A Tsunami of Squash

Rain was in the forecast for today—it’s raining now—so I wanted to clean up the garden yesterday and bring in the rest of the squash. I spent about three hours pulling squash vines and piling them up to decompose. They will just stay there until next spring.

I ended up with four blue hubbard squash. What I thought was a fifth one was a large blue kuri squash.

The husband loaded the hubbards into the wheelbarrow and hauled them to the greenhouse for me. He thought they were about 20 pounds apiece. Two of them are spoken for. I am curious to see how the blue kuri squash taste. I am giving one to Sarah so she can try it, too.

I also ended up with a dozen acorn squash, about a hundred little white decorative pumpkins, a total of 15 blue kuri, and another dozen Georgia Roasters in addition to what Anna and I had already brought in. I am not sure what to do about this one. 🤪

The butternut squash were a disappointment. There were a lot of them but they didn’t ripen in time. It’s always hit or miss with them. I am going to give up on them and just grow the squash that I know do well here in Montana. I have about two dozen Winter Luxury pumpkins, too.

I told Anna I would leave the squash in the greenhouse until the end of the month and she can use what she wants. I’ll put a few of each in storage for us, too. What’s left will go to church so people can take some home, and the remainder will go to the food bank.

I didn’t put in a lot of plants. All of this came from one—or at most, two—plants of each variety. Pig manure is great fertilizer.

And this is very weird. The photo is blurry but it is a Jonagold, one of the Costco apple trees I bought in February when I was visiting DD#1:

I bought four Costco apple trees in the spring, two from the Costco in Sequim and two from our Costco. The husband planted all of them in the garden. The Lodi and the Ambrosia did really well, even after the deer nibbled on them. The other two—this Jonagold and a Fuji—spent the entire summer looking and acting like they were dead. About two weeks ago, I noticed that the Jonagold was leafing out. (This is not the root stock; I checked.) Apparently, it decided that life was worth living after all. How absolutely bizarre. Thankfully, the husband, who is usually very efficient about pulling things he thinks are beyond saving, hadn’t gotten to these trees yet. I am going to leave the Fuji in over the winter even though it still looks dead. Who knows? It might leaf out next spring. If not, I’ll buy something to replace it.

[I believe this has something to do with the trees not breaking dormancy properly or on time. I need to talk to Susan and find out what she knows.]

The tomatoes are still in the garden. The turkeys are feasting on them and actually do a reasonably good job of cleaning up, so I will let them. I also brought in two white cabbages and four red cabbages. The batch of sauerkraut I started two weeks ago is ready to can. That will be today’s project, and I’ll start another batch in the crock using the cabbages from my garden. (Of the two dozen seedlings I planted last spring, only six survived the marauding deer in June.) The red cabbages will become a batch of spiced red cabbage. I also had one celery plant in the garden that produced a ton of leaves, which is fine with me. I will wash them and put them in the freezer to be used when I make stock.

One of the local grocery stores has a case sale every fall and every spring. I stopped there yesterday and loaded up on evaporated milk, mushrooms, and other items I don’t can or don’t want to can. I’ll probably go back again tomorrow.