Winter Squash

The night temperatures are expected to dip into the low thirties tonight, so I harvested all my squash (or whatever was left of it after two thefts over the past couple months). Three butternut squash and three honeynut squash. Sadly, no Delicata squash this year. The butternuts are slightly under-ripe, but I hope they will be okay. I also harvested some chard. Still growing in the garden are chard, kale, leeks and one butternut squash. I plan to clean up my plot and plant garlic and shallots this weekend.

Fall Sandwiches with Fresh and Pickled Garden Vegetables

October 23. “Farmers Lunch” sandwich: arugula, Granny Smith apple, sharp cheddar, home-made pickled green tomatoes and grainy mustard on home-made onion focaccia.
September 19. Using up one of the last big (Striped German) heirloom tomatoes: Caprese sandwich with garlic chili mayo.
October 29. Burger with arugula, beef patty, home-made refrigerator pickles, heirloom tomato and red onion on brioche bun.
Same burger before assembly
October 12. Zucchini grilled cheese with Gruyere, made with frozen grated and drained raw zucchini. Freezing the grated zucchini draws out extra moisture making it more flavorful (picture form July).

Today’s Harvest

Today, I spent a few hours in the garden weeding (in particular mint and those pesky Jerusalem artichokes that have been taking over the fence area of my plot). I filled two lawn bags with mostly Jerusalem artichokes, yikes! I also planted four basil seedlings that I had rooted from cuttings a couple weeks before and sowed cilantro and two rows of beets (Chiogga and Golden). I had to take out the bush beans as they were completely destroyed by the resident rabbit and planted cilantro in their place. Oh well.

Processing the 2023 Garlic

Today I processed my garlic. It has been almost three weeks since the harvest, and it has been hot and very humid here in Boston. I had a total of 21 heads of softnecks (Transylvania) and used 16 of them to make the braid above, which is now proudly displayed in my pantry. The remaining 5 heads, which I am keeping as seed garlic, include the largest head I harvested plus four heads that had started to split. Those four were still large heads, and I hope they will store well until October/November when I can get the cloves in the ground. Softnecks store well, so they will be used after all of last year’s harvest and all of this year’s hardnecks have been used up.

I also had harvested 17 heads of hardneck garlic (Red Russian), of which I kept the two largest as seed garlic. I left a longer stem for the rest of them because I noticed that they were not fully cured. For now, I will store them in a single layer in my kitchen so they can continue to cure.

I scaled down my garlic-growing operation for this year, because starting September, I will be an empty-nester. 31 heads will be more than enough to get me through next year.

Cleaned softneck garlic, pre-braiding
Clean hardneck garlic. I will shorten the stems once they have been fully cured.
Hardneck garlic – the messy remains