Sweet Early October Reprieve

Broom Corn, (actually a sorghum and not botanically a corn) Pumpkin Patch, Floyd Bennett Field

The corduroys will have to wait. There's still time for lazing on a sunny afternoon yet.

Dried Corn tassel, (Zea mays) Pumkin Patch, Floyd Bennett Field

Edamame

The only thing that would have made seeing the tiny sweet flower of my soy bean plants today even sweeter is if my nephew had been here to share the sight with me. This is a new crop for me in the garden and for Joe in the pumpkin patch, and as my nephew knows, it's a crop that makes one ono-licious snack. (that's Hawai'ian for delicious). We harvested young soy beans for Edamame from the pumpkin patch today and all the volunteers who helped out got to leave with some.

You Can Take the Boy Out of the Pumpkin Patch

Squash bug eggs

but still he may be searching for squash bug eggs on vacation. We visited the Fort Montgomery Museum while at Bear Mountain and checked out the revolutionary war garden that was replicated onsite. The theory is that soldiers in the revolutionary war supplimented their food supplies with gardens built onsite at forts. The gardener was keen to show us what he was growing (some familiars like the three sisters, corn, beans and squash) and even gave us instructions on how to make our own yarrow tincture. So we squashed bug eggs together and talked gardening. For news on a local Revolutionary War Garden in Brooklyn, go here.

Name That Bloom

It's Arugula. Flowering in Brooklyn. Another benefit of letting some of your vegetables and herbs go to flower is that you can often observe a family resemblance. Arugula and Radishes are related and you can see that in their flowers. Below, a flowering Daikon Radish from the community garden pumpkin patch in early October of last year. Both the Arugula and the Radish are in the Brassicaceae family, which contains a lot of food crop plants that are producing this time of year, like Broccoli and Cabbage, to name just a few.

Tiny Pretty Flowers In Bloom at Floyd Bennett

Delicate Daikon Radish flowers in the pumpkin patch

































An Israeli wildflower from Yacov & Ayala's vegetable plot.

While it's true that the gardeners of Floyd Bennett are mostly growing vegetables and herbs, there is still an appreciation for flowers and what they add to the garden, whether it's simply letting your vegetables go to flower and seed for bees and birds or next year's volunteer plants or leaving a patch of your garden for aesthetics. Yacov and Ayala are two of the most prolific vegetable growers at the garden, with serious rotation and winter beds for extending the season, but still this year they had room to dedicate to some lovely cornflowers that bloomed and bloomed, Israeli wildflowers and I know it goes against the theme of this post, these fantastic Dahlias.

Pumpkins!

There are more ripening on the vines, but the FBGA Children's Pumpkin Patch's Saturday harvest yield was:
Long Island Cheese (1)
Dill Atlantic Giants (2)
Charisma (3)
Buttercup Squash (1)
All were grown from seeds donated by Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Pumpkin patch

Sometimes I think Joe ought to be doing this horticultural internship instead of me. His garden plot looks pretty amazing this year. He's always building some new contraption to string beans or vines on. And the children's pumpkin patch at FBGA is going pretty well too this year under his care (fingers crossed..you can't count your produce until you harvest it). He'd never grown pumpkins before volunteering to take on this job, but he seems to be a natural pumpkin farmer. I hope all his hard work (and the rest of the crew helping out) pays off and there are lots of pumpkins and gourds for the kids come Halloween.