This is a series. You can see parts 1-6 on my profile page.
Well, I hope you weren’t waiting around for my garden update, because I’m a week late this time. Things have generally stayed the same in the garden, but there are a few updates to share from weeks eleven, twelve and thirteen. It’s been more than three months!
First, our sweet corn was ready to eat about three weeks ago. We boiled several ears when we had people over for lunch. It wasn’t the best sweet corn I ever ate, but it was good. When we went to make some the next week, though, there were several hard kernels already, making the corn not as enjoyable to eat. I guess I should have frozen some, but it was a crazy week and the corn really wasn’t that great anyway. By the time we checked the corn again, most of it was past its prime. So out of all that corn, we ate it twice. As my mom said, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just stop by a roadside stand and pick up a dozen or so when you needed it?” Well, I suppose, but there was still one good use for that past-its-prime corn: parched corn!
What is parched corn, you ask? It’s hard to describe, but if you leave sweet corn on the stalks to dry and then prepare the kernels like popcorn, they will “pop” into little air-filled, crispy kernels. Then you salt them and eat them, either alone or with popcorn. The closest thing I can think to describe it is like Corn Nuts, but not quite. Anyway, everyone in my family loves parched corn, but it is nearly impossible to get some, since it is not sold commercially. If we’re lucky, we can get some from my aunt Rebecca and uncle Ned. One year they tried to hang some up to dry and mice ate it all. So even though our corn was not good for cooked corn, I was okay with it if it turned into parched corn that I could share.
Then I went out and saw the evidence of raccoons: ear after half-eaten ear. Those little rascals! How dare they eat my parched corn! The least they could do is finish the ear they started with before moving on to the next, but no; they just eat the top third and go to the next one. How wasteful. There is still plenty left, for now, but I’m sure the raccoons will come back for a feast every night. I also found that some ears were affected by some nasty gray fungus with packets of black mold spores. I was talking to my mom on the phone while looking at the garden and I told her about it. She told me not to touch it and said it was called “smut.” Lovely. I pulled the husk off another ear and it was getting moldy. I am just not having the best luck with the sweet corn. I hope I can get some parched corn at least.
The pumpkins, gourds, butternut squash and watermelons are continuing to grow. There are so many different kinds of gourds showing up. I should have a fun variety to decorate with in the fall. In my last slideshow, there was a picture of this smooth, round light-orange thing and I said I didn’t know what it was. Well, it must be the pumpkin from this one seed I planted for huge pumpkins. It has quickly outgrown all the other pumpkins in the garden. It will be interesting to see how big it gets. I was also able to eat a ripe watermelon. It was good, but the variety had too many seeds. Every single bite had about three seeds. Avoid the ice box variety if you don’t want a ton of seeds.
The potatoes are ready to dig at any time. I’m just leaving them in the ground and digging them as I need them, but now that the plants are completely dead, I think we have to get them out of the ground soon. My mother-in-law said my sweet potatoes would probably be huge, because while most plants need rain, sweet potatoes do well in drier weather.
The tomatoes are finally exploding, especially the grape tomatoes. I have four plants of those and I have given so many away, but they just keep coming. I can eat all I want on salads and in other dishes; it’s great. My husband and I also made some salsa, but it wasn’t quite right. We’ll have to keep tweaking that recipe. My husband hates tomatoes, but loves salsa, so he’s trying to make it taste less “tomatoey” (I’m not sure how to spell that, because I don’t think it’s a real word). If anyone has a good salsa recipe, please publish it and let me know. I would love to know how to make it just like my favorite Mexican restaurant, but I’m guessing they don’t want to give that recipe away. I finally made a version with canned diced tomatoes with green chilies and he liked it. Unfortunately, that does not allow me to use up our tomatoes.
My zucchini pretty much died, so I didn’t get much from those two plants. I was able to make zucchini bread a couple of times and have a bit to freeze. I was a little disappointed about that.
I am perhaps most surprised by my eggplants. I really didn’t know what to expect with those and threw four small plants from the nursery in the ground. I thought I might get one or two from each plant. Instead, I have probably picked at least 20 so far and more keep coming. The plants don’t even need to be supported. I mean, support might have helped, but it wasn’t necessary. I am definitely planting eggplant again next year. They were cheap to buy and so worth it. The tomatoes and peppers were a great investment too. At Walmart, one red pepper was $1.49! I have several green and red peppers (green turn into red if you leave them on the plant long enough) and I probably paid about that much for the four plants.
Speaking of peppers turning red, did you know that jalapeno peppers get hotter as they turn red? I can eat the newer, green ones and they basically taste like green bell peppers with just a tiny kick. I tried a tiny bite of a red one, though, and it was scorching hot. My lips were on fire for half an hour and the only thing that would help was rubbing an ice cube on them. So if you want hotter peppers, let them get riper. Oh, and a couple of small cantaloupes were ripe, so I cut those up to eat. I had washed the cutting board and the knife my husband used to cut his hot pepper with soap and water, but my cantaloupe still had a bit of kick from touching them. It was one hot pepper!
The last update is that I set up a little vegetable stand at the end of our lane. I put out a table with grape tomatoes, jalapeno peppers and sunflowers. I put out plastic bags and a jar for the honor system. It’s been a few hours and no one has stopped. It doesn’t help that we live on a road that doesn’t get much traffic. I looked out at one point and realized that the plastic bags were blowing across the neighbor’s yard. I had to run around like a fool trying to catch them. I was just hoping no one saw me. Then I put a rock in the bag of bags to keep it down. So the vegetable stand isn’t going too well so far, but we’ll see. It’s only been the first day. There’s a farmer’s market in town, but it costs $25 a week to participate and I don’t think I have enough to sell this year to make it worth it. Maybe next year.
I made another slideshow of the garden. You can see it here.