An annoyance of fruits

I was not a good blogger in August opting to rest and harvest my labors rather than write about them. For every post I did not write, I harvested a huge crop of something. First it was zucchinis, which grow in quick succession. My wife hated them as I pulled at least two a day for weeks on end from the garden. Even trying to keep them small was a challenge as in a blink they doubled in size. Happily for my wife, squash vine borers had earlier infected my plants bringing a dramatic and quick demise to their production.

But as the zucchinis died away, a surprise crop took their place: lemon cucumbers. This opportunistic plant, which I wrote about before, crawled up my fence and traveled at least 25 feet spreading its large leaves and tendrils. At first the fruits were a curiosity as everyone believed that they were a type of squash. But upon cutting them open, they were a tasty and flavorful cucumber. Unfortunately, like zucchini, they proliferated with one plant outputting two to four fruits a day. I picked as much as I could but my wife and family soon tired of sliced cucumbers, cucumbers in yogurt sauce, cucumbers in oil and vinegar, cucumber tomato salad, sliced cucumbers as an appetizer. As I would come in from the garden hands full of my latest bounty my wife and daughter would give me a look of distain asking, “Is that all you have?”

Tomatoes were only beginning to ripen in August and I have to admit I harvested and ate many of the smaller red cherry and yellow pear tomatoes that had started to come in. So tomatoes were spotty in the early part of the month. The larger ones were taking their time to ripen as the weighed down vines struggled to hold them up to the sun. Every day I looked and while they were getting fatter and fatter, my tomatoes were still a pale shade of green.  By late August a few had started to ripen; some were hidden below the dark green canopy of tomato leaves while others were bright reddish beacons on top. Today we are pulling three to six fat tomatoes from the vines every day.

Tomatoes do not have the same intolerance half-life as my other vegetables as they are universally loved and can be morphed into many different dishes from salads, to sauce, to chirmol (a Guatemalan version of salsa), to just simple slices that can be placed on bread. So for now our abundance has not become an annoyance. My daughter Sarah is more than happy to take a pint bucket of small tomatoes to work for lunch. My wife Juana slices them to add to pizza as well barbeque them for chirmol. We are having tomatoes on everything with nearly every meal.

For my family there is a balance in this abundance, which should continue for the next three weeks or so. Then the fruits will go away (I didn’t plant any fall squashes this year) and the kale, bok choy, radishes, arugula, winter lettuce and Swiss chard will be ready for harvest. I hope they can cope.