The harvest has begun: I picked the first fruit of the season this week. Not only that, but it was the first fruit I harvested from the particular plant. The fruit was a Sunquat, planted in a pot a year and a half ago. It summers outdoors and winters indoors, basking in sunlight streaming through a south-facing window.

Not many people have heard of Sunquats. I hadn’t. Citrus plants hybridize freely and Sunquat is one of many citrus hybrids, this one a mating of kumquat (botanically Fortunella, rather than Citrus, but very closely related) and Meyer lemon. I happen to be a big fan of the tart flesh and spicy, sweet skins of kumquat fruits. I also happen to be a big fan of Meyer lemon, which is not a true lemon but is probably a hybrid of lemon and mandarin orange. Meyer lemons are juicy and somewhat sweet, with a flowery aroma. They also bear prolifically. As testimonial to their precocity, I once had a cutting that flowered soon after rooting, when it was only a few inches tall.

So what could be bad about combining the best of kumquat and Meyer lemon? A Sunquat! The skin was sour without picking up any of the spicy tang of a kumquat’s skin. The flesh was much less puckery than kumquat or lemon, but was uninteresting, just bland. Perhaps harvesting a bit underripe, before the skins turn full yellow, will put some pizazz in a Sunquat. If not, I’ll stick to Meyer lemons and kumquats, each on their own.

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Beautiful. Right from the sky. A white blanket of “poor man’s manure.” That’s what gardeners and farmers have called snow.

In fact, snow does take some nitrogen from the air and bring it down to ground level for plant use in spring. Not that much, though. Just a few shovelfuls of real manure could supply the same amount of nitrogen as a blanket of snow.

Mostly, what I like about the 15 inch deep fluffy whiteness now on the ground is the way it insulates what’s beneath it. Fluctuating winter temperatures wreak havoc on plants, coaxing them awake and asleep and awake and asleep as air temperatures go up and down. Each time plants are awakened, they become more susceptible to subsequent cold, the whole problem exacerbated with borderline hardy plants. Anticipating cold weather and snow, last fall I laid the 10 foot long canes of my Doyle Thornless blackberries down on the ground. They’ve been thankfully swallowed beneath snow.

Hardy orange (Poncirus trifoliata) is another plant to benefit from snow cover. It’s not a citrus, but a close Citrus relative that is cold-hardy as far north as New Jersey. Still, I planted some seeds outdoors a few years ago and their roots survive winter cold. The tops die back but resprout each spring. The deeper this winter’s snow and the longer it stays deep, the more of the plants’ stems will survive till spring. Perhaps, helped along with global warming, enough of the above ground parts of the plants will survive to reward me one year with sweet-smelling blossoms and, less appealing, their very puckery fruits.

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Last fall, I cut some stems from my black currants and grapes into 8 inch lengths. In the bare ground between the dwarf apple trees, I scratched some lines and pushed a straight-bladed shovel into the ground on that line. Levering the handle of the shovel opened up just enough space in which to shove one or two of those cut stems, distal ends up, right up to their topmost buds. Then I moved along the scratched line, pushed the shovel in again, shoved in more stems, and so on down each line. If all goes well, each of those stems should have grown into a good sized plant that I can dig up and transplant next autumn.

That is, unless alternating freezing and thawing of the soil heaves those stems up and out of the ground. I’ve seen it happen, a row of carefully inserted stems sitting on top of the ground by winter’s end.

Which is another reason I’m thankful for the snow. In addition to protecting plants from cold, the blanket modulates soil temperatures, keeping cold soil cold, which is how I’d like it to remain until spring. I could have -- should have -- thrown some fluffy, organic mulch, such as leaves or straw, over the stems to do the same thing. But I didn’t. I hope the snow keeps.

The garden is winding down so I’ll look into the freezer and see what I’ve got. Hmmmm. A couple of jars of frozen, small, yellow-orange berries. Sea berries! I forgot all about them. I’ve had the bushes for a few years and each year nibble a few of the tart berries. This year I decided to use the berries in earnest.

Native to Russia, China, and northern Europe, sea berries are relative newcomers to this part of the world. And even then, they’re often planted strictly as ornamental shrubs. Their silvery leaves make the perfect backdrop for their bright and abundant orange, yellow, or red berries. As a fruiting or ornamental plant, sea berry is easy to grow, needing only abundant sunlight and well drained soil. A (nonfruiting) male plant is needed to get fruit on nearby female plants; each male can sire up to 8 females.

Years ago someone sent me some sea berry juice, the flavor of which was something like very rich orange and passionfruit juices. Some people liken the flavor to pineapple; hence “Siberian pineapple,” another common name for the fruit.

The reason I only nibbled on sea berries up to this year is because harvesting the small berries can be a problem. They press closely to the stems, and the stems are armed with intimidating thorns. Someone suggested freezing the branches and then shaking off the frozen berries. That’s what I tried back in September, cutting berry-laden branches into foot long sections and and putting them in a large, plastic tub with a tightly fitting lid. Once everything was well frozen, I shook the tub with the lid still on. A lot. The berries fell off and settled to the bottom of the tub and after winnowing what was left in front of a fan outdoors, I had a couple of quarts of clean berries.

The fruit allegedly makes excellent sauces, syrups, and jellies; my plan was to replicate that delicious Siberian pineapple juice. After heating the berries in a saucepan with a bit of water, mashing them with a potato masher, and straining, I had 3 cups of a beautiful, but nose wrinkling, tart, juice. I added about a half a cup of water along with a half a cup of sugar, mixed well, and was ready to try out the juice on some dinner guests. Served before dinner in apéritif glasses, the juice was a hit. Everyone asked for more.

