The greatest success of my garden this year: pattypan squash.
When I was planning my vegetable garden for 2025, I knew that it would be no ordinary year. My father had just died, and my mother was going to need my support, which would mean being away from my garden for extended periods of time, so I decided to do things a little differently. I chose a less ambitious range of seeds and included varieties I hadn’t grown before, like pattypan squash, feeling that I had less to lose than usual. Little did I know at that point that life held even more disruption in store, including a move back to the UK to plan, meaning that the garden got even less attention this year than normal.
My lack of time and attention has had direct consequences on the harvest. I got a fraction of the figs, because, due to my failure to keep them under surveillance, birds took all the fruit from the top of the tree. Many of my tomato plants are only half tied-up and are drooping down under the weight of unripe fruit, which the slugs have been demolishing while still green. I have decided to find a redemptive way of viewing this situation. The birds of the air, who neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, have been fed, and I have been inadvertently loving my slimy enemies (Matthew 6:26, Matthew 5:44).
The pattypan squash, however, have been an enormous success – but I don’t really know what to do with them…