The Garden and the gardener

by Melvin D. Epp, Ph.D.

The rains of late summer and the cooler temperatures have given the Brightspot Garden a new look. When you look down at the garden from the sidewalk around the domes, the whole garden appears vibrantly green. Indeed, the whole garden is still in production in mid-September. As the spring crops were harvested, the empty spots were filled with second plantings.

The corn has tasseled, and it is only a matter of time until more sweet corn can be harvested. The cucumbers and summer squash are in production again. Fall plantings ofarugula always grow well. A succession of plantings has made possible the continuous harvesting of radishes. Lettuce also takes well to the cooler days.

A gardening tip in one of the magazines that I read this spring suggested not to dig out the broccoli plants after the spring harvest was finished, but rather to cut them back to three or four inches to encourage two side shoots to grow. These shoots would be heading during the cool days of fall. Weekly, we are harvesting a few pounds of broccoli off these plants. I expect that we will continue to harvest a bit weekly until after frost.

The real joy of fall gardening, however, is that there are fewer bugs. This was a buggy summer, but now there are very few.

This is also the time of the year to preserve herbs for wintertime. Flavor your foods with herbs rather than salt. Freeze basil by packing chopped leaves into ice cube Hays. Pour water or juice over the packed leaves and freeze. Store the basil cubes in airtight freezer bags. For fresh basil in a dish, just add a cube. Alternatively, the basil can be made into pesto. but leave the cheese out, and freeze pesto in ice cube trays also. When you want some pesto. thaw one or more cubes and add the cheese. The cheese in frozen pesto will lose its flavor. Dried basil also loses most of its flavor.

Basil will be the first to show cold temperature damage when the first frost comes. Sweet potatoes will be next. But fall is a great time to garden.