Gardeners' Holidays 2021: Late Harvest

Usually, the last Gardeners' Holiday of the fall is all about getting in what's left of the produce in our garden before the first frost. But this year, as October winds into November, there's still no sign of frost on the horizon. It's supposed to get down into the upper 30s on Tuesday night, but that's the coldest it's going to be all week. 

So, for the time being, we're continuing to pick tomatoes and peppers, though at a slower rate than we did last month. The one crop we decided to go out and harvest in its entirety was the butternut squash. True, they weren't likely to come to any harm sitting out on the vines, even if there was a frost. But they also weren't getting any bigger, as the vines themselves had mostly died back at this point, so there was no reason not to bring them in.

The total harvest for the year was a slightly disappointing eight squash. That's about on par with what we used to get with our old Waltham and Ponca Baby plants, but less than half of the 21 squash we got last year planting only Little Dippers. Perhaps last year was an outlier and we shouldn't expect results like that on a consistent basis. But on the plus side, these Little Dipper squash aren't all so little. Even the smallest of the lot is about a pound, and the largest weighs in at over three pounds. All told, we've got over 16 pounds of squash here.

But before we can start in on eating them, we need to finish up the last of that super harvest from last year. We generally eat these gradually throughout the year so they'll last us through to next year's harvest, and apparently we didn't step up the pace enough this year to use them up. So there's still a little bit of the final squash of 2020 left to use up before we can start on the squash of 2021.

We had part of this ultimate squash in a quinoa bowl earlier in the week, followed by some last night in a roasted root vegetable medley that's loosely based on this roasted sprouts and potatoes recipe. (I'll share the recipe for it some time, but it's basically potatoes, onions, Brussels sprouts, and squash roasted in the oven with a drizzle of homemade pancake syrup and a touch of smoke flavoring to take the place of the bacon.) That leaves just one little end that we can slice up to top Brian's butternut squash pizza with sage.

As for the upcoming year, these eight squash may not see us all the way through to next fall like this year's harvest did, but they should get us comfortably through the winter, at least. And between these squash, all the plum preserves we've socked away, the warm comforter we just put back on the bed, and our recent COVID booster shots, I think we're just about set to get snuggled in for the cold season.