It’s leaning in toward the end of September and the nights are coming sooner and the air is cooler, even at times with quite an early chill. The earth still holds out with about 4 growing watermelons and some sweet lettuce, but other than that, we are pulling the supports and putting the garden to bed.
A simple garden, and a few containers, have brought lessons of bugs and critters, harvest, scarcity, and abundance. The potatoes and eggplant played host to the early arriving red potato bug larvae with an encore appearance of the next stage of the dapper striped potato bug. Our handy research, hand plucking, and applications of diatomaceous earth eventually removed our guests from our almost square plot. Our container tomatoes chose to host the Tomato Hornworm and were carefully plucked and even pruned out. When another appeared, we chose to watch the progression and found nature’s way of balancing everything out. The braconid wasp injected eggs just under the skin of the hornworm, and as the offspring grew, it erupted through the skin and spun tiny cocoons that hung from the back of our hornworm. This eventually would be its demise (or perhaps it was the birds diving into feast).
From containers, we harvested potatoes and carrots, strawberries, peppers, lemons, rhubarb, and herbs. While from the garden we plucked squash, eggplant, cucumbers, melons, kale, swiss chard, tomatoes, and lettuce. Truth be told, not always in great volume, but always with beautiful flavors, good learning, and fun.
So, search some recipes and have some fun with your veggies, from the garden or store, farm stand or fridge, and experiment and explore!
And once again,
Be Well, Eat Well, and Savor~
Meg
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