I’m gearing up for our Annual Crop Review that I describedlast week. Here’s some notes I plan to share at the meeting.
Strike beans in our hoophouse May 23. Photo Pam Dawling
Bush beans: Strike. We’ve been growing this variety in our hoophouse for years, but I’m not sure I ever praised it before now. Outdoors we grow Provider and Bush Blue Lake, but in the protected hoophouse environment they grow sprawly, with beans lying on the ground. We followed advice to choose an upright variety, and we haven’t looked back. We grow Strike (we prefer round-podded beans to flat ones). It’s a reliable, productive 55 day OP variety with a concentrated bean set, which works well for our hoophouse. Outdoors we prefer a more extended harvest period.
Edisto-x-Trifecta f6 muskmelon (cantaloupe). Photo Common Wealth Seed Growers
Cantaloupe/muskmelon: Trifecta x Edisto 47 f6research sample from Common Wealth Seed Growers. Edmund Frost says; “We’re going for everything here: sweetness, flavor, deep orange color, small seed cavity, good keeping quality, even netting, and plants that can withstand both downy mildew and bacterial wilt. This F6 selection does well on all these points. Fruits are round and average about 2.5 pounds. Interior texture is smooth and medium-firm”. This cultivar will get its very own name this winter.
Fedco’s Red Dragon Napa Chinese cabbage. 60d to harvest
Chinese cabbage in red: Last year we grew Red Dragon and liked it. We couldn’t get seeds for that one this year, so we are trying Red Trumpet. It’s a Michihili type and we generally prefer the Napa types, so it will be interesting to see how it does.
Red Trumpet Michihili Chinese Cabbage. Photo Johnny’s Seeds
We had a complete failure with the Chiba Green edamame that we had high hopes for. We had too many deer and not enough rain. This is the year I found out that deer really like chard, too. They left us with just the stems.
Eggplant: Turkish Delight: For years we didn’t like the long small Asian eggplants. Now we’ve really found the answer! This is a large hybrid Asian-type eggplant, growing up to 11” (23 cm) long, with relatively few seeds. It has the classic glossy dark purple skin, gives good yields and cooks quickly, with a rich flavor. It’s parthenocarpic, meaning we could keep it netted all season to keep the flea beetles off if we needed to. It doesn’t need pollinators.
Muir lettuce not yet full size. Photo Pam Dawling
Lettuce for hot weather: Muir. This is a Batavian type, the most reliable and productive in hot weather. Beautiful large heads with wavy leaves. Best of all, it has a very good flavor, as well as the juicy crunch we expect from Batavians. And it has good disease resistance and high resistance to lettuce leaf aphids.
Rhone lettuce. Photo Johnny’s Seeds
Lettuce for cold weather: Rhone. This variety has attractive spiky leaves in an unusual green/bronze colorway. It’s one of the multileaf types (also called one-cut, but why cut only once when you can take outer leaves all winter and the sturdy roots will grow more leaves?). We grow this one in our double-layer hoophouse where we only add rowcover if the outdoor low will be 8F (-13C) or less. Pelleted seed is more expensive than raw seed, and is more particular about being kept moist, but as you can carefully set the seeds an inch apart, you can recoup some of the extra cost.
Having fun popping garlic and talking about next year’s planned crops. Photo Bell Oaks
As readers may have noticed, I’m a big fan of keeping records and reviewing how well our plans worked out. One of my gardening mantras is “Never make the same mistake two years running!” With many, many different crops, several successions of lots of those (at least spring and fall sowings), a lot of different varieties, and many different workers, one brain can’t hold all that information. We want to build on our successes and reduce our failures, so it pays to notice and record how crops did.
May lettuce bed showing several varieties. Photo Wren Vile
I last wrote about this here, ten years ago. I’ve also written about this process in my book Sustainable Market Farming 2nd edition. We do this task in early November, where it fits in well, as the season slows down and the main-season-only workers retire for the winter, and we are working towards starting our winter planning for the coming year. We talk over the successes and failures of the past season and start to consider what to do differently next year.
