I spent the last six weeks in Minnesota visiting family. I returned to a glorious mess of a garden hiding a harvest within the branches.
I start by inspecting the USF plant sale additions, new to my yard and untested. Prior to leaving, I nestled the Jaboticaba into the ferns, the wettest place of my yard. It is damp and healthy this morning. The passion flower needs a larger trellis. Purple blooms crawl across the ground. The Everbearing Mulberry is full of fruit.
Satisfied, I grab a shears and a bowl and go to work on the harvest. Yellow Pear tomatoes, sprouted from the seeds of my most generous plant last year, fill a full bowl.
Sweet 100’s offer handfuls of candy-like fruit. Purple Cherokee and Better Boy tomatoes cling to the branches, concentric circles evidence of inconsistent watering and sun cycles over the past few weeks. Most have holes and pests and will be composted.
I pluck eight juicy Hungarian peppers, a pile of chilies, and a few jalapenos.
The spinach and lettuce mixes have bolted, dying flowers waving in almost breeze. Kale held on and I clip a bowl of leaves. Okinawa spinach is everywhere, their thick stalks offering a feast of green and purple leaves. I clip a few and leave the rest for future egg scrambles.
In the overgrown grass around the garden bed, I brush a plant that releases a wave of scent. I have Papalo volunteers, a Cilantro-scented herb that I thought I lost in January’s freeze. I hunt through the weeds and find three more.
Cherokee Wax and Purple Bush beans fill a second bowl. I missed the Sugar Snap peas, although a number dried pods hanging off the vines offer seeds for replanting. The beans and peas are tangled mess of vines, some choking out tomato and kale stalks, others climbing over the fence to the neighbor’s.
Everywhere, Boniato potato vines fill the beds. I planted these right before I left, filling in any garden gaps with this virulent strain that survived a hurricane, freeze, and my neglect. Once again, they have proven to be tough little weed blockers, and have claimed every patch of sunshine available. Eventually I’ll dig them up and enjoy piles of sweet-tasting potatoes, but for now, I appreciate how well they keep the weeds suppressed. They can stay.
In the middle of it all, a large pineapple, a couple weeks from ripe.
Over the past few weeks, I acclimated to the Minnesota summer. This Florida stickiness is rough. By the time I have finished a cursory review and harvest of my abandoned yard, I am dripping with sweat, covered in mosquito bites, and I itch all over. It is not quite 8:00 am and I am ready to shower, close up the house, and turn on the AC. But I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
Yarden Love 