Your Small Kitchen Garden |

My small kitchen garden sometimes pushes up so many butternut squashes that there’s no chance my family will eat all of them. This inspired me to set some on the grill. Now grilled quash provides a fine counterpoint to the baked, mashed, and cubed squash dishes I’d repeated so many times over the years.

My small kitchen garden sometimes produces way more of a particular vegetable than my family will eat. Worse: when we have too much of a type of vegetable on hand, it’s easy to fall into the trap of preparing it the same way again and again.

This happened a few years ago with butternut squash, and I developed a great urge for a quick but different way to prepare it. After some thought, I decided to exercise my grill: it seemed that a big slab of squash would perform much like a slab of beef or pork. The result made me very happy and I hope it will make you happy too. Follow the instructions in the photo captions to make your own grilled butternut squash.

If you try this, please let me know what you think—or share whatever variations you feel are noteworthy. Grilled squash goes especially well with smoked poultry or just about anything else you prepare on the grill.

Before you start on the squash, start your grill and leave it on high so it’s hot when the filets are ready. A vegetable peeler removes skin from a butternut squash; it helps to rest the squash on a firm surface and draw the peeler down toward that surface. After peeling the squash, cut off the stem and the blossom scar.

 

To cut up a squash for grilling, it helps to have a big honking chef’s knife. Be cautious and always cut toward a cutting board with the hand that steadies the squash safely above the knife’s blade. My first cut goes down the center of the squash, but notice that I start the cut through the seed end before standing the squash up and forcing the knife down through the neck.

 

I scrape the seeds out of the squash before slicing it into filets. The filets are about a quarter to three-eighths of an inch thick. Notice again that I start each cut at one end of the squash, cutting down and through (I’m not pushing the knife toward my hand in the center photo… just down toward the cutting board). This first cut acts as a guide when I stand the squash on end and work the knife down through the length of the fruit.

 

Once I’ve cut out all my squash filets, I paint them on one side with a thin coating of olive oil (left). Then I sprinkle on cayenne pepper and black pepper (center). You could add salt at this point if you like. I finish with a light distribution of brown sugar which I press into the oil with my fingers so it will adhere when I put the squash on the grill.

 

I place the squash filets seasoning-side-down on my grill and immediately paint the unseasoned faces with oil. Then I season them as I did the other sides. I put the cover on the grill and let the squash cook for just three or four minutes. Then I flip the squash and cook it for another three or four minutes. CAUTION! The squash may be soft when you flip it, so work a spatula along the length of each piece before lifting it off the grill.

 

Grilling caramelizes the sugar, but the charring usually adds complexity to the flavor of the squash; don’t reject it just because it looks singed. If six to eight minutes on the grill doesn’t get your squash filets soft, put them back on the grill or finish them off in your microwave oven. This grilled squash is soft, sweet, and savory with a touch of heat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

 

Technorati Tags: butternut squash, cooking, grilled squash, grilling, recipe, squash, winter squash

FREE SEED OFFER HAS EXPIRED. Please note: The next-to-last paragraph in this post reads: This offer is good through February 5, 2010.

This 20 pound neck pumpkin went into canning jars and so far has produced a delicious pumpkin cake. I can’t promise your neck pumpkins will grow so large, but they’ll have a chance if they are offspring of this bad boy.

FREE SEEDS! Your Small Kitchen Garden blog is giving away a bunch of seeds to encourage kitchen gardeners everywhere, and to spread some fun. Do you remember that Neck Pumpkin and the Blue Hubbard squash I wrote about in November and December? Or, maybe you read about the amazing chili-pepper-shaped paste tomatoes I grew in 2009?

While you’re planning your 2010 kitchen garden, consider this: Until I’ve no more to distribute, I’ll mail a modest set of seeds to each person who leaves a qualifying comment in response to this blog post. A seed set will include six Blue Hubbard squash seeds, six Neck Pumpkin seeds, and 20 or more paste tomato seeds. It’s not a lot of seeds, but it should be enough for you to start your own tradition with these squashes and tomatoes (should you decide to do so).

Someone told me they read that a Blue Hubbard squash was the model for the alien pods in one of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies. This Blue Hubbard weighed in at 27 pounds. Leave a qualifying comment for a chance to receive six seeds from this squash.

Qualify for a Seed Set

Here’s how to get your seed set: Leave a comment in response to this blog post telling me you want to receive seeds and explaining (in one or two sentences) which of the three plants you most want to grow and why. While your comments will be judged on the basis of creativity and humorousness, the only criterion for selection is the order in which I receive them.

