Gardeners' Holidays 2023: Plumfest

For many gardeners, late July and early August is the time of Peak Zucchini. They're harvesting squash every day, including some the size of baseball bats, and eating it at nearly every meal—in soups, stews, pasta, frittata, and endless loaves of zucchini bread. By early August, many are even resorting to sneaking it onto their neighbors' porches.

Not us. Our new zucchini variety, Emerald Delight, which our new seed provider described as "extremely productive" with "great disease resistance," has so far produced only three measly squash—and two of those were pretty dinky. We've also had to discard a couple due to blossom end rot, despite our use of crushed eggshells to supplement the plants. This pathetic harvest isn't the fault of our old nemesis the squash vine borer; the plants themselves are vibrantly green and flourishing. They just aren't making any actual squash. So we'll definitely be dropping this variety next year and leaving a negative review of it on the company's website.

Fortunately, we have plenty of other crops that are more than making up the difference. In fact, as you can see here, we have a whole rainbow of produce in our garden, including:

• Plums. We're at about the midpoint of our plum harvest right now. The Opal tree has been picked clean, and the Golden Gages and Mount Royals are just beginning to come ripe. So far, we've harvested about 36.7 pounds of purple-red Opals, 7.5 ounces of Golden Gages, and 3 ounces of blue Mount Royals. Now, that may not sound impressive compared to our 2021 harvest, which included 51 pounds of Opals, 21.3 pounds of Golden Gages, and 22.3 pounds of Mount Royals. But as Brian pointed out, that year we weighed all the plums as soon as we picked them. A significant percentage of the harvest turned out to be unusable, either because the plums never ripened or because they'd already gone bad. This year, Brian has been weighing only the plums (or portions thereof) that he's determined to be edible. So it's entirely possible that our 36.7 pounds of edible Opal fruit meets or beats our take from 2021, and that the eventual harvest from the other two trees might do the same.
• Tomatoes. Although our new zucchini variety was a bust, the same cannot be said for our new San Marzano tomatoes. They've only given us four fruits so far, but that's more than we've managed to get this early in the season from any other paste tomato we've ever tried—and there's more on the vines where those came from. We've also harvested 17 Premio tomatoes so far, nearly double the total amount we got last summer. And as always, our trusty Sun Golds are showering us with little orange-yellow fruits—143 to date, with no sign of a slowdown.
• Cucumbers. Normally, as I mentioned, it's the zucchini that tend to sneak up on you this time of year. You turn around, and there's a massive green phallus poking out from under a leaf that you swear wasn't there at all last time you looked. But this year, it's the cucumbers that have been providing that experience for us. The Cross-Country cucumbers have only produced six medium fruits so far, but the Marketmores have provided three medium cukes and six whoppers like the one in the middle of our produce rainbow. We have two quarts of ice box pickles in the fridge right now and plenty left over for salads.
  

And that's only the crops that are at peak production right now. There are several others that are just getting started, like the green beans, peppers, and basil. And there are a few more that are past their peak but still producing, like our new Salad Bowl summer lettuce, green onions, and bush cherries. Plus, there's still the entire second crop of raspberries to come. So there should be plenty to keep our plates filled with fresh produce as summer winds down—especially with our new rain barrel now in place to keep the crops watered and happy. (Of course, it would probably help if we got a bit more serious about weeding, as well.)