Gardeners' Holidays 2026: Harvest Home

We’re at a turning point in the year. The Jewish calendar has just rolled over from 5786 to 5787 (which is why this entry won’t be posted until tonight, because I’m currently on my annual Internet fast for Yom Kippur). And tomorrow marks the fall equinox, otherwise known as Harvest Home, the official kickoff of the autumn harvest season.

And our garden is certainly rising to the occasion. For the past few weeks, we’ve been up to our elbows in raspberries, green beans, peppers, and especially tomatoes. According to my running total, we have now harvested 12 Vivacious tomatoes, 20 Goldies, 126 San Marzanos, 189 Premios, and a whopping 841 Sun Golds. The only disappointing producer has been the lone Pineapple plant, which has yielded only two big, juicy fruits. Brian and I have come regretfully to the conclusion that, tasty as the Pineapple tomatoes are, we’ll have to drop them from next year’s garden, because they’re just not able to earn their keep. We’ll consult the Fedco catalogue to see if there’s any other variety on offer that purports to be as flavorful as the Pineapple but more productive; if not, we’ll probably just stick with the varieties we have.

Fortunately, the tomato harvest has finally tapered off to just a few fruits per day, so we only need to eat a tomato-centered dish maybe once a week instead of every day. That leaves us free to concentrate on our green beans, which are still going at full blast. We’ve harvested most of the Provider beans at this point (about two and a half pounds’ worth), but the Climbing French beans are still cranking them out fast enough that we need to harvest them pretty much every day. Brian has been handling that job for the most part, so when I offered to help him with it yesterday, he wouldn’t let me get started until he’d acquainted me with “the rules”:

1. Take care not to step on the zucchini plants. These didn’t give us much during the summer, but there are still a few healthy fingerlings on them, and he wants to make sure they get big enough for grilling.
2. Take care not to impale yourself on the stakes on the pepper plants, which are so big and heavy that they’re starting to bend over and drag the stakes down with them. They haven’t been as massively productive as the tomatoes, but they’ve still given us a pretty good haul already: 4 peppers off the new Apple plant, 6 massive Aconcaguas, and 12 of our trusty Carmens.
3. Only harvest beans that are of good eating size. If they’re too small (skinny and less than a couple of inches long), they should stay on the vine to get bigger; if they’re too fat (meaning the beans inside the pod are big enough to form a distinct bulge), they’re not much good for eating and should stay on the vine until frost, at which point we can harvest them for seed.
   

Following this last rule was trickier than it sounds, because the vines are so big and sprawling that it’s sometimes hard to spot the beans. You could go over one plant thoroughly, thinking you’d picked it clean, and then come back in five minutes and find another whole handful of beans that had escaped your notice the first time. It took us several passes to glean about 4 ounces of beans in that one picking, and there were another 4 ounces out there on the vine when Brian went out again today, bringing our total for the year up to about 6.6 pounds. And that’s just from our first planting of French beans. There’s a whole second crop that I put in at the end of July in place of the snap peas, which are only just now starting to flower. If those plants are anywhere near as productive as their older siblings, they should keep us in beans until Thanksgiving.

The final crop that’s been keeping us on our toes is the raspberries. We’re about midway through our second harvest of these, and we’re bringing in close to a cup and a half of berries every day. I’ve been eating berries every day for lunch, and last weekend I brought a big plastic tub of them to a CCL event (sending postcards to CCL members in New Jersey encouraging them to vote). About three minutes after leaving I realized I’d left the container behind with over a cup of berries still in it, and I didn’t even bother going back for them because I knew there would be more than enough ripe berries on the canes for the next day’s lunch. (There were.) 

We’re celebrating Harvest Home tonight with of our new vegan version of Pasta a la Caprese, using our own home-grown tomatoes, peppers, and the tail end of the basil crop. (The plants are still out there, but they’re starting to look a little yellow and brittle, and we probably need to harvest what’s left soon and process it into paste for the freezer.) Fortunately, I’m not fasting in the conventional way, so we’ll be able to eat well before sundown and head off to board game night at Pino’s. That’s the nice thing about Gardeners’ Holidays as opposed to traditional ones: You can celebrate them in any way you like, at whatever time is most convenient. And speaking for myself, I’d much rather welcome in the autumn with a meal of home-grown produce than with a day of fasting and prayer.

More mini updates

Once again, I've got nothing big to share this week, so instead I'm bringing you an assortment of little mini updates from our ecofrugal world. It's along the same line as my quick fixes posts, but these run the gamut from successful projects to unsuccessful ones to ideas that are still at the planning stage.

Update #1: Darn, still not so tough

Remember a year ago, when I was disappointed to discover a hole in one of Brian's Darn Tough socks? And how I decided that it wasn't worth using the alleged lifetime guarantee when I could just darn the hole and be done with it? Well, I now have confirmation that this incident was more than just a fluke. Last time I hung them on the line, I discovered that a second pair of Darn Tough socks had also developed a hole, this time toward the front. Once again, I was able to darn it without difficulty, but it confirmed my decision not to bother buying this brand again, warranty or no warranty.

