Harvest

This has been the best autumn we've had since I moved to Utah. Usually fall lasts anywhere from 1 to 5 days in Utah. But this year, we're still going strong after three weeks of nice fall weather. And my garden is still producing.

We had quite a crop this year of cherry and heirloom tomatoes and lemon cucumbers. I didn't realize what monsters the lemon cucumbers would become. Their vines wrapped around and tried to pull down my raspberries (in fact, I found one lemon cucumber hanging from the raspberry bush and I had to thoroughly inspect it to make sure it was not actually growing from the raspberry plant). The lemon cucumbers turned our regular green cucumbers into long fat yellow cucumbers (see photo at very top). The vines crept into the other garden box and began pointing their leafy fingers right at our very healthy tomato plants, implying "You're next." I don't know if I'll do lemon cucumbers again; it sure was a good thing that they tasted really good AND that Bianca likes cucumber sandwiches (and any number of other summer salads that include a lot of cucumber). My neighbors seemed to like them too.

Bianca wants to grow them again next year, but if we do, it'll have to be somewhere on the other side of the yard away from the other helpless plants. Bianca offered up her garden box, but she's had a healthy crop of peppers this year (of all varieties and colors) so we'll see if we're ready for such a high maintenance vegetable come next spring.