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I next turned to the bowl of tawny stems and grains that’s been sitting on the kitchen table for a couple of months. That bowl represented the sum total of my wheat harvest, planted in spring into 3’ by 3’ of garden bed.

The cut stalks of wheat, with their fat heads of dry grain, had been hanging upside down from the kitchen ceiling up to a few weeks ago. The contents of the bowl -- chaff, grain, and bits of stalk -- represented the results of putting the stalks into a pillowcase and beating them up vigorously, and then removing long stems remaining. That was a couple of months ago.

Yesterday, as long as I had my winnowing fan set up outdoors for the sea berries, I thought I might as well also winnow the wheat grains. As with the sea berries, slowly pouring the grains and other debris in front of the fan sent most of the debris flying away, leaving with the crop, the grain in this case, settling into a waiting bowl below.

My crop was relatively paltry, about a half a cup of grain. This half a cup per 9 square feet translates to about 16 bushels per acre. Average wheat yields are 30 to 50 bushels per acre, with some farmers harvesting over 100 bushels per acre. I guess I’m not much of a wheat grower -- yet. I’ll try again next year, perhaps planting more densely or earlier.

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With the shortest day of the year past, it’s time for hints of the sights and smells of spring -- indoors. Paperwhite narcissus, potted up back in November, is already blooming and perfuming the air. And I’ve brought up a jasmine plant (poet’s jasmine, Jasminium officinale) from the basement. That jasmine plant, along with a few others, was outdoors this past fall through a few light frosts, then has sat in front of a sunny window in my cool basement. The cool temperatures, perhaps also short days and occasionally dry soil will contribute to abundant bloom in weeks ahead. I’ll extend the bloom by bringing up a new jasmine plant every few weeks.

I oversee, in all probability, the biggest pomegranate farm in Ulster County, perhaps New York State, even the Northeast. My planting recently expanded by 200 percent with the 4 new plants that arrived at my doorstep a couple of days ago. My farm is biggest because so few people in this part of the world grow pomegranates and, if they do, they might have one plant.

Pomegranates are an up and coming plant. Their health benefits have been highly touted, perhaps with some hyperbole. They are beautiful shrubs or small trees with traffic-stopping red (sometimes white or pink) blossoms. Best of all is the fruit’s flavor, combining the richness of berries with the tang of citrus.

Unfortunately, pomegranates are not adapted to growing in this part of the world. They hail from the Mideast, much the same region as figs, where winters are mild and moist, and summers are hot, dry, and sunny. Yet, I, along with many other gardeners, do grow figs, coddling them through winter by growing them in pots brought indoors, in a greenhouse, or swaddled in the ground or, where winters aren’t bitterly cold, in various insulating blankets. Why not do the same with pomegranates? Stems of both plants tolerate temperatures down to about 15° F.

Well, not exactly the same. Figs bear fruit on new wood so you can harvest a crop even if the stems die back, as long as they don’t die back too much. Pomegranates bear fruit on older wood, which needs to survive winter to bear fruit. Pomegranates also need a long season to ripen. And they don’t like humidity, and especially rain near harvest, or the fruits burst open.

All of which is why 12 to 18 inch diameter pots are what my pomegranates call home. I move these pots to my cool basement for winter. I move them outside as soon as the weather warms in spring to get them started early, and inside temporarily if frost threatens. I can move them under cover when rains threaten.

Commercial pomegranates in the U.S. are of varieties from warmer parts of the Mideast. The varieties I am growing are from colder regions -- central Asia and Russia -- so should better tolerate colder winters. With global warming, I may eventually try overwintering some of these plants outdoors. These varieties also ripen their fruits in shorter seasons. My plants -- with exotic names like Kazake, Salavatski, and Sverkhranniy -- have yet to flower and fruit. I’m looking forward to harvesting a selection of pink, red, sweet-tart, and sweet pomegranates in the next couple of years.

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A few more years of greenhouse gardening and I may get the hang of it. Up to a few weeks ago, I was so proud of all those beautiful lettuce seedlings I had transplanted into the greenhouse in September, as they swelled up into beautiful buttery and crunchy heads. Now, though, a number of them have telescoped out their once-compact heads in preparation for flowering and going to seed.

Lettuce typically switches to this flowering mode when days are 12 hours, or more, long. Around here, daylight hours through most of September are a bit more than 12 hours long. Still, I couldn’t wait too long to plant because, planted after September, lettuce grows ver-r-r-r-r-y slowly.

And daylength isn’t the only player here; temperature also plays a role, with hotter temperatures coaxing forth those flower stalks, especially when coupled with long days. On sunny days in early autumn, temperatures in the greenhouse did soar to 90°.

There is consolation. When lettuce starts to flower outside during hot, long days of summer, the leaves take on a slightly bluish cast and turn tougher and bitter. Leaves of my bolting greenhouse lettuces are still deep green, succulent, and flavorful.

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Another disappointment, one without a saving grace, are the black walnuts. Back in September, we harvested as usual. Deb took off the husks, I laid the de-husked nuts out to dry, and then packed them away in baskets for a few months of curing. So far, just about all the nutmeats I’ve cracked out are thoroughly dried out or rotten, black, and inedible.

Why? Perhaps it was the summer’s drought. Perhaps the newly husked nuts stayed too wet before being packed away. Perhaps something’s amiss with our old tree. I’ll check some walnuts a friend harvested from a different tree to see if the problem is widespread. Perhaps the late frost affected early nut development. Next September, I’ll check a few nuts when we harvest them.

As consolation, I turn to the words of Charles Dudley Warner (My Summer in a Garden, 1871), “The principle value of the garden . . . is to teach . . . patience and philosophy, and the higher virtue – hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning.”