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7.19.2009

Garden Report

I am not sure I have ever seen a better garden year here in the Willamette Valley, and that is saying something.

Things are coming on early and abundant. They are producing long. I am not sure I have ever seen the snow peas last through the blueberry season. We have been eating buttercrunch lettuce for a month and it has not yet bolted. The strawberries were abundant. The tomatoes are many and mid-range orange. The potato crop makes me think we need a root cellar.

I wish I had planted more.

Our only mistake.
We had a fine big batch of compost ready at the end of may. I mounded several wheel barrows, and then planted not one, but TWO zucchini. They are producing two to three six inchers every day. Last evening I picked every zuke that was out there plus a handful of radishes to take to church. This evening before dinner I went out to get some peas, and there was a happy eight inch zuke, and another six. In under 24 hours.

Why, oh, why, has no one figured out how to make bio diesel from zucchinis?

Turns out it was hard to get rid of the zukes at church. Even the first time, even with cute little ones, even with hungry people.

We are in trouble.




Comments:
Well you could try pickling. I could never get jam to work but I have made some good pickles in my time, the only downside being the smell of boiling vinegar!
 
i thought the basement does count as a root celler? is there some difference i am unaware of? dark, cool, and underground right?

ps i so told you two plants was overkill :).
 
I think of the basement as a combo tornado/bomb shelter. My aunt geneva's root cellar had boxes full of straw.

I wasn't aware that we had a zucchini phobic church.
 
zucchini is gross and mushy. no right thinking person likes them, i'm pretty sure.
 
An amazing amount of zucchini can be consumed as raw veggie sticks with a good dip.
PS. I only use my basement as a tornado shelter.
 
poem you might like: "attack of the squash people."
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Marge-Piercy/17184
 
Thanks rebecca,

here without permission of the author, but with gratitude.


The Attack of the Squash People

And thus the people every year
in the valley of humid July
did sacrifice themselves
to the long green phallic god
and eat and eat and eat.
They're coming, they're on us,
the long striped gourds, the silky
babies, the hairy adolescents,
the lumpy vast adults
like the trunks of green elephants.
Recite fifty zucchini recipes!

Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;
sauté with olive oil and cumin,
tomatoes, onion; frittata;
casserole of lamb; baked
topped with cheese; marinated;
stuffed; stewed; driven
through the heart like a stake.

Get rid of old friends: they too
have gardens and full trunks.
Look for newcomers: befriend
them in the post office, unload
on them and run. Stop tourists
in the street. Take truckloads
to Boston. Give to your Red Cross.
Beg on the highway: please
take my zucchini, I have a crippled
mother at home with heartburn.

Sneak out before dawn to drop
them in other people's gardens,
in baby buggies at churchdoors.
Shot, smuggling zucchini into
mailboxes, a federal offense.

With a suave reptilian glitter
you bask among your raspy
fronds sudden and huge as
alligators. You give and give
too much, like summer days
limp with heat, thunderstorms
bursting their bags on our heads,
as we salt and freeze and pickle
for the too little to come.
 
LOL! I made the mistake of planting 2 zucchini plants once. ONCE! ;o) Glad your garden is doing so well. Mine is too, though perhaps not as well as yours. My tomato plants are *huge* with many green tomatoes on them. Patiently awaiting the first ripe ones...
 
I seem to remember some biblical thing bout a plague of zucchinis...

Around here people lock their cars when they leave them in town, primarily so they don't come back to find their back seats full of zukes!
 
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