Harvest

One day last April I stopped by the little country store on the highway to pick up the local weekly newspaper, and noticed a flyer announcing a new community garden. With the family farming DNA that I inherited from my Dad, something inside of me said, "that's for me!"  So I gave them a call, paid $15 for a ten by four foot plot, and began planning the garden layout. After I got back from my trip to Dallas in late May, I commenced planting my crops ... baby carrots, mesclun salad greens, golden zucchini (summer squash), tomatoes, sweet onions, fingerling eggplant, and several varieties of peppers.

This community garden is operated by a county agency and is located on the county fairgrounds in a south-facing area that gets full sun all day during the summer. At present, the garden is only operating from May through October. The growing season in the western Columbia Gorge is short, with relatively mild weather -- daytime temperatures were in the 60s and 70s through the end of June -- and I had no idea how my adventure in farming at the 44th parallel would turn out.

The community garden is located next to a creek that empties into the Columbia River a few hundred yards to the south, after passing under the state highway and BNSF railroad bridge. The cliffs in the background are on the Oregon side of the river. What a glorious setting for a garden.

Yep, I've been learning new ways to cook zucchini.

At the beginning of the summer, I planted a bunch of sweet "Candy" onions. They pretty much languished until the middle of September, when all of a sudden they began putting out green shoots.

Comments

[Joanne]

Looks like a pretty good harvest! We like zucchini sliced and cooked on the grill with a little olive oil and sea salt. But our garden really was a washout this year, with rain practically every day in July. It was a sad little tomato patch :(

[Sharon]

What a beautiful spot and healthy plants you have. There are so many people who garden in my town that community gardening is not available, but if it was I would take advantage because I don't know where to start. We did plant cherry tomato plants in buckets on our deck, and we have gotten about two dozen tomatoes. That's a small harvest, which is okay because many people lost all their plants to blight. It looks like you will be eating well right through the fall:)

[Kitty]

Joanne ... yep, the simple recipes are sometimes the best. I also bought a food dehydrator and have been experimenting with making veggie "chips".

Sharon ... You should see my freezer. It's full of frozen veggies, including several big containers of whole tomatoes.