September Garden Report

Autumn has fallen upon us and the garden is starting to wind down.

The strawberries are alive, but not really producing. The green beans may still produce some, but I am not counting on it.

One of the tomato plants is done, but two others continue to bear fruit. However, ripening happens slowly, and the first frost that we get will kill them all, so I now need to keep an eye on the weather forecasts. The first time it looks like we will dip below freezing, I will pick everything left and see what sitting on the counter can do for them.

However, the second planting of peas and the lettuce seeds are growing. That frost could still ruin everything, but I continue to hope.

I am still getting some new zucchini and crookneck squash, but they are not getting as big. I am not sure how much longer they will last. The pumpkins would have actually thrived under cooler conditions if they had grown, but that leads me to one of the big questions of this whole gardening experiment - why didn't they grow? I am starting to think that they simply mutated.

I guess the idea was planted when talking with one friend about gardening, and worrying about nutrient sharing and competition, and she mentioned in passing that the only risk was squash cross-breeding.

At the time it didn't seem important, but yes, there are many different kinds of squash, some of which are quite similar to each other. I would not automatically be suspicious that the crooknecks are thriving and that I never got a single pumpkin fruit, but there are a few things that make me wonder...

1. One of the crookneck vines is extending from the area where I planted the pumpkin seeds. Things can get mixed up a little, but it is pretty far away from where I put the crookneck seeds.

2. Some of the crooknecks are suspiciously orange, instead of the regular pale yellow. Are they really mutated crumpkins?

3. One of the other garden patches has some squash that are dark green and elongated at one end, but yellow and narrow at the other. Crookini?

My zucchini have remained intact, but they started as plants, and had time to get established while the crookneck and pumpkin seeds were just sprouting.

Really, the most suspicious thing is that yet another garden patch has some thriving crooknecks in the space that they planted watermelons. Are crooknecks like the Borg? You have been squashimilated?

Fortunately, they are pretty flexible for cooking. We have sauteed them with onions, cooked them au gratin with zucchini, and baked them with sausage. I think I will be trying squash breads and cookies soon.