Reaping and sowing

We’re, of course because we’re in California, still reaping the vegetable and fruit harvest of the season, as we ready to plant for the fall/winter/spring harvests.  We have tens of pounds of tomatoes still to pick, pasilla and serrano chiles, bountiful bell peppers, copious cucumbers and squash.  We also still have fruitful figs on the tree from the second crop.  We also have one pretty pumpkin.  One.  What’s up with that?

I’ve developed a few new recipes, most notably one with squash, chiles, tomatoes, onions, sautéed and served with corn tortillas and Greek yogurt.  It is such a wonderful dish, a blend of cool and hot flavors that both perk and soothe the taste buds.  Next time I make it, I’ll write down the proportions and post it here.  There cannot be too many summer squash recipes.

We’re getting ready to plant.  Our plans include garlic and onions, to be planted into a raised bed that was a former horse trough that we have repurposed.  It doesn’t make a good summer bed as it gets too hot, but it makes a fabulous winter bed and it nurtured my first garlic crop that I harvested in June.

In the East beds, we are going to plant broccoli, cauliflower, bok choi, recreate another bed of Swiss chard (it stopped growing in the asparagus bed, so I assume they do not make good companions), and cabbage. We will pick our first asparagus early in the spring—we are so excited.  A two-year wait has only whetted our appetites  for this early vegetable. Our tiny lemon tree has four lemons on it, so we will harvest them sometime this winter.  That will be enough variety for us.  We made plans to put another two long raised beds to the south of the house, to raise more winter veggies, but economic woes dispelled that notion for this fall.  We’ll get there—albeit slowly.

We are in the process of making two raised beds to plant two sets of three trees—a mini citrus grove, and an apple, plum, pear grouping.  This will probably come to fruition during the winter months.

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