Plenty of Pumpkin

The pumpkin harvest is in, and it looks like we'll have plenty of pumpkin for the fall and winter.

We had pumpkin soup for lunch the other day, thickened with rice.

Yummy!

Plethora of Pumpkin

Cinderella Pumpkin

One of the vegetables Cindy planted this summer was a Cinderella Pumpkin, supposed to be one of the best pumpkins for making pies.  She thought that meant the pumpkins it produced would be small, like most pie pumpkins are.  Instead, the plant only produced one pumpkin, but it was much bigger than expected.

Cindy picked it several weeks ago and it's been sitting in the garage maturing since then.  But it couldn't stay there forever, so she cut it up the other day.

The final tally was 5.5 pounds of pureed pumpkin for pies and pumpkin soup, and 1 pound of roasted pumpkin.  That's a whole lotta pumpkin.

There's also some pumpkin juice that will go into the soup.  I'm a huge fan of Harry Potter, so I'll have to see what pumpkin juice tastes like, although I think my potion of choice would probably be Butterbeer.

We may have to do some experimenting with this.

The Bean Poles Are Up

Bean Teepee

The bean poles, or teepee, or structure of whatever you want to call them, are up in the raised beds behind the garage, and the beans have been planted.  They're all under their protective square cages until we can get the new anti-varmint shields finished.

Cindy has been in a hurry to get them planted, but couldn't do it until the irrigation issues were resolved, and now that they are planted, we have to finish the protective screens so that the squirrels don't nibble the sprouts off before they get started.  Considering the damage the squirrels have already inflicted on the pumpkin and the butternut squash plants, that could be considerable damage.

The pumpkin has started putting out flowers and the leaves are huge, but nothing has set on yet.

Guardian Of The Pumpkins At Work

Cindy stationed one of her garden art pieces, a ferocious looking blue bird, to guard the pumpkins, and he's hard at work.

Butternut Squash Trellis

The Butternut Squash plant is already happily climbing up its trellis and a couple of small squash have already set on.  So, as long as the squirrels don't eat them before we can get the screens completed, we should have some squash this fall.