Grow a Row

Gardening is much like golf.  Well, at least I think it is.  I don't golf. There is no such thing as a perfect garden.  While we have been eating carrots and broccoli out of the greenhouse on a daily basis for the past two months, the recent hot spell has made my salad greens bolt up the hill. There is no telling from year to year what is going to happen with crops.  One year it is cool and rainy and the arugula grows like crazy while the squash rots on the vine.  The next year you are eating zucchini bread for breakfast lunch and dinner while you crave a nice salad.  It can be very frustrating.

The greenhouse helps tremendously with the cool rainy weather, but 90 degree days spent under plastic can be difficult even for the heat loving tomato.

I was a little worried about a week ago that I was going to have to write that I failed for the fifth year in a row to produce more than a dozen tasty tomatoes.  The fact that we spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours building the greenhouse, creating the richest soil, and procuring a wide array of exotic heirloom seeds,  in the never ending quest for the perfect tomato weighed heavy on my mind as I watched several of the delicate yellow flowers that hold the promise of  big juicy tomatoes, turn brown and die.

A few well placed fans in combination with a healthy dose of sea kelp fertilizer and my frantic shaking of the plants to help with pollination seems to have done the trick and we have eaten the first of the sweet little black cherry tomatoes this week.

It is funny how sublime the first taste of the first ripe tomato, first leaf of lettuce or first sweet berry  is every season.  The peas are usually the first things up and are eaten right in the garden.  Ditto for the asparagus that gets snapped off and chowed down without the hope of ever being bathed in a butter sauce.

Diminutive zucchini are sliced and eaten raw in salad and the entire family eats two blueberries for every one that goes into the bucket.  This culinary merriment seems to always come to an end a few weeks after that first taste.

This year was a bumper crop for blueberries.  I would like to attribute the bounty to my careful pruning and mulching but I am pretty sure it was just dumb luck and the fact that we didn't have a really warm winter followed by a freak frost in May like last year.

The husband and I eagerly awaited the first ripe berries watching the branches hang to the ground under the weight of so much fruit.  Prince had his recipe for Blueberry Dump Cake all ready to go and with the addition of the pressure canner, I was going to be able to avoid killing anyone with my blueberry bacon jam.

The first day of blueberry picking, we filled our bowls and bellies without making a dent in the number of berries still on the bushes.  By about the tenth day of picking, the boys revolted and Prince announced that they were striking unless they got paid.  The labor dispute was settled with an agreement I think would make many farm workers jealous, but the berries just kept coming and by the time I canned the 100th jar of jam, I was not really enjoying the blueberries quite as much.

There are still many blueberries ripening on the bushes and every time I pass by on my way to the garden, I realize I need to buy even more pectin and canning jars to keep up with the harvest.  The freezer is also full and I don't think anyone is too keen to eat another blueberry dessert for a while.

Today,  it hit me.  The way to reinvigorate our blueberry picking mojo is to change who we are picking the berries for.

A couple of years ago I heard about an organization started in New Jersey called "Grow a Row."  They encourage farmers to grow a row of fresh produce to be donated to those in need.  The boys cannot comprehend why we need more than 20 gallons of berries in our freezer but they can get behind the idea of picking them and giving them to a food pantry.  So now, I don't have to worry about wasting all of those nutritious little blueberries AND I get to cross "have the boys do some volunteer work" off of my summer bucket list.

Anyone who wants to come help us pick or if you know of a great food bank in the Oneonta area, please get in touch.  I am really hoping I will be able to do this with the tomatoes as well.  Fingers crossed.