For me, the garden is all about edibles, and this is the glorious time of year when we eat well. Here are some pictures of the garden today.
Purple sprouting broccoli. We got a spring harvest from this overwintered plant but I left it in the ground—and now it’s producing again! (Health note: have you heard of anthocyanin? It’s a plant compound in purple foods that has a lot of health benefits.)
Melrose apple. Won’t be ready for harvest until October, but we’re eating them up with our eyes right now.
Scarlet runner beans on a 15-foot bamboo trellis. This must have been the inspiration for Jack and the Beanstalk. They climb to the top and wave in the breeze as though saying, where to next?
Brandywine tomato. So heavy it nearly bent its stem in two until I staked it up, but it’s fine. Won’t turn red for another month!
Ah eggplant. Auburgine. Whatever you call it, it got a late start and is only now flowering. Pointlessly, as it won’t make a fruit before the cool weather of fall knocks it down. Oh well.
A bit of the harvest. Those purple (again!) and yellow beans are the Dragon’s Tongue variety. Unfortunately, they lose their color when cooked. I’m goign to experiment with canning them and see if that preserves the color.
Ukranian Purple tomatoes. This variety is a fighter! It’s put on a lot of fruit, which comes ripe two at a time. Gives me hope for the future.
Dinosaur (Lacinato) kale on the left and Marrowstem kale on the right. The Marrowstem is a new one for me. The leaves are giant and it’s getting quite tall, overshadowing the dino. They cook up more like collards.
Belle de Boskoop apple. It’s overproducing for its size, so much that I had to stake it up or the weight would have broken the trunk. Like Melrose, won’t be ready for harvest until October. This one’s great for sauce and pie.
A mystery fruit! We think this might be Mexican lime. The plant has been growing in a large pot for years but this is the first year to produce fruit, which was green but is now turning yellow.
Looks like a mess? Well actually, it’s a seedbed for next year. The spring plants going to seed here, which I will harvest as they dry, are radish, purple peas, lettuce and parsley. We’ll also let some of it just drop to the ground and naturally sprout next spring.
The Jack ‘o Lantern is beginning to blush!
And finally, we stopped off at one of my favorite nurseries yesterday to stock up on a winter crop: Brussels sprouts! I started some from seed, but the seedlings got stressed in a heat wave and are very tiny. These are doing quite well and will have a much better chance of getting up to size before winter hits, so they can start bulging out the little cabbage growths along their stems this winter. A good birthday gift to myself.
May you eat well this harvest season.
And here’s a silly musical tribute to a farm:
Most of all, Happy Birthday!
also like the Jonathan Richman classic tune with the line “ain’t no potato like natural potato”—could be the anthem played at a harvest festival called Edible Man where a human effigy constructed of produce is ingested and savored by the celebrants??