Nora Clarke shows off her giant Early Girl tomato. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Erin (left) and Marissa Flynn crade their winning zucchini.

Tom Cooke holds up an exotic cucumber grown by his mother, Lynn.

September may be here, but Harvard gardens are still going strong.

Nora and Bo Clarke of Fairbank Street entered the Garden Game with an Early Girl tomato that measured 13 inches around! The zucchinis entered by Erin and Marissa Flynn of Green Hill Road are record-setting, at 17 and 15 inches each. (The 17-incher beats last year’s record, set by the Clark sisters of Bolton Road.)  Tom Cooke is a record holder with a 28-inch exotic cucumber he brought in.

Get in the Garden Game!

Do you have what it takes to be a gardener extraordinaire: A perfect tomato? A killer zucchini? You can enter it into the second annual Harvard Press weekly garden contest, the Garden Game. Eight categories of vegetables will be judged according to overall appearance as well as size. Categories and their corresponding measurement criteria are:

• Beets (biggest circumference)
• Broccoli (largest diameter)
• Cabbage (biggest circumference)
• Carrot (longest)
• Cucumber (longest)
• Eggplant (biggest circumference)
• Pumpkin (biggest circumference)
• Tomato (biggest circumference)
• Zucchini (longest)
• Any vegetable—most unusual

Entries must be brought to the Harvard Press office, on the third floor of the General Store, on Mondays by noon. A staff member will measure the entry and photograph it. Winners for the week will be selected and featured in the Garden Game column. The contest ends at the first sign of frost.
Good luck!