The first week of September brings a range of emotions to the fore.  We signal the unofficial end of summer with a collective sigh, welcome the start of a new school year with smiles & tears and (at least some of us) look forward to breaking out a favorite fleece or comfy pair of sweats.  

  Signs of fall are all around us in the EC.  The Asian Pears are ready for sampling, the grapes smell terrific and taste even better and sunflower heads are heavy with seed. Cucumbers, a not-so-distant memory and blackberries nearly absent.  However, because we live in a rather temperate climate, we still have a few months of growing before we are plunged into those cold, late fall temperatures.  The cranberry beans I planted a few weeks ago are about a foot high and flowering.  Fall brassicas (kale, cabbage and my favorite, Brussels Sprouts) occupy row after row at both our farms.  Feathery carrot tops grace the fields and we're still harvesting tomatoes and peppers.

The EC still has a good crop of cherry tomatoes.  I picked a basket-full the other day. This morning I scattered the cleaned tomatoes on a parchment lined baking sheet, added a few cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil and popped them into the oven.  I can smell them cooking, low and slow...  Once finished, I'll put them in a container for later use. Full disclosure - I'm not the primary cook in the house, my better half will use these gems in the weeks to come in a tasty dish, whipped up on a moment's notice!

This week's Plant of the Week is the Sunflower!  The reason for the nod is it's amazing diversity - there are sunflowers for every occasion! Some varieties are prized for their colors, some for their ability to attract bees and other pollinators to the garden.  Still other varieties excel in the retail (cutting) market and some grow huge heads, yielding hundreds of seeds/head.  A walk through the EC and both farms confirms the variation in these gentle giants - in the Horsham EC, some of our plants tower over most visitors on a single stem while others are shorter and exhibit a branching growth habit.  This time of year, the goldfinch are busy collecting seeds while bees fly from flower to flower.  The maturing seeds remind me of fall and of baseball.  How many baseball games have you sat through watching kids and adults alike plowing through a bag of sunflower seeds?  The small, rectangular seeds are great either raw or toasted and have so many culinary uses. It's safe to say you can add them to almost any dish and be happy with the end result!  A friend has several fields of sunflowers and she said when she walks through the fields in the morning, she feels like she is being welcomed to the day by hundreds of smiling faces!

If you'd like to add some smiling faces to your garden, check out this  Organic Gardening link for some tips on selecting the right variety for you.

Have a good week.