A neighbor has been growing chili-pepper-shaped sauce tomatoes for decades and these are from that family line. The tomatoes are nearly all-meat, and they taste terrific raw. Plants are indeterminate, and fruits can weigh from eight to 16 ounces.

In other words: first-come, first-served. When I run out of complete sets, I’ll send whatever combination of seeds remains until all the seeds are gone. I expect the Blue Hubbard squash seeds to run out first, then the Neck Pumpkin seeds, and finally the sauce tomato seeds, so if you want all three, leave your comment early. Oh, and please keep it at one seed set per person.

Receiving Your Seed Set

Once you leave a comment to this post, use the Contact Us form to drop me a note that includes your snail mail address. Make sure you include the same email address that you use in your comment; I’ll use email addresses to match each Contact Us form to a comment… so if the addresses don’t match, you might not receive your seeds.

This offer is good through February 5, 2010.

My Australian friend who goes by @GardenBy on Twitter brought to my attention that there may be issues with mailing live seeds to international destinations. I once researched import laws of shipping seeds to Australia and was discouraged by what I read (mostly that there was so much to read and interpret and I could never do an adequate job research such issues on a country-by-country basis). So… I regret that I must amend this giveaway with the restriction that I will ship seeds only to people in the United States of America and Canada. Thanks for understanding.

Technorati Tags: blue hubbard, giveaway, neck pumpkin, seeds, squash, tomatoes

The Blue Hubbard squash I bought was 24 inches long and it weighed 27 pounds; 7 pounds more than the neck pumpkin it rests on in this photo… and, perhaps, 20 times the weight of the butternut squash from my own garden.

Some months ago I got all excited about winter squash and lamented that the only squash in my small kitchen garden this year was butternut. I bought a huge neck pumpkin at the farmers’ market, and a week later I bought a Blue Hubbard squash as the weekend flea market.

I canned the neck pumpkin in my pressure canner, and presented a two-part written documentary: Exploring Neck Pumpkin at Your Small Kitchen Garden and Can Squash or Pumpkin from Your Home Kitchen Garden. Then I promised readers a look at this amazing Blue Hubbard squash.

It’s been a long time coming, but here’s how I preserved the Blue Hubbard. This method is simple and valid for any winter squash you plan to use in pie fillings. If you want to freeze squash for later use mashed or in casseroles, leave it out of the blender; scoop the cooked squash directly into freezer containers.

I started by cutting off the rotten end of the squash. I removed about a half-inch margin of healthy-looking skin in case the rot had progressed farther through the flesh than what showed on the surface.

The Blue Hubbard Squash Review

I bought my 27 pound pod-people squash for $1.50. This resulted from a 25% discount offered when the seller discovered one end of the squash had started to rot. I had heard that Blue Hubbard is great for pies… but that seems to go for every winter squash I haven’t tried.

While the photographs and their captions tell the story of how to prepare squash for freezing, I didn’t freeze all of the Blue Hubbard. After cooking it, I scooped a sample to taste and was quite pleased. My Blue Hubbard was sweet and very flavorful; it has a much “squashier” flavor than the neck pumpkin. You could serve Blue Hubbard in place of butternut, and few people would notice.

The cut squash was gorgeous. I love the rich pastel orange that fades into pastel green near the rind. When I pressed on the flesh, it gave easily and fluid squirted from it, indicating rot. When I removed another inch of material, the flesh was firm.

 

I cut the remaining healthy Blue Hubbard squash lengthwise into thirds and picked out all the seeds to plant next year (I hope to give some away or swap with some of my readers). Then I used a spoon to scrape the stringy guts away from the flesh. I’ve no doubt you can eat this stuff, but I’ve never read anything encouraging me to do so.

 

I had to cut the sections of squash into smaller pieces to get them to fit into one of my largest cook pots. I stood the pieces on edge, and arranged them with air spaces between them. Then I added a few inches of water and covered the pot. It took about 45 minutes for the flesh to become soft all the way through on every piece. I used tongs to remove the squash from the pot, and then I scraped the cooked flesh away from the rind. Even cooked, the subtle pastel colors show in the squash on the spoon in the right-most photo.

 

Each scoop of cooked squash went into my blender (place the scoops directly into freezer containers if you intend to serve the squash as a vegetable… pureed squash is best for use in baking and soup bases). There was so much squash that I had to run the blender several times. I used the puree setting and made sure there were no chunks remaining in any load. Once I’d filled my largest bowl with pureed squash, I distributed the puree into freezer bags in 16 ounce batches; one bag is the appropriate amount for making a pumpkin pie. I wrote the date on each bag and set them all in the freezer… I’ll be able to make pumpkin pie, bread, cake, soup, and ravioli throughout the year.

