Am I wrong, or does it feel like only last week that we were up to our ears in summer vegetables and sunglasses? Now, little by little, fall is working its way into our daily routine. Just yesterday I was passing a train station on Long Island, crunching my way over a carpet of yellow leaves, and there are more than a few trees at the NYBG following suit. It may only be the first weekend in October, but autumn’s not wasting any time.
And neither are we! This Saturday marks the opening of the Haunted Pumpkin Garden in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, which you’ll know by the family of grinning, sneering, giggling jack o’ lanterns peering out over the Adventure Garden archway. Just inside you’ll find the hub of all our October activities running right through Halloween proper. Of course, we’ll be stacking the Garden’s schedule with all sorts of spooky spectaculars throughout our 250 acres as we creep our way toward All Hallows’ Eve, so keep an eye out as we move further into the season.
Walking around the NYBG on this misty Wednesday afternoon, you can already make out hints of Halloween creeping into the Garden. The jack o’ lanterns peeking out from atop the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden archway are a dead giveaway. And this weekend, Annie Novak and the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden do them one better by welcoming an age-old tradition back to our vegetable plots. Leave the chicken wire at home, skip the raised beds, and grab a burlap sack: the scarecrows are slinking in!
As of Saturday and Sunday, the Family Garden’s vegetables see the silhouettes of autumn’s most iconic bird-shooing bodyguards, and we need your kids to help put them together. We’ll supply the poles, twine, floppy hats and straw, just so long as they bring their creativity. And that imagination easily carries over to our other activities for the weekend, like making corn husk dolls and exploring the nine restaurant kitchen gardens of Mario Batali’s Edible Garden.
Ron Wallace and his heavyweight pumpkin (The Boston Globe, 2012)
It’s October 1, and that means exactly one thing: you can throw the unwritten embargo on Halloween decorations out the window! No more tamping down the urge to buy orange string lights. No more nibbling your nails as you scurry past the candy aisle. Free reign to stake your front yard with frightful scarecrows and tombstones, whether your neighbors scowl or not. And at the NYBG, we get to ramp up our coverage of the season’s holiday excitement! You may not think there’s much to celebrate in a simple gourd, but trust me, there’s nothing simple about a one-tonpumpkin.
Don’t bother with a double-take–that wasn’t a misread. Early predictions from farmers close to the Garden hinted that drought and heat would lead to a disappointing harvest, but pumpkin crops have pulled out a clutch win, with some gigantic gourds already smashing weight records in our neck of the woods. Included is the latest champion, a 2009-pound behemoth out of Rhode Island that took the title for grower Ron Wallace on Friday, September 28, at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts; that’s nearly 200 pounds heavier than last year’s winner. But the challenge isn’t settled just yet! Rumor has it there are still a few contenders lurking in the wings, not only in the northeast, but on the west coast and the continent, as well. We could see the record snapped more than once before 2012 crowns its prince of pumpkins.
This week in the Ruth Rea Howell Garden, Assistant Manager Annie Novak and her team of gardeners fire up the kitchen for some hearty recipes that celebrate the last of the summer harvest. “Grillin’ Summer Fruits,” as we like to call it, is set to take over our one-acre vegetable garden on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday of this week, at both 2 and 4 p.m. each afternoon. But while the name may suggest otherwise, we’re not talking about peaches and watermelons here!
Each demonstration focuses not on the sweeter fruits, but on the savory ones–those like tomatoes, which are so often mistaken for vegetables. And also making an appearance among the veggie-leaning fruits, a couple that you might not be aware of: zucchini and eggplant. Despite public opinion, these aren’t actually vegetables because their seeds are on the inside! So don’t let your warm-season produce languish in the crisper drawer when you could be throwing a cook-out instead. If there’s one way to celebrate what remains of this picturesque weather, it’s with food.
Already hunting in vain for the tastes of summer–that last, sweet reminder of tan lines and getting the mail without boots on? While your friends tell you it’s masochism, you may have a few crumbs of luck left: last week’s Greenmarket bounty included a teasing stack of peach pies from The Little Bake Shop. And while there are no guarantees that we’ll see more stone fruit desserts on the tables tomorrow, it can’t hurt to take a look, right? In the meantime, what little remains of summer’s harvest now makes way for the rush of autumn edibles.
If waiting until Thanksgiving for your first dose of melons, gourds, and root vegetables sounds foolish to you (c’mon, it does), then you’ll want to make tomorrow your day out. We’re expecting to see piles of mellow Asian melons, decorative pumpkins, gourds in Seussian shapes and beans by the armful. On the starchy front, parsnips and potatoes are practically begging for a stew, and the beets and radishes aren’t far behind. You’ll even have a chance to bag up some apples and pears while you’re here.
Tomorrow is Wednesday, and that means one thing and one thing only (if you’re particularly fixated on fresh produce, at least): the NYBG Greenmarket! From what the calendar tells me, we’re looking at the last official summer Greenmarket before we move on toward autumn’s bushels and baskets–spicy apple cider and the like–so you might want to think about hoofing it up here while we’re still savoring the flip-flop weather. It’s been pleasantly cool out until now, but some trees are already coloring for fall; it’s going to be scarves and pea coats before you can say “fare thee well peaches.”