We allow 5 hours (all afternoon) with a break in the middle. We grow a lot of different crops and have a lot of different plantings; a farm that specializes in fewer crops would not need as much time. Naturally this is also a time for mutual congratulation and appreciation, reliving the highlights, and a few hilarious or rueful diversions when we recall the more disastrous events of the year. Among comments like “harder to pick,” “not enough water,” “Five blahs” (Red Sun tomato), and “don’t remember,” we have “Zucchini Spineless Beauty: Fruitless! Pointless!” And then our silly mistakes: Broccoli Green Comet: “One row lost to sweet potatoes,” and Acorn Squash: “Gap filling resows hoed off by accident, let’s not do that again.”
Popping garlic for replanting at Twin Oaks. Photo Bell Oaks
Also, it’s the perfect time to pop our garlic bulbs for planting, a group indoor task that combines well with thinking and talking. “Popping” is the name given to separating the cloves ready for planting. It’s best not to do this too far ahead of planting as it signals the cloves to start sprouting, which makes them harder to plant.
We now have several garlic varieties, and have to pay attention to not mix them up. We used to only grow one hardneck (lots of it, 3180 row feet) and one softneck (1080 row feet, a smaller amount to eat last, after the hardneck is sprouting).
A screenshot from a Crop Review in a year when we grew lots of edamame!
One person prepares a spreadsheet ahead of time, of all the crops we grew, when we planted them, what varieties and so on. We go down the list alphabetically by crop and share what we remember about how well each planting did. Anyone who remembers anything notable about that crop speaks up, and someone takes notes on a laptop. We use this information when planning how much of what to grow next year, and therefore, our seed order.
The next important task is to line up the snack-makers! While we recognize the power of caffeine and sugar to keep us alert, we also cater for those avoiding these. Our rule is that we have to get past Lettuce in the alphabet before we break out the snacks. It keeps us focused and prevents us from talking for too long about the crops early in the alphabet.
In reviewing each crop, we consider yield, quality, flavor, ease of harvesting, pests and diseases, and the effects of weather. We also take into account the space use and timing in terms of a continuous supply of that crop or a good flow of produce in general as well as the crop’s popularity with our diners and cooks.
Raised beds in September with people hoeing. Photo Wren Vile
Overall, our garden looked very tidy this year, with fewer weeds. This is mostly thanks to a used cultivating tractor we have been using, and the enthusiasm of the rototiller operator to turn under finished crops and let something new get established. Right now that’s winter cover crops.
Some particular crops were disappointing. We planted quick early cabbage, Golden Acre and Red Acre, but would have benefited from a storable one to provide summer greens. The edamame disappeared. Green beans weren’t the best, although not the worst. The Mannon’s Majesty tomatoes didn’t do as well this year as last, to our disappointment. Nor did the blackeye peas.
We tried a new system for growing fall brassica starts – in cells – but they didn’t thrive as hoped.
We had tons of scallions, basil, parsley and coriander. And Delicata squash, Honey Boat.
2026 saw the return of sweet corn after several years’ absence. We had one huge planting of sweet corn in mid-May. “Brittle Synthetic 2 Hawaiian Supersweet” from Common Wealth Seed Growers. Not a name to roll off the tongue, but delicious nonetheless. Certified Organic seed. Hopefully next year we can have a succession of smaller plantings for more enjoyment.
Once again, we had plentiful cucumbers, and enough summer squash (although I didn’t like that variety much.) Our leeks this winter look great (thanks to attention to weeding, and to side dressing with compost in the late summer). The lettuce supply was good all through the spring and early summer, and is great now. Okra was very abundant, as were eggplant – the hot summer was good for them. Our peppers did well. Sweet potatoes did well, but June-planted potatoes yielded poorly. Our cherry and slicing tomatoes did well, but came to an early end once again.
Maybe after the crop review meeting I’ll have more to say.
We’re up to date with preparing for the end of garden shifts and the transition to one or two people each day taking care of the hoophouse, greenhouse, weather station and harvesting the remaining outdoor crops. We’ll work that way until the end of January.
Potatoes being harvested. Credit Kathryn Simmons
We’ve just harvested our June-planted potatoes, which had rather a lot of weeds, our peanuts (yum, boiled peanuts!), our fall beets, our sweet potatoes (looking good, cured very quickly this year). The August-sown carrots are still growing, they are for harvest and storage in November.As the tasks to do outdoors start to wind down, we’re upping the pace of our winter planning season. Our next tasks include doing an inventory of the seeds we still have and figuring out our garden plan, so that we can work towards ordering the seeds we want in sensible quantities.