Technorati Tags: blue hubbard squash, freeze squash, freeze vegetables, plant squash, pumpkin, squash, winter squash

There’s my big boy neck pumpkin on my large cutting board next to my biggest chef’s knife in front of my KitchenAid stand mixer. (Trying to provide a sense of scale.)

While my small kitchen garden lies dormant for the coming winter, I’ve been exploring winter squash. Always a fan of butternut squash, I planted several hills of it this year, and harvested about 25 pounds of fruits. Some were as small as grapefruits while others were about as large as quart jars. For my family, a one-quart butternut squash lasts for two or three meals.

I visit a farmers’ market nearly every Wednesday, and flea market produce vendors on most Sundays. Every autumn, I see a delightful variety of winter squashes. However, happy with my homegrown butternuts, I’ve never explored these others. Until this year.

In my last post, I described a Blue Hubbard squash, the full 27 pounds of which I purchased for $1.50. That post included a photo of a neck pumpkin that weighed in at a hefty 20 pounds. After two weeks of delays, I finally dissected the neck pumpkin. This is one very impressive squash!

I washed the neck pumpkin thoroughly before I started carving so as not to contaminate the squash’s innards with soil that might have remained from the farm where it grew. I cut sections starting at the neck end, and finally cut the bulbous seed chamber in two. A neck pumpkin is almost solid meat.

Gourds from the Amish

The neck pumpkin goes by many names, among them Pennsylvania Crookneck Squash (according to Cornell University’s web site). They are very common in central Pennsylvania—Amish country—and apparently not so common outside of this area.

Neck pumpkins I’ve seen have been as small as a large butternut squash, and even larger than the 20 pound fruit I bought at the farmers’ market three weeks ago.

I understand that neck pumpkin is ideal for making pumpkin pie. Given its resemblance to butternut squash, I imagined it might also be fine for eating as a side dish… and for cooking up in baked goods and other foods that call for pumpkin as an ingredient.

A simple vegetable peeler easily removes the skin from the neck pumpkin. Of course, such a peeler has trouble on very large expanses of skin; curves of the pumpkin interfere with the ends of the peeler. Cutting the neck pumpkin into small sections would reduce the problems of paring it. With the skin removed, I used my largest chef’s knife to cut the sections into one-inch cubes.

Neck Pumpkin Preparation

The photos in this blog post reveal the steps I took to prepare my neck pumpkin for consumption. Actually, I cooked only a half cup of the squash so I could taste it… the rest I canned in quart jars. The canning operation itself, I explain in my other blog, Your Home Kitchen Garden.

Preparing and storing winter squash offers many options: you can steam, boil, bake, roast, and even dry squash. Use a crock pot, a microwave oven, a stove pot, a conventional oven, a grill… it doesn’t matter. However you cook squash, it gets soft and mashable. For a chunkier side dish, peel and cube it before cooking. To save effort, leave the skin on until after cooking… but by the time you scrape the squash out of its skin, you’re likely to have mashed it up quite a bit.

As with cleaning a pumpkin that I’m about to carve into a jack-o-lantern, I used a spoon to scrape the seeds and their anchoring fibers from the squash’s seed cavity. I set the seeds aside to dry; I’ll be growing neck pumpkins from them in my small kitchen garden next year.

For canning, you create one-inch cubes of raw squash which you blanch for only a few minutes before putting them in jars and cooking in a pressure canner. You can use freshly cubed squash in any squash dish… cook peeled and cubed squash any way you want. Most simply, cover some with water in a pot and cook until soft. Pour off the water, mash the squash with a potato masher, and stir in butter and brown sugar to taste.

If you want to can some squash, please enjoy my squash dissection photos, and then head over to Your Home Kitchen Garden for a step-by-step canning review. This one, 20 pound neck pumpkin filled seven quart jars and left about two cups of pumpkin cubes that I used to make bread.

More about neck pumpkins and som excellent ways to use them:

• Brown Long Neck « Wood Ridge – Country living in the northern … – October 25, 2009. Another heirloom: the Brown Long Neck pumpkin. This crook-neck pumpkin makes an excellent pumpkin bread or pie. The Brown Long Neck is the pumpkin used by our regional Amish for their markets’ baked goods. LongNeck …

• Neck Pumpkins, White Greasy Beans, and Blue-Podded Peas « Digging RI – Another of this year’s experiments is Neck Pumpkin. You have to see this baby to believe it… Looks like a butternut squash on steroids, doesn’t it? I got this seed from the very nice, very generous Daniel Gasteiger, …

• One last taste of winter squash | Front Porch Farm – That spring sunshine has been tantalizing me with its promises of warmth. I’ve been digging in the flower beds, poking in my herb garden. But come.

