Late Summer Garden Update

September was a slow time in my vegetable garden so i felt silly posting a tour. It should have been a busy month, full of sowing and transplanting and readying the earth as she tracks a slow pivot, returning us to cooler, wetter weather. What happened instead is that i was distracted, seeds failed, and slugs and birds grew fat on the few tender seedlings that did emerge.  Grrr. But this blog is a record, my way to mark the rhythms of the garden through fat and other times, so i will see if i can record a few highlights.

Purslane. First time growing this. Predictably i couldn't resist it's easy reputation. Easy but virtuous, high in omega 3s. Felt weird eating a weed but it cropped quickly and wasn't bad mixed in with other greens and was pretty good with hummus in a veggie wrap. Have you ever tasted these?

Photo by Dr. John Meade, weed scientist emeritus
Rutgers NJAES Cooperative Extension

It's what purslane tastes like. The oxalic acid i think.


Juliet tomatoes are just starting to ripen. I hope these are the grape tomatoes i have been looking for. A few years ago i let a volunteer tomato plant grow. It sprouted from a seed that was either washed out of a tray from an earlier planting or grew from a composted hybird tomato. The plant produced lots of firm little grape tomatoes that held for a long time on the vine. These tomatoes tasted okay fresh. But roasted? Oh my, roasting absolutely transformed them into smoky, rich tasting morsels that pureed into a remarkable sauce. Earlier this year i tried to prepare Komohana grape tomatoes the same way, assuming that one grape tomato was pretty much like another. Let me tell you, they are not.  I'm crossing my fingers this time.

This is a sad little naranjillo plant.  It has been sitting here looking much the same for about a month. Stunted maybe, did i leave it in the pot too long? It's a pretty thing, covering itself in prickly, purple fuzz. I'm curious about this and the fruit that it will produce. Have you grown it?

A big surprise this month was my Hunan wing bean. It languished for the first three months while it's neighbor, Lorenzo's Wing Bean, pumped out an early harvest. Hunan decided to scramble up it's trellis just as Lorenzo's started to fade. At first there were only a few fat frilly pods here and there but this month Hunan has given me a skilletful once or twice a week.

In September the salad bowl was filled with rainbow and lacinato kales, mizuna and midnight chard, arugula and Okinawan spinach. The zucchini succumbed to powdery mildew and the melon flies had no trouble finding the cucumber but the cherry tomatoes were unstoppable. We are tired of broccoli but not cowpeas. The eggplants were small but delicious and we are looking forward to more. Oh, and then there were the gardenias. In September! Which, as it turns out, was a pretty fat month after all.

That's all for now.

A hui hou!