Harvest

This is my first season gardening, and aside from the part where I have to pull weeds, it is quite fun. My roommate Amanda and I are sharing the garden, and both being novice gardeners, at the start of the season, we just stuck seeds in the ground and hoped for the best. Miraculously, half of the plants we sowed grew, even though we couldn’t really tell what they were when they first started.

I squeal with delight when I see a plant growing happily in the sun. And when I see a small fruit, in the form of zucchini or pepper, drawing nutrients from the plant and slowly expanding, I am in awe of how these plant things manage to convert sun energy into such a tangible form. I have derived so much joy from just admiring how big and leafy our garden is that I don’t know what I will do when winter time comes and I won’t have a garden to visit anymore.

And of course my excitement was hard to contain when we first started getting zucchini, luffa and peas in our garden three weeks ago. I stood and gazed at the fruits, and said adoringly, “Oh, you are soooo cute.” Other than zucchini and luffa, we have planted green beans, peas, bell peppers, tomatoes, kale, brussel sprouts, and eggplant.

The peas had shown up quite awhile ago, and Amanda and I were unsure as to when we were allowed to harvest them, and so we gently tugged on a few, and since they were stubbornly stuck to their vines, we assumed they were not ready to come off, and decided to wait a bit longer. Then, a week ago, the plant started dying. One day after watering the garden, I reported to Amanda that this was happening, and we were both at loss to what the cause could be, because we diligently watered our garden every day.

I ended up asking my friend I-chun, a seasoned gardener (well, 3 seasons I think, but she does have horticulture degree), what was going on. She laughed and said peas are an early plant, and we should harvest the peas if they are big enough to eat. So the conclusion is they are probably done bearing fruit, and we should salvage whatever is left. Amused, she also asked how our luffa was doing. I-chun had been kind enough to give us leftover seedlings of luffa. I proudly said that one of the plants had survived, and there was a large luffa growing on it. I-Chun was promptly envious because all her luffa plants in her own plot had died.

A few hours later, I get a call from I-Chun who tells me that she and her husband went to see how our luffa was doing. And they ended up laughing so hard that a neighboring gardener commented: “well, I’m glad your garden makes you so happy.” It turns out that our luffa is not a luffa but a cucumber. So now I have a gigantic cucumber in my fridge.

(In my defense, this cucumber was spiky and had rough skin… )

In a panic, I went to my garden after her call, and decided to harvest whatever looked big enough to eat to avoid other vegetables having the same fate. I plucked a few pounds of green string beans, some more zucchini, and my gigantic cucumber. Next to the zucchini was a zucchini-like plant with a gigantic round heavy green fruit growing on it. I decided, better safe than sorry, and plucked it off it’s vine. Then I started wondering what it was…

Again I called I-Chun and described my latest harvest. She asked: Is it round? Does the plant sort of grow vine-like with large leaves that look like zucchini? Yes, yes and yes. That’s a pumpkin. She concluded.

Okay, so now I have a green pumpkin in addition to a cucumber as large as my forearm. Ah, the joys of gardening.