Gardeners' Holidays 2023: First Fruits

For New Jersey gardeners, June marks the real start of the harvest season. In April and May, you can gather a few salad greens, along with whatever you can get from perennial crops like rhubarb and asparagus. (For us, that's "plenty" and "almost nothing," respectively.) But by the June solstice, our garden is really starting to crank it out. Our two new lettuce varieties have proved to be quite impressive producers, particularly the Marvel of Four Seasons. The three squares we planted have already yielded around 17 cups, and it shows no signs of bolting. We've harvested about 14 ounces of snap peas so far—nothing like the 79-ounce bumper crop we got in 2019, but far better than the measly 3 ounces we got last year. And we've gleaned the odd few bits of garlic scapes, parsley, and other herbs.

But the real stars of this summer's garden are the fruits. We've picked between five and six cups of raspberries so far, and there's plenty more where that came from. We've also gathered two to three cups of honeyberries—not enough for the honeyberry fool I envisioned when we first planted the bushes, but more than enough to snack on or sprinkle over salads. And we're currently experiencing an early windfall of plums—literally. 

It's pretty normal for our plum trees to start shedding fruit in June. There's just too much for their branches to hold, so they drop little green plums all over the yard whenever there's a bit of a breeze. (We even bought a special tool to help us pick them up so we don't have to crawl through the grass collecting them before they sprout.) By late June, some of the Opal plums falling off the trees are red, but they're usually too small and sour to eat. But this year, Brian tried sampling some of the fallen plums and found that parts of them, at least, were ripe enough to use. So he's been spending some time today going through the collection, cutting them up and putting the edible bits into a freezer bag. When he has enough, he plans to try making them into plum wine. He's never made any kind of wine before, so it's an experiment, but if it works, it'll make a nice alternative to putting up quarts and quarts of jam.

Which is not to say we won't be making any jam at all this year. Brian has already made one batch from our raspberries and strained half of it to make a seedless jam for the top of our anniversary cake. The remaining extra-seedy jam has gone into the fridge for us to enjoy on toast or possibly even homemade tortillas. And that only used about two cups of berries, leaving us with three and a half (and counting) for scattering on salads, muddling in drinks, or just scarfing down by the handful.

The best thing about all this produce is that it's only the beginning. Out in the garden, there's the promise of so much more to come: a narrow, pale green pepper on one of the new Banana pepper plants; green fruits forming on the tomato vines; tiny little embryos of zucchini and cucumbers; pale purple flowers on the bean plants; and an abundance of little basil seedlings. So there's plenty to look forward to as the gardening season winds on.