The Bay Gardener’s Feast
This year’s garden was one of my most productive in recent years, despite its late start as I recovered from a fall last November. With help from family members, including grandchildren, the garden was planted in mid-May.
Even so, we harvested nearly a bushel of onions, which were braided and hung in the garage until recently. This year’s turkey stuffing will contain those garden-grown onions. The Crocket snap bean crop was outstanding, as was the harvest from the yard-long Gita pole bean plants.
My 14 tomato plants were so productive that in addition to feeding the children and their families, I delivered many half-bushel boxes to the SCAN food pantry at St. James Parish in Lothian.
I shared my ample okra crop with fellow Ruritans, who also enjoyed harvesting my Gita beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and melons while I vacationed in Maine in late August and early September.
From six separate plantings of sweet corn, five harvests were better than expected. The last was not ready until early October; its ears were only partially filled and small.
There were a few disappointments. Cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower were small due to being planted late. My garlic crop was thin because I was unable to keep up with the weeds. Peppers under-produced, too. A granddaughter came to help me transplant, but because I could not convince her to tear the roots of the transplants, the plants never fully established and produced only a few peppers each.
This late in the year, the garden will bless our Thanksgiving table with fresh as well as frozen and canned vegetables. Fresh from the garden we’ll serve roasted Brussels sprouts, kale chips and raw salad of shredded carrots and kohlrabi — plus peas from the freezer and stewed tomatoes from the canning library.
Leaves of kale will be spritzed with olive oil and baked at 400 degrees until crisp, approximately 10 to 15 minutes, then sprinkled with onion or garlic powder. This kale is the product of my successful experiment growing in the bales of straw, where both organic and chemical fertilizers did well.
The Brussels sprouts will be cut in half, brushed with olive oil and baked in a covered dish for 15 minutes at 400 degrees, then baked uncovered for an additional 10 to 15 minutes or until the edges of the cut surface turn light-brown.
The salad is made by shredding and blending together equal amounts of carrots and kohlrabi to be drizzled with real maple syrup made by my brother in New Hampshire.
Peas harvested in October were blanched for five minutes in the microwave, chilled and bagged for the freezer. On Thanksgiving Day, they will taste as if they had just been harvested from the garden. We’ll put them in a Corning dish, microwave for five minutes and, as soon as they’re removed, sprinkle with Butter Buds.
When tomatoes were plentiful in August, I peeled and processed 28 pints, each with a teaspoon of salt. On Thanksgiving Day, several pints of stewed tomatoes will be dumped into a large bowl with two tablespoons of light brown sugar per pint and a generous portion of fresh dill from the garden blended in, then microwaved for only three or four minutes before serving.
Grow a garden, and you’ll eat this well at Thanksgiving and all year long.