First Zucchini

Zucchini, as of June 14, 2015

      It seems early to me, but I picked my first two zucchini yesterday!  We had one of them for dinner in a delicious casserole, so had the one remaining on the left. Today we picked the two golden zucchini and the nice green one on the right.  So in only two days into the picking season, we are near the point of overload. However, daughter Emily will be here on Tuesday, and she is a zucchini fixing and eating machine.  Even zucchini fritters for breakfast.  Yes, they are quite good.
      My previous posts tagged for zucchini are from the months of September and October.  It was unusual to have it that late, as bugs or mildew usually do it in. The newer bush zucchini are quite susceptible to squash borers eating out the main stem.  If you pile more dirt around the base of the plant they will often put out new roots and continue to grow. That is how I kept them late into the season.  They also grow so quickly that plants started before July 15th should produce a fall crop.

Wonderful Pickings

Harvest, morning of August 20, 2013

      What a nice way to start off an August morning.  Yellow squash and zucchini are still producing.  To the right of the zucchini are Purple Cherokee tomatoes that have just started decent production.  The fall veggie starts are doing well, but that is a different story.

I Never Thought I Would Miss Zucchini

      Zucchini comes in with a bang in the early summer, swamping us with its generosity.  Luckily for me, I can put the extras in the "free Veggie" box at the park where they disappear without a trace.  But often in the last few years the plants lifespan seemed to become shorter and shorter.  Squash borers would get them, or leaf mildew, or this year they were killed by the ground hog creating a tunnel under the roots.  So for a change, I would look for zucchini in the "veggie box" to bring home.  Never thought I would miss zucchini.
      This spring I started lots of different squash by seed, and had plants in cell packs that never made it to the garden.  Even past our vacation in early July.  I finally put those plants in the ground, and wondered if any might set fruit.  I had seen several very small squash on the plants, but yesterday I found this:

Fresh Zucchini,  September 20,  2012

Nice to have some summer crops still producing

Home at Last

      Vacations are fun, but so is the return home.  To check on the garden to see what has boomed in a week.  Quite a bit as usual.  So much so, that I hardly know where to start.  A bonus this year was finding a ripe Ox Heart tomato over at the park garden.  Early for me, though other gardeners have tomatoes in abundance.  Still a delight to have the first tomato of the season.

First tomato, 7/16/11

      Also to complete a nice harvest were contributions of zucchini, cucumbers and beans.

Harvest 7/16/11

      In a recent conversation with my brother Tom, he related to me that I have been nicknamed "George of the Jungle" by my fellow park gardeners.  Easy to understand as my gardenus operandi is to let most things go to seed, to encourage volunteers, and to have a much more "naturalized" garden than other folks might tolerate.  In the spirit of things, the park garden has done its best to live up to the jungle title:

What path?  South of compost pile.

Even worse, north side of compost pile

Browned garlic ready to harvest, beds 2 and 3

Overgrown sunflowers, north end