• Roasted Butternut Squash Puree with Ginger | Andrea Meyers – I’ve been roasting squash all during the month of November, and every time I use up all the squash in my kitchen, more seems to magically appear. Well,

• butternut ravioli – as you know, i have, over the last few months, lost my taste for food. i’m sure for many pregnant women, those who dread cooking or find it difficult, this would not be the end of the world. but, i have to tell you, for a girl who loves …

Technorati Tags: harvest, neck pumpkin, plant squash, pumpkin, squash, winter squash

Two weekends in a row threw so many distractions at me that my gargantuan neck pumpkin sat neglected, cuddling some butternut squash on the rocking chair in my dining room.

Closing down my small kitchen garden for the coming winter seems to have made me a tad crazy for winter squash. I harvested about 28 butternut squashes from my garden, and then went out and bought a neck pumpkin which you can read about here: Neck Pumpkin: a Home Kitchen Garden Marvel.

My plan was to can the neck pumpkin and save seeds so I could grow my own next year. After two false starts, I still had a whole pumpkin on the rocking chair in my dining room… and I brought another wonder squash home from the Sunday flea market.

Blue Hubbard Wonder Squash

This is the first season I’ve noticed Blue Hubbard squash. It really stood out at the flea market where, for the past six or so weeks, there has been a table holding a dwindling supply of these most impressive gourds. Earlier, the price of a Blue Hubbard was enough that I gave it barely a thought. But this past Sunday, the one remaining pod-person Blue Hubbard listed at just $2.

Nothing like a little overkill when you’re trying to get across a simple truth: This Blue Hubbard squash is enormous! 24 inches long, heavier than a large neck pumpkin, and more volume than, perhaps, 20 of the butternut squash I grew in my small kitchen garden this summer. (Some of my butternut squashes were kind of small this year.)

What little I knew about Blue Hubbard squash at that point is that people say it is excellent for use in pies. Shucks. Neck pumpkin is great in pies, and I already had a 20 pounder at home. But only $2 for this amazing-looking squash… I pretty much had no choice; it was going home with me.

When I set hands around the squash to lift it, I realized that the skin near one end was damp and slimy; the Blue Hubbard had started to spoil. No matter; were I to buy a packet of Blue Hubbard squash seeds, I reasoned, I’d spend two dollars. So, even if I find half of this fruit spoiled, I’d be way ahead in the squash department.

The cashier at the farm stand felt bad about the squash’s spoilage, so she marked it down 25%; I paid only $1.50! It was a challenge to carry along with lemons, limes, and a head of cauliflower, and between the checkout counter and my car, three people asked what I was carrying and what I’d do with it. This is a truly remarkable gourd.

Blue Hubbard Squash Awaits

When I got it home, I weighed the Blue Hubbard squash and was astonished to see that it totals 27 pounds. That’s seven pounds more than the neck pumpkin! Of course, with one end rotting, the Blue Hubbard’s finished weight will be substantially less. For that matter, I’ve never seen one of these things opened, so I’ve no idea how thick the flesh is. Perhaps there’s only an inch of meat… or maybe the meat goes nearly to the center and there’s only a tiny ball of seeds.

Whatever the case, I’m keeping the seeds and planting some next July along with seeds from the neck pumpkin and others from this year’s butternut squash. I’m excited to explore this Blue Hubbard monster, and I’ll share the experience here.

These look like some excellent ways to use winter squash; Blue Hubbard should work just fine:

• Blue Hubbard Squash Casserole « Local Nourishment – I saw a blue hubbard squash at the pumpkin patch we went to over the weekend. I too was kind of weary of it because it was so large and not sure what to do with it. I love the idea of replacing it for sweet potatoes (especially since I …

• roasted winter squash soup with croutons – what can be more comforting than a bowl of creamy soup on a cold day? when the weather starts to turn a little chilly, i start making soups and this was my first one this month. roasting the acorn and butternut squash brings out a …

• Winter Squash | MattBites.com – And if you’ll excuse me for saying this, sometimes they look as if they landed on earth from outer space. A few years ago I made it a point to familiarize myself with these hefty gourds. Until that point they were only gorgeous table decorations to me (trés gay, I know I know), and also made nice ammo during food fights.

• Organic Baby Food-Steamed Winter Squash – This quick video shows how to make organic baby food from steamed winter squash.

Technorati Tags: blue hubbard, neck pumpkin, squash, winter squash

I love to grow winter squash in my small kitchen garden… even though squash plants cannot in any way qualify as small-garden-appropriate. Still, when I plan a progression from spring crops to summer crops, I make sure there’s a place where butternut squash plants will be able to stretch out in July and August.

