Crystal Madrilejos

Our gardening season is coming to an end. At least the majority of the growing part. We still have some things to harvest, but even with this crazy weather (that is causing tiny watermelons to sprout!) most of our plants are done for the season.

I thought it would be nice to focus on each variety that we decided to grow this year and give them their own posts instead of one super long post. That way, I can go into more detail about our experience.

Overall, this year has been a wonderful success that I’m going to attribute to the addition of a deer fence and raised beds. Even with our one groundhog incident, we still had a great harvest.

Acorn squash and one watermelon.

We got a good amount of acorn squash, though this was our first year growing them so I don’t have much by comparison. We grew Organic Sweet REBA (Resistant Early Bush Acorn) variety and they performed well. I didn’t realize at first that these were going to be a bush variety (despite the name!) rather than the vining type, so they got pretty crowded and huge!

Here they are as babies, nice and neat and tidy.

Here they were full size! Yikes!

I was a little worried that they weren’t getting pollinated when I noticed some of the squash were falling off before fully ripening. I did some hand pollination after some research and chalked it up to the fact that we got them into the ground really early.

Okay, I just remembered that we did have issues with chipmunks and squirrels digging things up, which resulted in this. But didn’t seem to effect the plant too much.

We haven’t eaten any yet, so I can’t vouch for taste. I did trade one for eggs with a friend and she said it was still good despite being slightly unripened. We will see as the cool weather ramps up and we get into fall cooking. Last Thanksgiving, Andrew made an acorn squash soup for our family – I think he spent like $20 on acorn squash alone. Not this year! Will post updates once we’ve opened one of these guys up.

xo,
c.

Tags: Country Living, Food, Garden, Sustainability