Update #2: A DIY lipstick case

I don't normally wear a lot of makeup. Most days, it's just a swipe of white nail pencil (or my new favorite substitute, grease pencil) under each fingernail and a spot of concealer as needed to cover any blemishes. I keep both of these in a cosmetic case in my purse, along with such other everyday carry necessities as hand sanitizer, lotion, Band-Aids, and a mini sewing kit. Unfortunately, the cap on the concealer tube isn't very secure. Occasionally, it comes off as it rattles around in there and I end up with concealer smeared all over my other necessaries. And eventually, it ends up getting cracked and won't go back on the tube at all unless I wrap it with clear tape.

To fix this problem, I decided to invest in a little lipstick case. These are easy to find for $10 or less on Amazon, but it's much harder to get one at a reasonable price secondhand. And when I searched for tutorials on how to make one from scratch, they all seemed to require skills I didn't have, like crochet or metalworking. So I decided to make up my own design: a simple envelope made of felt. I just wrapped the felt around the tube to gauge the size, leaving a little overlap to make a closure flap. Then I cut it to size, sewed the ends shut, and added snaps to hole the top flap down. It's not very elegant or very sturdy, but it should be sufficient to protect the tube or, at the very least, keep its lid on.

Update #3: An unsuccessful wallet repair

Remember the new wallet I was so pleased to find for $5 at the thrift store last July? Well, within about a month, the metal discs that support the clasp on the front flap (one on the inside, one on the outside) fell off. Now, technically, the wallet is still usable without it: the clasp on the flap can still be closed even if there's nothing but fabric behind it. But it looked kind of odd, and I feared the fabric would wear out pretty quickly.

In theory, it should have been easy to reattach the metal pieces with a couple of small screws. Unfortunately, they'd have to be very small screws, smaller than anything we have in the shop, and searches at both Home Depot and Michael's turned up nothing of the appropriate size. So I hunted around for something else I could use to secure the discs in place, and I hit on the idea of using some toothpicks. I could fit one end pretty securely into the outer metal piece, then thread it through the holes in the cloth flap and the inner metal disc, and hold it all down with hot glue.

Well, that was the theory, anyway. Unfortunately, it didn't work very well in practice. The glue leaked out around the edges of the metal, and the metal tip of the glue gun heated the discs up so much that I burned my hand while trying to press them into place. Also, I couldn't manage to clip off the ends of the toothpicks neatly, so there was still a small, jagged end poking through. And after all that, the glue only held up for a week or two before the discs started coming loose again.

So, for now, I'm just keeping the metal pieces with the wallet, with only the clasp to hold them into place. I'm hoping that someone at the next Repair Cafe, which is coming up in November, will have the right size screws to fix it properly, or at least a better way to do it improperly.

Update #4: Finally, the right ground cover?

Ever since we bought this house, I've been trying to find a suitable ground cover to replace our front lawn. I didn't want to use anything invasive, like English ivy or Japanese pachysandra, but so far, all the more sedate plants I've tried—from Dutch white clover to creeping thyme to the native barren strawberry—have been unable to compete with the crabgrass. And every time I tried searching lists of native ground covers, I found the same old recommendations I'd already considered and deemed unsuitable. None of them could stand up to all the conditions in our yard: clay soil, afternoon sun, and occasional foot traffic.

Until last month, that is, when I stumbled across a native plant directory called Planoot. I searched for plants native to our area that were perennial, low-growing, and clay-friendly, and I came across an unfamiliar plant that goes by two different colorful names: frog fruit or turkey tangle. It's suitable for clay, likes full or partial sun, and grows to just 6 inches in height, and according to the directory, it "spreads vigorously as a low, trailing groundcover." Native Backyards was even more enthusiastic, calling it "my favorite native ground cover" thanks to its fast growth, low maintenance, and appeal for humans and native pollinators alike.

After a quick consultation with Brian, I searched out and ordered five frog fruit plants from a seller on Etsy. They were supposed to arrive last weekend, but the package appears to be held up in Texas. Once it arrives, we'll put the plants in the ground and see how well they live up to the hype.

Update #5: Middle-hanging fruit, maybe

This month, New Jersey became the ninth state to officially legalize balcony solar. Unlike large-scale solar setups that can power a whole house, these are miniature arrays that plug into a wall outlet and provide a smidgen of energy for internal use. They're easy to install, and crucially, they don't require an interconnection agreement with your electric utility, since little or none of the energy they produce will ever make its way onto the grid.

During a webinar I attended about this new law, I learned about a nonprofit called Bright Saver that's supposedly selling these mini solar arrays at cost in states where they're legal. If you sign up for a $29 yearly membership, you can either get a kit with a single 180-watt panel, an inverter, and a power cord for just $285 or pay $414 for a larger two-panel version. (You can also pay $499 for the smaller kit without signing up for a membership, but it's not clear why anyone would, since you can cancel when the year is up.) 