Poor Squash Production

The first season I grew butternut squash was very disappointing. The seeds sprouted quickly, and vines grew aggressively. It was a bit of a rush when squash flowers popped open; and very entertaining to see new flowers open almost every day. When female flowers opened, I was particularly jazzed: these were young squash fruits that would grow large and provide food later in the year!

My first year growing winter squash, I saw blossom after blossom wither and die, dashing my hopes of getting a decent harvest.

No dice. Those female flowers would blossom and fade in a day, and two or three days later the fruits from which they’d emerged would turn brown, wither, and drop off the plants.

Occasionally, a squash fruit would set: the flower would dry up and fall off as the squash itself plumped up. While this was very satisfying, harvesting only a squash or two per plant seemed hardly worth the garden space.

Since then, I’ve heard this story told by many beginning gardeners—and even by experienced gardeners—who were puzzled by poor production from their winter squash plants.

More Squash per Plant

One summer, as the squash plants started flowering, it occurred to me that, perhaps, a squash fruit that isn’t pollinated isn’t viable. Honestly, I don’t know whether this is true, but the thought led me to a new garden task: I now hand-pollinate all my female squash flowers. Since I started doing this, I’m almost certain that every squash flower I’ve pollinated has grown into a harvestable squash fruit. Now in a typical season I harvest at least five decent squash fruits per plant, and sometimes as many as seven or eight.

A male squash flower (left) stands atop a stalk that stretches toward the canopy of leaves. A female flower (right) lies low under the canopy and grows from the end of a miniature squash fruit.

Life of a Squash Plant

A squash plant may seem to develop slowly, producing small leaves on skinny vines. After a few weeks, however, the plant starts to overwhelm its area in the garden. Large leaves rise 18 inches above the garden bed as the vines thicken and send out branches.

Soon, squash blossoms peak out from under the canopy of leaves… they don’t necessarily rise above the canopy, but their unmistakable orange flashes in the morning sun.

The earliest squash blossoms are males; they can’t produce fruit. These usually sit on stalks that grow straight up from the horizontal vines.

You can pollinate a female flower using a male flower from the same plant, but I like to find a male flower from a different plant. I snap the stalk that holds the flower (they are brittle and break off easily), then I peel the petals away much as you’d peel a banana (center). I end up with a stamen at the end of a handle (right).

 

To pollinate squash, I simply use the doctored male flower as a paintbrush: I hold the stem and brush the stamen around on the pistil of the female flower. A squash fruit grows very quickly after pollination. If the plant gets enough water (and if the days are hot), a fruit can reach full-size in seven-to-ten days… though it might take several more weeks to ripen fully.

A squash bud blossoms in the morning, glows orange until midday, and starts to fade in the afternoon. By nightfall, the blossom is droopy, at best, and the flower is useless by the next day… but another set of blossoms opens on that morning.

You might see such blooms for a week or two before the first female blossoms mature. A female blossom grows in the direction of the stem that holds it. There is a tiny squash behind the flower, and the flower itself may actually lie on the ground when it opens. While male blossoms congregate near the original roots of the plant, female blossoms grow near the ends of the vines… but I’ve never seen a female blossom open when there were no male blossoms open as well.

Caution! Bees seem to think squash flowers are what it’s about. On a good day, the squash bed is abuzz with dozens of bees. In my experience, they pay no attention to me as I wade through the sea of squash leaves. They are so single-minded, I’ve actually had bees land on the male flowers whose petals I was stripping. Despite heavy bee activity, I still hand-pollinate. I try to avoid arguments with the bees, and I’ve never been stung in my squash patch.

Squash Plant Maintenance

As a vine, a winter squash plant sends out tendrils that can wrap around anchors to support the vine. This being the case, some gardeners train their squash plants up and away from the soil. One great advantage of this is that the fruits develop off the ground where they are less likely to succumb to insects and rot caused by moisture.

But I wonder whether training squash vines off the ground cheats the grower out of a few pounds of squash per plant. You see, squash vines branch, and the branches are thinner and flimsier than the main vine. Still, those flimsy branches can grow quite long and they can produce fruiting flowers. No problem so far.

In my experience, the fruiting flowers of slender squash branches are smaller than those of the main vine. Many fail to blossom; they simply shrivel and drop off the plant. I’m about to offer a guess about squash culture, but first: one more fact about how squash plants grow:

Squash vines aggressively seek supplemental sources of water. At each node where a leaf grows from the vine, the plant wants to drop roots into the ground. If the vine lies on your garden’s soil, the plant will re-root itself in dozens of places. I must believe (without knowing for sure) that these roots support the plant’s growth.

