Brian Minter: Harvesting our gardens for Thanksgiving

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One of the great joys of gardening, especially at this time of year, is harvesting a bounty of foods. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and there’s no better time than now to celebrate the abundance of our food gardens by pulling, picking, cutting, cooking and savouring our own homegrown produce.

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In spite of our rather copious amounts of rainfall, late potatoes, such as Russet, Burbank and Yukon Gold, should now be perfectly sized, full of flavour and ready to dig. Sweet potatoes should be ready now too. Remember: They need to be stored upright in an egg carton at about 60 F to allow the starch time to turn into sugar.

For salads, the last crops of Romaine, Buttercrunch and colourful red varieties, like Red Express leaf lettuce, should be at their best. Even the odd head lettuce might still be available. The last cucumbers are just finishing, and yes, although most late tomatoes are green as grass, some tasty cherry tomatoes might be hanging on. Our herb gardens will certainly have parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, chives and maybe some cilantro for added flavouring in our Thanksgiving dishes.

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We should still have lots of choices for main course vegetables. Crunchy carrots, especially the colourful Rainbow blends, can be pulled, and delicious broccoli, particularly the tiny heads of broccolini, can be gathered. Green and red cabbages and white, purple or cheddar orange cauliflowers are ready to add colour and flavour to any holiday meal.

Although brussels sprouts, a traditional Thanksgiving favourite, and turnips would benefit from a good frost to intensify their flavours, they could still contribute their own unique tastes.

Beets offer a rich pop of colour and deliciousness to any meal, and they can hang out in the garden most of the winter. Cylindrical beets are really the best overall. You may also have golden beets, that look fabulous and taste amazing, growing in your garden. You’re particularly lucky if you’re growing the heirloom Chioggia beet, with its impressive red and white patterning, or the bright, blood red Bull’s Blood, also an heirloom variety. These two special beets will really colour-up your Thanksgiving menu.

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Summer squash, like zucchinis and scallopinis, aren’t quite as soft and supple as they were earlier in the season, but they’re still growing in many gardens and make perfectly enjoyable additions to any Thanksgiving dinner.

If you really want to impress your table guests, hopefully you have some vegetable spaghetti squash. Its unique flesh looks much like strands of spaghetti and, when baked and topped with tomato sauce, it presents very well as a surprise dish.

Whatever true winter squash you grow, it will really pack a flavour punch. Both Mashed Potato, a pure white acorn squash, and Festival, a multicoloured variety, have great flavour. The oval Butternut and Buttercup varieties are smaller, serving-size types. Perhaps you have grown some of the smaller Delicatas, like Sweet Dumpling, and they too should be ready to harvest. The giant hubbards are flavourful and keep well but can be a bit too large for smaller families. The Baby Blue hubbard still has all the rich flavour but in a smaller size.

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Onions should have been lifted and stored by now. Walla Walla onions are the most popular variety, but they don’t keep well. Giant Kelsae onions hold up much better, and they have a wonderful flavour. Red onions also keep well, and they’re great for spicing up salads and sandwiches. The old Riverside Sweet Spanish onion is one of the best keepers and will still be viable for our Christmas meals. White bunching onions and leeks should still be in the ground and can stay there for most of the winter. Pull up a few as needed for flavouring soups and sauces.

Garlic is the most flavourful allium of all. Hopefully you harvested your bulbs in July, and they’re now dried and ready to add their unique bite to your Thanksgiving dishes.

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If you need a little spice for some of your meats, perennial horseradish roots can be easily dug up and served for a little heat. Jerusalem artichokes, with their great nutlike flavour, can elevate an ordinary soup into a gourmet delight.

You might have some fresh cranberries growing in your ground-cover areas. They would be excellent when used to garnish plates. Lo-Hugger is my favourite variety, and its berries make a delicious sweet/tart cranberry sauce. They taste really sour now, but they’ll sweeten up after a couple good frosts and are quite nice to eat fresh.

If you have a few vacciniums, like lingonberries, their fruits also make a wonderful, edible garnish, as does the spearmint flavoured ground cover, Gaultheria procumbens.

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What does your garden offer in terms of dessert? Well, traditional pumpkin pie is still hard to beat. Smaller sugar pumpkins are the true original pie pumpkins, but most varieties will work just fine.

If you decided to try a novelty baking squash and have been growing Galeux d’ Eysines or the Japanese heirloom Futtsu Black, you may want to consider them as great alternatives to the role pumpkins have played in baked desserts and breads.

Perhaps an apple dessert would be appreciated. Late fall apples should be sizing-up now, full of flavour and ready to pick. Whether you live in the drier Interior, where Ambrosia, Honeycrisp and Jonagold varieties grow best or you live in coastal areas where Liberty, Gala and Cox’s Orange Pippin do well, apples are great eaten fresh or in pies and salads. Late pears, like Bosc, should now be sweet and tasty eaten fresh or in desserts.

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We’ve gotten away from growing nuts in our gardens, and that’s a shame. The new blight-resistant filberts, like Jefferson, Theta, Sacajawea and Wepster, produce nuts that are a treat eaten fresh or in baking. If you would like some nuts to serve for future Thanksgivings, plant two different nut varieties (for pollination) and within three years you will be enjoying nuts from your own garden.

Many gardeners, especially today’s remarkable younger ones, often don’t realize that numerous food plants extend their harvest times well into fall and winter. Planting a strategic succession of crops can provide a great deal of produce to harvest for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. The pride, joy and sense of accomplishment in serving your own freshly grown food is one more reason to be truly thankful and something more of us should be able to experience.