Early October means more harvesting

Sweet potatoes are harvested. Sweet potatoes, like strawberries and cucumbers, like to hide, and it is a game to find them. My friend Mary likes the challenge so we worked together to find as many as we can, knowing always that we missed some. Mary's specialty is tracking runners that grow under the wooden confines of the raised bed and into the pathways. She finds decent sized sweet potatoes under the mulched paths. We laughed a lot as we found the big ones, giant sweet potatoes where the original slips were planted, the biggest was over seven pounds. They are sorted by size, giant, store-sized, and small. The small and damaged (pieces broken off during digging) are used first. Some are peeled before use, some just scrubbed and sliced. Sweet potatoes are my carrot alternative, both orange with the same nutrients, put into soups, stews, cookies, pasties, and eaten with most oven meals. Sweet potatoes are both a starchy and a yellow vegetable, are sliced and baked along with whatever else is in the oven. Some ornamental gourds were harvested. The longer they grow, the thicker the outer wall, the ones picked were some that had been growing since early summer and are expected to dry intact. Some were left to grow until frost, but the young ones among them will probably rot. Two varieties of ornamental gourd were grown, egg gourds which are white and sometimes the shape of a chicken or goose egg, and what I call ghost gourds because they are used to make ghosts ornaments for Halloween. The ghost gourds show delightful variations due to messy genetics. They probably started as spoon gourds but added genes from warty gourds and crown of thorn gourds so all sorts of color and shape are possible. They are in seasonal arrangements in several rooms. Many years ago my Mom noticed sad looking rhubarb at the end of their growing season and suggested using the last stalks. Rhubarb is not just a spring crop, the stalks can be used all summer long in rhubarb muffins, rhubarb apple sauce, rhubarb crumbles etc. Now the stalks are picked, the flabby fibrous ends removed, and the remainder used to make something, depending on how much is left. The recipe for rhubarb bread requires three cups, rhubarb ginger jam takes five cups, or maybe just chop it up and freeze until inspired. Zinnias and herbs can be harvested and dried for later use. Old zinnia heads are cut off and stored in a paper bag. Next spring they are shredded over a planting space and reliably grow zinnias. Thyme, lavender, and winter savory are all perennial herbs that are shutting down for the winter but still have leaves to harvest. Thyme is air drying on newspaper and will be agitated when dry to release the small leaves. Lavender keeps blooming and the flower heads keep getting picked to use in sachet, tea, cookies, linen closets, etc. If you grow and use other herbs think about drying some for winter use. As this year's crop of dry herbs accumulates, pitch the old stuff into the compost bin. A satisfying time of year, enjoy. Susan Carty is professor emerita at Heidelberg University.