With great intentions of feeding the house-hold, and possibly neighbours, with products from the garden, I bravely planted a collection of vegetable seeds early last spring. The sprouting went very well and even the self-sown cherry tomatoes promised a delivery of hundreds of juicy blobs.
The variability of rainfall meant that these poor germinants were subjected to either too little rain - I did my best to water them regularly - or too much - followed by some mildew-y type infection of all the squashes. A handful of really baby marrows and six marrow flowers were all that I could scavenge before the mildew took over. The rocket grew too fast to harvest at it's peppery, non-bitter best. The spinach went to seed in the blink of an eye. The carrots on the other hand took months to deliver tiny little snacks. I suspected, that tallied up my harvest would look something like this:
(By Andre Jordan via www.awaytogarden.com)
In many ways the harvest was barely enough for a dinner for two. And just when I thought the harvest was over, the pumpkins delivered! Hidden in among the mass of vines and decorative garden plants was the growing pumpkin harvest. At first it looked like three good sized squashes, but when the mass of vines started to dry out and look the worst for wear and the pumpkins weren't getting any bigger themselves, it was time to haul them out of the garden. What a bounty it was!
Now nearly everything has pumpkin in it. It started with cookies, gnocchi and a veggie side with dinner. Next is soup, fritters and maybe muffins. Growing pumpkins may just be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. I'll grow them again come spring time.
