FOUR Butternut Squash!

I received a free butternut squash plant, I think it was in exchange for some purple sweet potato slips, but it might have also been from cousin Amanda. Anyway, I was still excited about container planting and wanted to try it out.

In these photos you cannot even see the pot because it's so covered by greenery, but it's right in front of the large blue container. I'd estimate the pot was approximately 5 gallon. For the hot summer months of July and August, the plant stayed in it's pot and stayed alive. Then when weather cooled in late August, it started to climb out of the pot and travel the yard. It produced FOUR butternut squash, which is awesome! I wonder if it would do more in the ground, so I might try that next year. The soil was very dry when I did the fall clean up last week and I did not keep a consistent watering schedule. They did seem to burst to life with the fall rains, as you can see with the cracking on one. Too much rain produces cracks but it wasn't quite ready to harvest. It matured nicely and is not curing in my basement. I've read that on average a plant will produce 5-6 squash, so I guess I did okay with a container.

Why I should NOT do container plants

I am not consistent at keeping a garden watered and rely mostly on rainfall. Henseforth, my container plants do not last throughout a hot summer. Here's a perfect example of zinnias planted in a container, and one in the ground:

I think the reason I put some in pots was to give the garden more dimention, and I thought I could squeeze the pots into spaces that had previously been taken by spring flowers that had yet to die back. I may have thought I'd be more proactive in watering but that was sadly not the case. When the hot dry summer finally cooled down, the in-ground zinnia bloomed to awesome beauty while the one in pot died. It was such a contrast! The heat was so tremendous, we couldn't even get sunflowers to srout and grow from seed. Marigolds refused to budge until September! I'm afraid they won't have enough time to grow flowers before Day of the Dead.

My First Basil Plant

I was given a basil plant in exchange for purple sweet potato slips. I planted it with a few purple sweet potato slips just to see what would happen. Here is how it looked in September:

I started using the basil in August and found a profound love for pesto! It's insanely good on sandwiches, pizza, and pasta. I've made 3-4 batches so far and looking forward to making more. Here is a photo of Evie helping me de-leaf the entire plant right before frost season hits:

I'll update soon on my recipes for using pesto.

Evie's Neapolitan Cookies

Evie did not get accepted into the Saturday morning art class because I signed up too late, so I decided to do a weekly art lesson with her at home. She asked if we could make cookies together and that is a form of art so we decided on baking Neapolitan cookies. I've been avoiding these for a long time because they look time consuming, but once she sets her heart on something she's bound to return to it again and again until we get it done. So I actually had the freeze dried strawberries on hand for 10 months, thinking we'd do them over last Christmas vacation. Glad to say we finally made them, and they were awesome!

We followed the receipe from Sarah Kieffer's 100 cookies book.

Plucky Purple Sweet Potatoes

It's been 8 years since we started planting purple sweet potatoes, and for the past two years I've been able to keep them in the basement until spring and have enough to replant so I can't remember where I last bought slips. I even gave away slips in the spring so hopefully others have had success. Here are photos of our slips in the spring, and fall photos of our crop as we dig them up.

As you can see, the tops of the plants got a bit frost bitten, but the purple sweet potatoes were fine. Now to let them cure up for two weeks and then it's onto to making scones and tempera!