Gardeners' Holidays 2022: Harvest Home

Ever since we built our compost bin, we've had occasional cases of "volunteer" plants sprouting next to it. This isn't exactly surprising, since we're always throwing vegetable scraps in there, some of which presumably contain seeds, and the bin itself is filled with nutrient-rich growing medium for them to sprout in. But it's a nuisance, because these are never neat little self-contained plants like lettuce or bush beans or even peppers. They're always long, vining plants like tomatoes or butternut squash which, left to their own devices, end up sprawling over the entire side yard. The asparagus ferns get completely buried under them, and in extreme cases, it becomes almost impossible to walk through.

So after the first couple of years of this, I established a zero-tolerance policy for volunteer plants. Every time we spotted them, we were to root them out, no matter how nice and healthy they looked, rather than letting them take over the whole yard. And until now, we've adhered faithfully to this rule. 

But this year, the tomatoes and squash we've been growing in the garden itself have been, to say the least, disappointing. Our Pineapple tomatoes, normally so big and juicy, have provided us only one small fruit; the Premio, supposedly an early provider, has yielded only nine to date; and the new variety we tried this year, Grandma Mary's, was a complete loss, with both plants falling victim to blossom end rot. And the Little Dipper butternut squash, such prolific producers in their first year, are currently displaying only a total of five squash on four vines.

So, when Brian spotted a healthy-looking squash vine next to the compost bin, with multiple squashes already on it, he just couldn't bring himself to uproot it. And since it was staying, he figured the volunteer tomato plant curled up in its lee might as well stay too. I protested feebly at first, but when he pointed out that this single plant would probably more than double our squash crop, I had to admit the justice of the argument. After all, it's not completely obstructing the yard yet.

And that's how it comes about that the vegetable harvest we brought in to celebrate Harvest Home, the Gardeners' Holiday marking the fall equinox, includes three tomatoes we can't identify. In fact, they may not even belong to any breed that can be identified. They most likely grew from the seeds of a supermarket tomato, and most of the varieties in the supermarket are hybrids that won't breed true. All we know about them at the moment is that they're red, round, and smallish.

Fortunately, the plants in our actual garden, the ones we put in on purpose, haven't been a complete loss. We got a couple of peppers off our new Banana pepper plant, and our trusty Sun Gold tomatoes are continuing to produce tiny fruits by the hundreds. And today, Brian harvested some arugula and lettuce left over from our spring and summer plantings and put them into a nice big chick pea and arugula salad for lunch.

So this year's Harvest Home isn't exactly the bountiful burst of fresh produce we've had in years past. But at least with this massive volunteer vine in the side yard, we can hope for a good crop of butternut squash before winter rolls around.