The Garden That Would Not Die

Glorious Eggplants

I can’t believe the weather this autumn. I’d be thrilled if I wasn’t concerned that the heat might be a reflection of climate change kicking into much higher gear. It’s a week into October, and the vegetable garden continues to produce like it’s August. I spent much of Saturday afternoon freezing eggplant. I froze three pints. We have two varieties coming in at the moment- the Asian variety that I posted about last week (Pingtung), and a beautiful Italian strain called Rosa Bianca. We’re also still getting tomatoes including a big orange one called Nebraska Wedding, a smaller red one called Stupice and two not pictured here: the nearly black Cherokke Purple and a very prolific cherry tomato called Mexican Midget.

Still Life #2 with Eggplant

I’m still harvesting summer squash. This was another successful experiment this year. I usually lose all of my squashes and cukes to squash boreres. I have found that by planting late, I avoid that problem. Next year, I will refine the technique a bit and try more varieties. There’s a ton of basil that I need to turn into pesto. The cold season stuff is, of course, doing great. We have huge Swiss chard and it looks like I’ll get my first ever crop of autumn lettuce.

Swiss Chard - Fordhook Giant

With the exception of the basil, everything in this year’s garden was started from seed. That’s a first for us- I usually buy flats of eggplant and tomatoes.

In unrelated news, I'm making lemoncello. Here are the lemon peels steeping in vodka. They're sitting on the reoof just outside of the bathroom window. I hope the toilet spiders don't crawl under the jar.