Hay

Plot on October 22

I went to Agricultural Hall yesterday afternoon and had a nice little chat with Bill about garlic, bees and apple cider. I got half a bale of field hay to spread on my garlic. It has been very rainy in the past few days and it is supposed to be a wet week. I hope the garlic I planted three days ago will be okay with all the water.

I still have quite a few things going on in my plot: squash, chard, leeks, onions, fall greens (mostly arugula and mustard greens), some last tomatoes, herbs and still some dahlias.

Squash

Yesterday, I harvested four more squash. They now cure in our back hallway. The night before – a very rainy and windy Sunday that my poor 17-year-old daughter spent outdoors at the last rowing regatta of the season on the Merrimack river – I had roasted three of the five previously harvested squash and turned half of the roasted pulp into a very tasty butternut squash soup with fried sage and cheese, adapted from this recipe. The soup was the perfect ending to a wet and raw day. I froze the other half of the pulp for future use.

All in all, I have harvested nine butternut squash so far. They weighed in at a total of 21 pounds and 15 ounces. I gave two of them to my neighbor and five are still on the vine – a total of 14.

Brushed with olive oil and stuffed with thyme and sage
Roasted at 425F for 40 minutes
Dinner is served

Planting Bulbs

Tulip, grape hyacinth and Anemone blanda bulbs

Today I planted my garlic (2 rows hardneck – saved from my harvest in July – and 3 rows softneck – Inchelium Red from Johnny’s) in the community garden and flower bulbs in our front yard. I bought the bulbs a few weeks ago from K. van Bourgondien: two types of tulips (Blushing Apeldoorn and Ronaldo), grape hyacinths and Anemone blanda. Can’t wait for them to bloom in spring!

Garden Work Day

Fall bouquet – dahlia, Jerusalem artichokes, parsley flower, pokeweed

We had our fall work day in the community garden this past Saturday. We mostly weeded, cleaned and got the garden ready for winter. There was a big patch of Jerusalem artichokes in the flower bed we adopted and we needed to take them out. Some of them came home with me and made it into this small bouquet.

Parsley
These are the last green beans. (The bell peppers and the black hot peppers are from another gardener’s plot who recently moved away)

Fall in the Garden

I went to the garden late this afternoon and harvested 10 oz. of green beans, 4 butternut squash (10 lb. 14 oz. total), a big handful of Swiss chard and the last dahlia. I only took the squash that had brown stems, the remaining 9 (!) still have green stems, so they might grow and ripen a bit more. I need to carefully watch the night temperatures though.

Roasted Tomatoes

Before

I still have a lot of tomatoes coming in from my community plot. For tonight’s dinner, I slow-roasted some with minced home-grown garlic and fresh thyme (90 minutes at 300F). I then chopped the tomatoes and added them to sauteed (home-grown) shallots and (store-bought) crimini mushrooms. I served everything over penne pasta, topped with grated cheese and fresh basil. No photo of the final dish – it was gone to quickly.

After