Here’s that guess I warned about: A squash vine that can’t drop supplemental roots into the soil will produce the flimsiest of branches and, probably, less fruit than a vine that re-roots itself all over your garden bed. Believing this, I let my squash plants have plenty of room, and I leave the vines in place so I don’t disturb the roots they inevitably produce.

Squash vines produce tendrils (left) that are capable of supporting the plants off of the ground. However, if a node where a leaf stalk emerges from the vine rests on damp soil, the vine drops roots there. For the sake of this discussion, I lifted a vine (right) and its newly-forming roots came out of the soil.

Now I’ll contradict myself: Two or three squash plants growing from a common point can intertwine and become very inaccessible. The main vines and their branches criss-cross and overlap while the canopy of large leaves blocks your view of the vines. As fruit sets and enlarges, you’ll see many flimsy branches grow from the main vine, and it will be obvious that most branches won’t produce fruit.

When my squash patch becomes particularly overgrown, I remove many of those useless vine branches; I use a paring knife and cut them off close to the main vine. Again, I don’t know for sure, but my plant sense tells me that the vines and growing squash fruits that remain benefit when the plant isn’t trying to grow so many new branches.

When Squash are Ripe

It’s a little early to be concerned about harvesting winter squash. But if squash fruits ripen, cut them off the vines and take them inside… there’s no sense leaving them in the garden where they can fall victim to insects and other inconveniences. If your plants are still setting fruit… or they haven’t yet started, you may face decisions about when to harvest. I wrote a post last autumn about harvesting and storing winter squash. I hope you find it useful: Harvest Squash from your Small Kitchen Garden.

Here are some links to articles about diseases that can damage your squash plants… and to a few discussions about cooking winter squash:

• Downy Mildew Alert « Weekly Crop Update – edu and Kate Everts, Vegetable Pathologist, University of Delaware and University of Maryland ; keverts@umd. Downy mildew was observed on cucumber in our sentinel plots on Wednesday, July 9 near Georgetown, DE by Emmalea Ernest. She found several small spots on 3-4 leaves on the susceptible slicing variety Straight Eight’.

• pumpkin plants turn ugly in just a few days – jerry brust, ipm vegetable specialist, university of maryland; jbrust@umd.edu. last thursday, august 6, my pumpkin plants looked great with large green leaves and just a little powdery mildew (fig. 1). just a few days later and they …

• having my way with winter squash « Culinaria Eugenius – Although I must say that I recently devoured a maple cream puree made with the grey squash above, I prefer winter squash dishes that don’t add extra sugar. The marshmallow yam Thanksgiving casserole? *shudder* …

• Five Ways to Eat Winter Squash – I love this Moosewood Cookbook recipe, which mixes kale and chunks of winter squash into a basic white-wine risotto. It’s easier than I expected—although you do have to be vigilant about stirring!—and it’s a very healthy dish, …

• Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Croutons – Bon Appétit | December 1996. In France, this soup would be prepared with a baking pumpkin. A mixture of butternut and acorn squashes mimics the French pumpkin’s exceptional taste and texture. Pour a lightly chilled rosé with this …

Technorati Tags: flowers, plant squash, pollination, squash, winter squash

My small kitchen garden is still fully abloom, which portends great things to come. The blossoms also provide fodder for me to participate in another Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Carol at May Dreams Gardens hosts Bloom Day wherein she encourages garden bloggers everywhere to photograph their blossoms, post them on their blogs, and then add a link to the Bloom Day list.

My small kitchen garden this month has blossoms that are quite similar to last month’s blossoms. Still, there are a few changes, and all-new photos. I don’t really grow flowers, but if I don’t get any in my garden, I won’t get any vegetables and fruits either… and that would make me very sad. Please have a look and see what the future holds for my small kitchen garden.

Cilantro flowers abound in my garden. My cilantro patch is very mature, and blossoms are giving way to coriander. These cilantro flower clouds—volunteers that planted themselves last fall—float among my tomato plants. Similar volunteers are making coriander throughout my planting bed.

 

My oregano monster is in full-bloom: dozens of stalks of flowers stand above the foliage. My oregano is spreading; trying to consume the planting bed. So, a few days ago I trimmed back the edges of the monster. I’ll dig out a lot of oregano roots when my annuals die back in the fall.

 

My pepper plants this season have messed with me. Peppers I potted in gallon jugs grow side-by-side with peppers I potted in a handrail planter. The gallon juggers matured and produced fruit while the handrailers turned into bonsai pepper plants. About a month ago, I shuffled plants out of the handrail planter into an in-ground planting bed… but I left some plants in the planter. Now all are growing as though they mean it. So, August has brought a new round of pepper flowers, and I’m eager to harvest peppers in September. Most, I suspect, will end up in gumbo.

