to have managed to trick one plant to bloom. The aphids seem to really like artichokes.

We planted squash late so as to avoid some of the squash bugs. Haven’t seen any yet, so that might have worked. The squash vine borers on the other hand are plentiful and likely doing their slow damage to the plants.

It’s a race now to see if the plant can live long enough to bear fruit. Two new mini varieties of summer squash are growing along with spaghetti squash elsewhere in the garden. Also found a nice robust acorn volunteer squash doing very well along side the compost bin. That’s nice since we didn’t plant any acorn squash this year.

I’ve been enjoying gourds and squash this year. And I am not much of a squash eater – perhaps I haven’t yet found the right recipe. We are more or less stuck on the butter + brown sugar standby. Last night as I prepared a large butternut squash in this fashion I thought a fried squash pancake might taste pretty good. And Anne says there is a good Moosewood squash soup recipe she wants to try. But mostly I enjoy the oddity of the squash plant and fruits – and later their decorative personalities. 

The vines next to the barn were all planted directly into bags of soil. A large section was cut from the broad side of the bag and small holes poked into the opposite, face-down side for drainage. It seems to have worked out rather well for these squash. We also planted tomatoes, melons, zinnias and basil directly into bags. All did well. The only minor problem were the weeds that came with the bags, and the illusion that the bags would hold in all the moisture — they do dry out and that’s probably a good thing. But if tired or bored with watering I would skip the bags thinking “they’re fine… the bags are keeping them moist,” which was not entirely true.

The squash are several varieties including one I can’t be sure of (largish, round, green with stripes), luffa gourd and butternut.

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.

It’s kinda big. We figured since Chris Musgrave was coming to till up the grape rows we might as well have him till a new garden bed as well. We might have gone over-board on size. It’s about 100×25. Anne has already moved some perennials in since this picture was taken. The tilling was great. Highly recommend Musgrave Landscaping out of Toledo, IA. The plan now is to plant the big spreading vines in here. Looking forward to melons, gourds, pumpkins, etc… Although we need to check if squash family needs to be separate from melons.

This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that neither squash nor pumpkin will cross-pollinate either watermelon or muskmelon. Growing squash or pumpkins near melons will not affect the quality of the melons, despite the persistent belief that it will make the melons taste like pumpkins. Bad weather, poor soil, or disease may make melons taste bad, but it is not due to crossing of squash or pumpkins with melons.

* source: http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/vegetabletravelers/summersquash.html