Camouflage

Walking Stick

It is getting blustery and chilly in Spy Garden: woooooo fall!

Target…

Practice

Target (a drawing of the Governor from the TV show The Walking Dead attached to a cereal box). HAhaha

Tomato that wants to be a pumpkin.

Pumpkin (Atlantic Giant; a small, 7ish pounder we picked)

After scraping out the seeds, I carved up this pumpkin into big irregular chunks (think tuna steak-sized) and added loads of spices (paprika, cayenne pepper, thyme, ginger, a Jamaican-jerk seasoning) and salt and a drizzle of oil and roast in the oven (flesh-side down) on a foil-lined baking sheet at 350 for awhile until the flesh becomes translucent. Then slice the skin off and enjoy! I dipped it in hot sauce and Dijon mustard.  When roasted in this manner, pumpkin really does remind me of filets of fish; fresh-caught wild pumpkin-fillets. haha  I should make some sashimi and pumpkin sushi to further illustrate my point.

The seeds of the Atlantic Giant are also large.

I washed all the seeds and added the same combo of spices/drizzle of oil on them and also roasted those too. Yum! I will also save some of this variety of seeds (from the largest pumpkin). These Atlantic Giant pumpkins were grown from seeds from Baker Creek. Here is the description from their website:

110-125 days (C. maxima) Lovely, giant, pink-orange pumpkins can weigh over 800 lbs, and do so every year, with some reaching almost 1500 lbs.! This variety was introduced by Howard Dill, of Nova Scotia in 1978, and has since broken all records. (source)

Atlantic Giant Pumpkin Patch

There are seven Atlantic Giant plants and we had seven pumpkins; one small one rotted and we threw it in the woods and the other small one I picked and roasted (as described above). Five left to harvest; cooking, carving, curry, soup? So many possibilities for pumpkins. Winter squash is by far my favorite vegetable. So versatile.

A Jarrahdale Pumpkin

Jarrahdale Bloom

Desription of the Jarrahdale from Baker Creek:

100 days. (C. maxima) Slate, blue-grey, 6-10 lb. pumpkins of superb quality. Their shape is flat and ribbed, and very decorative looking; also a good keeper. Popular in Australia; an excellent variety. (source)

Upper Ground Sweet Potato

Upper Ground Sweet Potato Leaf (with a tiny spider on it)

Here is the description of Upper Ground Sweet Potato from the Baker Creek website:

(C. moschata) This heirloom is still grown by a few people in the South. An old, hardy type that grows well even in rather poor conditions and produces an abundance of medium-large, round-to-bell-shaped, tan fruit with moist orange flesh that is said to resemble that of the sweet potato, hence the name. Sweet, good quality, and it keeps very well. A really rugged variety that is going the way of the dinosaurs if people don’t work to save it. (source)

Giant Cape Gooseberry

(Physalis peruviana) The cape gooseberry is native to Brazil and was grown in England by 1774. It was cultivated by settlers at the Cape of Good Hope before 1807. The delicious yellow fruit grow inside paper-like husks that are easy to peel. They are great dipped in melted chocolate or made into pies and preserves. Larger than the common ground cherry. (source)

Echinacea

Blackberries

Meyer lemons just starting to grow.

Rainbow Swiss Chard

Pepper, eggplant and strawberry

Mexican Sunflower