 

Oh, beans! I harvested about a gallon of wax beans over the past two days, and there’ll be another half gallon ready tomorrow morning. The climbing beans are still flowering and producing new beans which makes more than a month of production with no end in sight; typically bush beans spew huge amounts of beans very quickly and you need to plant them in stages if you want to harvest through the whole summer. I’ve taken a one-and-done approach with bush wax beans, and they’re flowering madly even as I pluck the gorgeous yellow pods.

 

I’ve been lucky this year to be in the one 50-mile swath of the United States that hasn’t been too hard on tomatoes. I’ve canned 1 and ½ gallons of tomato sauce, I have about 12 gallons of tomatoes ripening on my dining room table, and my plants are producing about two gallons of tomatoes each day. To keep me on my toes, the tomato plants continue to produce those demure yellow flowers. I suspect that flowers in mid August will not produce ripe tomatoes before the first frost.

 

Here’s a volunteer I really don’t want in my small kitchen garden… but it’s so pretty. I think thistle plants are quite attractive, and the flowers are gorgeous. Of course, I’ll pull this plant in a day or two and add it to the compost heap. But there it is blooming on Bloom Day.

 

The big change in my small kitchen garden from mid-July to mid-August is the overwhelming emergence of winter squash. I had set seedlings in the garden on the first weekend of July, and a month later squash plants covered a big chunk of the planting bed. The vines are maxing out. That is, they continue to put out more stem and leaves, but the new stems are very slender, and they don’t seem to support fruiting flowers. New fruiting buds are tiny, and they seem to wither and die even before the flower opens. That’s OK, there must be 15 – to – 20 butternut squash fruits under the leaves. And, despite the lack of viable female flowers, the vines continue to produce daily explosions of bright orange male flowers. I couldn’t choose just one squash flower photo for this blog post, so I’ve included three of my four favorites (the one I didn’t publish was a bit esoteric).

 

A volunteer tomato plant, self-seeded from last year’s crop, makes a small jungle surrounding a squash blossom in my small kitchen garden.

 

Few things are better in my small kitchen garden than the time I spend among the squash blossoms in August.

 

Thanks so much for visiting!

Technorati Tags: beans, bloom day, cilantro, flowers, herbs, oregano, plant squash, plant vegetables, squash, tomatoes, vegetables

Summer seems to be ending abruptly in my small kitchen garden; I hope that’s not the case for yours. Goodness, when autumn was two days away, the temperature dropped to 37 degrees F (3 degrees C) overnight! There are many clear days forecast, so I expect frost might come early this season.

My home kitchen garden contains no squash this year, but in considering major end-of-season topics, gourds keep coming to mind. By gourds, I mean all the pumpkin-like fruits: winter squashes (acorn, butternut, and the like), pumpkins, and decorative gourds. I’m hearing concern about the shortening season and what to do with under-ripe fruits that are still on the vine. Can you get them to grow larger? Is there anything useful to do with green squash?

Is your squash harvest growing?

In my experience, gourds (like nearly all small kitchen garden plants) simply slow down as the days get short and the nights get cool. I’ve had squash and pumpkins of various stages of being ripe on the vine in mid-September, wishing they were larger and riper. Being obsessive, I’d check each day, hoping to see change, but whatever change might have been was imperceptible.

Of course, if there is water in the soil, and the plant’s leaves are green, then the plant is still packing food into its fruit. So, it’s sensible to leave younger squash and pumpkins on the vines as late in the season as possible. However, late in the season, the rules about gardening change.

When it’s cold in your small kitchen garden

Squash and pumpkins don’t mind a little frost, but you’re taking a chance in the event the frost comes from sustained sub-freezing temperature. When squash or pumpkin flesh freezes, it becomes mushy and won’t last very long—if you were planning to eat it, do so that day… but it isn’t real appetizing to feel a mushy spot on a squash and have it ooze fluid on your hands.

Even when frost isn’t pending, cold nights and warm days lead to uneven ripening: a pumpkin that’s green in mid-September will likely ripen faster on one side than on the other (the lower hemisphere of the pumpkin stays warmer at night, and so continues to ripen while the upper hemisphere cools down and waits until morning).

If it isn’t real cold, but there’s suddenly a lot of rain at the end of a dry summer, the squash can take it in quickly, and it may split. You need to consume split squash quickly, or preserve it so it doesn’t rot.

Finally, even as autumn is upon us, the squash bug population in your small kitchen garden is peaking; leaving your produce exposed to pests for a few more days—or even weeks—provides no significant advantage.

