Weekly Harvest: where summer meets fall

by Erin Enouen

What a wonderful go we've been having with the weather! Dry sunny days and breezy, chilly nights. We are in the moment of transition between summer and fall, which is splendidly reflected in the weekly harvests from the garden. Summer and fall vegetables meet in a lovely way; the vegetables coming out of the garden are a perfect blend of airy and earth. It's the time of year for soups garnished with fresh herbs and a smattering of tomato; creamy grain dishes served with salads; for meals of the cooked and the raw, warming and cooling just like the days.

As you might or might not notice, we have a few nice vegetables in the photo above that were not available in the catalog this year. That's because we are trialing new varieties for the 2013 season. The stand-outs will be included in our catalog next year, including that gorgeous eggplant, the blue Kobocha Squash (center) and the long Japanese cucumbers.

Here's what you should be looking to pick in your garden:

Tomatoes: your plants might be waining, so enjoy them while they last!

Eggplant

Sweet peppers: seen here, Bridge to Paris, picked green

Hot peppers

Snap beans: pole or bush

Lettuce: finally, the cold nights keep it from bolting!

Arugula

Collards (and kale and broccoli): We plant a good amount of fall greens around here. The key to having a nice supply of hearty greens once the days are cold and short and the plants cease to grow is to have big, luscious plants by that time. But if you have lots of really big leaves now, go ahead and pick them, then let them grow out. Anything that is really big now might turn yellow by mid-October, so best to eat it now. Same goes for Broccoli. if you have noce big heads now, cut them. They won't last on the plant, but the plants will produce side-shoots by mid-October.

Melons and watermelon

Cucumbers

Beets

Winter Squash: as your plants succumb to powdery mildew and the horrid squash bugs, you should start harvesting and curing them. Otherwise, the exposure causes them to rot in the garden.