Eggplants, tomatoes, and beans, oh my!

Well, the end of July means a more exciting harvest.  The basil is getting bushy, the first little tomatoes are starting to turn orange then red, there are even some cayenne peppers starting to peek out from underneath old blossoms.  Yep, the hour of fruits is upon us!  (Now, people tend to think of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and beans as vegetables.  And sure, they are.  But as far as plant anatomy goes, the part we're eating is the fruit of the plant, the part with the seeds in it.)

Now is the time where we get to make more interesting dishes with the harvest.  Don't get me wrong, I love salads, but after 2 months of eating giant salads almost every day, I'm ready for a bit of a break.  Yesterday I made pesto with fresh basil and parsley from the garden, as well as some from our organic family farmer.  I modified a great recipe for 3-basil pesto from epicurious.com to include 5 types of basil in total.  I have some great lemon basil plants whose seeds were a gift from friends.  (Alyssa and Chris, it is as yummy as the name sounds!)  I also added some purple basil and Thai basil for extra flavor dimensions.  Blend together with Romano cheese, garlic, pine nuts, and a splash of olive oil and enjoy!  Pesto apparently freezes really well, so take advantage of bushels that you may be growing yourself or that are selling at your local farmers' market and stock up for the winter!



On Saturday Mat and I drove out to Quinn Farm and filled up paniers with 6 liters of blueberries.  We probably ate another 3 liters between the two of us.  The bushes were loaded and pesticide-free.  How heavenly!  We've put them in our oatmeal in the morning, blueberry scones in the evening, and grab handfuls for general snacking.  The next task is to freeze them to be able to enjoy local blueberries all year round.

Zucchini in a self-watering container

My zucchini plant is healthy and looking good, but unfortunately no zukes have developed thus far.  Most people have a problem of too much zucchini, not too few.  Alas, there are a couple explanations for this:

1. I have only one plant.  Zucchini, like their curcurbit cousins the cucumbers and squashes, need a lot of pollinating for successful fruit development.  With more plants you increase the odds for pollination.  So while I wanted to avoid having a kitchen overflowing with summer squash, having just one plant may mean I have none.

2. My zucchini is growing in a large self-watering container, which is great because it gets all its water from the bottom reservoir.  Zucchini plants don't like having wet leaves, as this encourages mildew, and can take over and disable the plant.  The problem here is not the container, it's that a neighborhood cat has decided to claim this for its own personal litter box.  A couple times I've had to scoop out some poo and lay down the cayenne pepper, which really does help to deter the cat.

3.  The final obstacle to my zucchini harvest may or may not be related to cats.  Something has discovered that the flowers are edible, and eats them off just as they open.  It also at the top of the plant off where young leaves were coming out.  My guess is either squirrels or raccoons are responsible for this mischief.  Fortunately now a new set of leaves is coming out and some baby flowers are on their way.  I'm going to try covering the new flowers with some cheesecloth to see if that will protect them.  All this to say is that I bought a bunch of yellow zucchini at the store and have several from our farm basket (CSA basket), so I am not without zucchini.  Here's an interesting blog about how to freeze it.