So, Harvest Squash Early

Sure, the conventional wisdom is to leave the fruits on the vines until the vines die. But, when frost is a near-certainty, harvest squash, pumpkins, and gourds. Even harvest the green ones along with the ripe ones! Cut the stems off the vines one-to-three inches from the fruit, clean off any soil, and take them all inside. Stack them out-of-the-way (I put mine in the corner of the dining room… there are still three there from autumn of 2007), and check on them from time-to-time. Consume the ripe ones, and wait for the others to ripen; they will… even rather small ones will.

Storing Squash

These gourds have hidden in my dining room for almost exactly a year. They’re in surprisingly good shape, though obviously starting to fade.

Squash and pumpkins store amazingly well. I’ve kept butternut squash in my dining room for six months and found it firm and useable. As the squash ages, it loses moisture, and the meat gradually separates into strands… but if it doesn’t develop an off odor, you can still cook it up without fear.

Ideally, once your squash are ripe, store them in a cool, dry room… around 50 degrees F. Don’t lean them against each other, as one spoiling squash could hasten the spoiling of other squash it touches. If you don’t trust squash to hold through the winter, you can cut it into chunks, blanch it, and freeze it… or cook it down and freeze it. Alternatively, squash dries nicely, so you could cut it into chunks or strips and set them in a dehydrator… or even dry them in your oven on very low heat (three-quarter inch slices will dry in ten-to-twelve hours in a 150 degree oven—place them on an oiled baking sheet, and let them cook until they’re dry).

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I just returned from a visit with neighbors whose activity completely fails the criteria for a small kitchen garden: He tills a plot that is 11 yards across, and 33 yards long. He starts spring crops early, plants summer crops in their place as they expire, and goes back for another round of spring crops as summer draws to a close. She spends hours a day from late spring to early fall processing food into jars and freezer packs. In fact, as I approached this morning, they both were shucking their last ears of sweet corn—clearly enough to can or freeze.

We chatted before I began a photo shoot in their garden (click the lead photo in this post to see all the photos on flickr.com), and a chipmunk snuck under the table and tried to grab a kernel of corn from her sandal… it startled us, and we startled it with our reactions.

My neighbor’s garden is extremely traditional. They’ve lived in their house for fifty years, and simply carved a garden plot out of the yard (it’s a very big yard). There’s no transition from yard-to-garden… except that the grass ends and then there’s exposed soil. The garden is large, so you need to walk in it to reach the plants, and the rows are close together.

At the near end of the garden, I found long-necked squash weaving among tall sweet corn stalks. Sunflowers defined the garden’s edge, though they’d faded: their heads dry and drooping ground-ward. There were rows of tomato plants hugging the ground, and other rows of tomatoes staked and upright. Beefsteaks and Italian tomatoes—the first for salads and sauces, the second specifically for sauces.

There were huge cabbages, a row of green beans, another of wax beans, and a third of lima beans. The cucumber plants were spent, but tucked next to them was a pocket of young lettuce and flowering bean plants—recent planting. Interestingly, the cucumber plants were withering where peas had grown in the spring. There was a partial row of pretty green-and-purple-leafed plants I mistook for turnips, but it turned out they were beets.

I believe she mentioned that she has already put up 50 pints of tomato sauce, but it was clear there’s another ten pints of sauce on the plants. They didn’t have much luck with beans this year as they rely only on rain for water, and it has been dry. Still, the recent rains have revitalized things, and it looks as though some bean-picking will soon be in order.

All this as the season is winding down. Still, in our hardiness zone 5b, we might not see killing frost until mid October. A lot of new beans can grow in 30 days, and you could even get some decent young lettuce if you started from seed now.

My neighbors have peach and apple trees in their yard. The peaches are all harvested, and the apples will provide enough for the season without creating pressure to preserve them. A small grape trellis holds an awesome crop of what look like concord grapes—I should have asked while I was there, or tasted one. I also failed to ask how they use the grapes, but she did comment that the grapes would be the last of the big chores before the garden is done for the season. My mom used to can a mixture of grapes, sugar, and water; we’d drink the liquid from these jars and toss the grapes. This juice absolutely rocked compared to commercial grape juice.

My neighbor’s compost heap stands about five feet deep, and must be at least 12 feet on a side. No doubt there is a thick layer of rich mulch at the bottom. As he uses no chemical preparations, he must move a lot of compost to till into the garden each year.

Yes, it’s a large kitchen garden, but even with all that space, they get more production by staging crops according to the seasons. This is an important technique especially for the owner of a small kitchen garden who wants to get the most from little space.

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