Last week’s tasty loot came in the form of apple-cranberry pies, concord grapes, San Marzano tomatoes, jalapenos, bosc pears, and so much more. But along with the fruits, vegetables, and baked goods, I noticed something else: the Greenmarket staffers work really hard. They’re out there each week, trucking away to keep market events moving smoothly, and striving to get the word out to New Yorkers in all the boroughs. Beyond that, they’re holding events within events, like last week’s cooking demonstration. I’m only disappointed that I missed out on the omelettes!
Countless acres of lush flora, over 230 bird species, a virtual menagerie of fish, insects, reptiles, and mammals–and that’s just Central Park. New York City may have a reputation for being the urban jungle, but tucked in and around the buildings are the greenscapes–including the NYBG–that land us in the upper echelons of woodland sustainability. Places where flora and fauna have thrived in spite of the metropolis built up around them. But it’s not as if it was an easy task to get to where we are now, as The Cultural Landscape Foundation‘s (TCLF) president, Charles Birnbaum, recently explained; it was a long and trying process, with green spaces across the city sometimes suffering under a lack of proper management. And that’s a part of the reason that we’re adding our voice to TCLF’s fall conference, Bridging the Nature-Culture Divide II: Stewardship of Central Park’s Woodlands.
On Friday, October 5, the NYBG joins with the Central Park Conservancy and institutions from across the country to examine today’s woodland sustainability, along with natural diversity, the role of people in the care of these landscapes, and public education. Speakers such as the Garden’s Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections, Todd Forrest, will offer their expertise on the lessons learned by our park stewards over the years, while accomplished landscape architects and other national experts detail the challenges now faced in caring for these cultural icons.
With autumn so near at hand, you’d think the excitement would be winding down in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. Most vegetable gardens in New York are offering up the last of their produce right about now, while green thumbs stow their trowels for the next spring planting. But at the NYBG, the best of the season is still ahead of us! In fact, the atmosphere is nearly humming with anticipation for the peak event of the summer: Mario Batali’s Edible Garden Festival. And while the legendary chef’s top culinary minds have inspired plenty of palates during Family Dinners throughout the season, it’s Mario himself that will treat your tastebuds for September’s pièce de résistance.
Now that the Family Dinners have come and gone, I got to wondering what might end up on Mario’s menu. And when you think of Italian cooking, you don’t have to be shy about it: your mind leaps straight to the tomatoes. Plump and delicious, blushing red (or yellow, or purple), they take center stage in so many of the dishes we’ve come to love. Still, while picking my way through the Family Garden in recent weeks, I thought to myself, “Why let the tomatoes hog the spotlight?” They’re delectable–don’t get me wrong–but Italy’s culinary history encompasses so much more! Mario knows this better than anyone. And when his acclaimed chefs first planted their vegetable plots, they dotted the Family Garden with leafy greens, pungent onions, and herbs enough to make your spice rack green with envy. And the peppers! So many peppers, in myriad shapes and colors.
Wednesdays are foodie days at The New York Botanical Garden, and the twelfth is no different! If your palate’s been hunting for something a touch more scintillating than what you can sniff out at your average midtown hot dog stand, it’s not a crime to look outside your borough–the Bronx, perhaps? As always, our Greenmarket is a cornucopia of home-grown goodies!
Peppers in many a color were last week’s highlights–orange, yellow, and red, all crisp and piquant–while apples flaunted sweetness among the pre-fall fruits. Even the fresh bitterness of dandelion greens was on call. Not to be outdone by the “two to four servings a day” crowd, The Little Bake Shop and Millport Dairy made a delectable point with fresh-baked breads, raisin oatmeal cookies, and berry pies to put any dessert tray to shame. Wash it down with a fruity juice from Red Jacket Orchards and you’re sending off summer with all the right flavors.
I can say with sureness that this upcoming October will be a big month for The New York Botanical Garden. And I mean that in as literal a sense as possible. “But how big is it?” you most certainly ask. Well, if we need to get down to brass tacks, we’re talking about squash waaaay bigger and badder than anything you’ve seen in your neighborhood market–pumpkins trucked in from around the globe that weigh in at nearly a solid ton (that’s 2,000 pounds by U.S. standards). In other words, they make your porch jack o’ lanterns look like carved grapes in comparison.
Each of the growers that contributed mammoth pumpkins to 2011’s Halloween in the Garden–members of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth hailing from California, Pennsylvania, and even Quebec–supplied a home-grown monster the likes of which most have only seen in The Nightmare Before Christmas or Cinderella. I’m talking record-breaking squash weighing 1,600, 1,700, and even as much as 1,800 pounds in some cases. After the weigh-ins and the awards, each found its final resting place in the Garden, where Ray Villafane took knife to squash in an artful if ghoulish manner.
Am I wrong, or does it feel like only last week that we were up to our ears in summer vegetables and sunglasses? Now, little by little, fall is working its way into our daily routine. Just yesterday I was passing a train station on Long Island, crunching my way over a carpet of yellow leaves, and there are more than a few trees at the NYBG following suit. It may only be the first weekend in October, but autumn’s not wasting any time.