This was a better deal than I could find anywhere else, and it seemed like a great way to dip our toes into solar panel usage without a big commitment of time or money. It wouldn't reduce our home's carbon footprint, since we already use community solar for all our electricity, but it could still save us a little something on our energy bills each month. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, which I needn't go into here, it looked like it could pay for itself in just a few years, much faster than a full rooftop array (which we can't get right now, anyway, because our electric usage is too small). It seemed like a perfect example of the kind of middle-hanging fruit I've been looking for to make our life more ecofrugal in modest but meaningful ways.

More intriguingly still, Bright Saver says balcony solar is just the first clean-energy project it plans to tackle. There are plans in the works to help members save on home battery systems, insurance, and crucially for us, heat pumps. By joining now, we might eventually be able to get one for much less than the $24,000 after rebates that local installers have been quoting us.

This got me excited enough to plunk down $29 on a membership, but as I was preparing to place my order for the mini solar array, I hesitated. A small, suspicious voice in the back of my head whispered, "How do I know this is for real? If it sounds too good to be true, doesn't that usually mean it is?"

Further research did nothing to ease my mind. I could not find one single review from someone who actually owned Bright Saver's solar panels and could confirm they worked well. I found positive reviews, but they were either from "professional" sources who were simply repeating the info from Bright Saver's website or from folks on Reddit who had pre-ordered them and were expecting to receive them in August, only to have the shipment delayed until September and now October. I found myself wondering if the company might just take my money, promise shipment in a month (and then another month, and then another), and eventually disappear. Or maybe they would send me something that looked to the untrained eye like a solar panel, but when plugged in it would do nothing. I have no actual evidence that Bright Saver is anything but a legitimate company—but I also have no proof that it is one.

So, for now, my policy is to watch and wait. If and when Bright Saver says they are actually ready to start shipping out the solar panels, then I'll place an order. If it arrives and we plug it in and confirm it's working as claimed, great. If it doesn't, then we'll cancel the credit card charge before the bill comes due. And if the panels never become available on the site at all, at least I'm only out $29 instead of $443.

Piecemeal project

When we bought this house back in 2007, one of our first projects was to refinish the kitchen cabinets. They were all natural wood with a beautiful grain, but it was somewhat hard to see under the heavy varnish. So we took off all the doors, laid them out in the (at the time) unfinished basement, and stripped them with a product called "Safest Stripper," which took about 24 hours to work but was safer and less smelly than anything else we could find. Then we gave them a coat of wood conditioner to raise the grain, followed by a couple of coats of a nontoxic water-based finish.

In hindsight, this eco-friendly product may not have been the best choice. Over the 19 years since, the finish has gradually worn away, particularly in the areas along the edges and around the handles that get touched most often. As a result, our lovely wood cabinets now look worse than they did before we first refinished them. 

This month, Brian and I agreed that it was about time we refinished them. However, we no longer have a large unfinished basement in which we can work on all the doors at once. Instead, we're tackling this project in a piecemeal fashion: pulling off just one or two doors at a time and taking them down to the workshop to be stripped, treated with wood conditioner, and refinished (this time with "water-based, oil-modified polyurethane," which we're hoping will hold up better than the old water-based finish).

It took a little trial and error to figure out the best way to get the old finish off. At first, Brian thought he could just sand the doors down as he did with all our interior doors ten years ago. He tested this process on the smallest section of cabinetry, the front panel of the little tilt-out drawer under the sink, and that piece came out okay—a bit lighter than the other doors, but we figured they'd all end up the same once they'd been refinished. But this turned out to be a slight miscalculation. When he tried the same process on two larger doors, he discovered that it took more sanding to get the finish off in the damaged areas around the edges than in the middle. As a result, the wood in those spots looked lighter than the rest, and the grain was less visible. So for the remaining doors, he switched back to chemical stripping. Fortunately, the product we have now, called Lift Off, while still nontoxic, works much faster than Safest Stripper. It only takes about five minutes to bubble off the old finish, so he can completely turn around one pair of doors—removed, stripped, cleaned, refinished, and reinstalled—in just a day or two.

While we had the doors off, Brian thought we should also have a go at cleaning the handles, which had never been really thoroughly scrubbed since we first installed them in 2014. It turns out that nifty basket-weave design that looked so cute when they were new is also really good at trapping particles of dirt and grease from the air. Soaking the handles overnight in a mild solution of dish soap brought all this hidden goo to the surface in a thick, sticky layer. A quick scrub with an old toothbrush removed most of it, but once the handles dried, little mottled patches appeared where some of the schmutz was left behind. (We know it's dirt and not the finish being scrubbed away, because it comes off when scraped with a fingernail.) So it will most likely take multiple rounds of scrubbing to get these fully clean.

This project is kind of a microcosm of all the home renovations we've done in the years since we bought this place. Our approach has always been to take as long as we need to do a good job on a low budget, rather than a quick-and-dirty rush job or a high-priced, high-end whirlwind makeover. We spent literally years after we moved in redoing our big basement room piece by piece, close to a year on the downstairs bath, half a year on the guest room, three months on the office closet doors, and over a year on the laundry room. So redoing these cabinet doors bit by bit, tackling one or two at a time and spending maybe an hour on them each day, is much more our style than setting aside one long weekend and trying to blast through the whole job at once.