After the main garlic planting, we plant all the reject tiny cloves for garlic scallions. Click the link to read about growing and harvesting these yummy spring treats.
Front cover of Jean-Martin Fortier’s book In Your Garden
Book Review: In Your Garden: The Complete Guide to Home Vegetable Gardening, by Jean-Martin Fortier. New Society Publishers, September 2026. 368 pages, 200 color photos, line art, and tables. Dimensions: 10" × 8" × 0.8" Hardcover $39.99 USD. ISBN:9781774060353
Jean-Martin Fortier, the rock star of market gardeners, known as JM, has written his first book for home gardeners. How he gets so many books written is beyond my understanding. In Your Garden is a full-color hardback, with stunning large photos that have been described by other readers privileged to get a look in advance of publication, as spectacular. They mostly show young families and really fresh vegetables.
This book is so different from his others, that I was a bit surprised. The photos are, indeed, huge and beautiful. His tone is encouraging, and the layout is very accessible. I don’t know how a brand new or wannabe gardener would respond. It’s been so long since I was that new!
The format follows a pattern, making for easy accessibility. The information is very basic. Will this be reassuring to new gardeners or will it leave them with lots of questions? I guess it depends on the individual reader. The book will work well for those overwhelmed by the internet and disgusted by AI’s contributions, and those people lacking in confidence to get started without an authoritative mentor. It will help people who want to be sure they are getting solid information on organic and sustainable vegetable gardening.
There are 12 chapters and about ten more pages of appendix, etc. The chapters cover organic growing, garden design, proven strategies for improving production, the gardener’s tool kit, starting and transplanting seedlings, vegetables in spring, summer and fall, herbs, feeding the soil, harvesting and preserving, winter harvesting.
It’s clearly written for the Northeast, and I hope Southern readers don’t start following it too literally. In his efforts to write unambiguous directions, all the nuance is swept out. This definitely makes it clearer for complete beginners.
It has 368 pages for $39.99, compared to 224 pages for $34.99 in The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming. JM and his partner Maud-Hélène Desroches cultivated an acre and a half at Les Jardins de la Grelinette (website in French) in southern Quebec, producing more than $150,000 in vegetables each year, and feeding their family of four.
Later JM moved to co-found Ferme des Quatre Temps, a bigger, more complex operation, with a mission to show that ecological farming could be highly productive, regenerative and profitable. At the same time FQT was a training ground for young growers.
An example of a design for a small vegetable garden from In Your Garden
As part of keeping things simple, JM advocates for keeping gardens rectangular, with beds that are multiples of 4′ (1.2 m) wide and 5′ (1.5 m) long. The 4′ (1.2 m) beds have a 30″ (75 cm) wide growing area and an 18″ (45 cm) path. Have at least 20 beds, all of the same length, so you can design and use a simple crop rotation. If your garden is 40′ (12 m) long, you can have 2, 4, or 8 beds at 20, 10 or 5′ (6, 3 or 1.5 m) long. I wondered if the two pages of diagrams of various bed layouts were useful, but I recognize that I am decades from needing such things drawn out for me. Brand new gardeners, on the other hand, might be so relieved to see it all made plain.
As well as the coffee-table-worthy photos, and the diagrams, there are full-color drawings of garden plans, beds, crop spacing, and more. Technical methods used by market gardeners are explained for home gardeners to adapt, a goal I have always admired. Improved results with saved work!
Harvest planning is the first of these methods. Heirloom.ag is a planning software widely used by homesteaders. Plan for a reliable, steady flow of vegetables every week during the season. From that information, calculate when to plant. He gives an example of wanting 4 heads of lettuce every week, each spending 4-5 weeks from transplant to harvest, after 4 weeks in the seedling flat. That’s about 8 weeks from sowing to harvest. I think in milder climates, this number might stay fairly constant. In my climate, lettuce takes only about half as long in summer. For 4 lettuce each week, start 4 seeds each week. Doesn’t anything ever go wrong, suggesting a margin for error?
There’s a nice clear chart of Crop Spacing, both the space between plants and the space between rows. JM acknowledges that information sources differ. This chart is designed for 30″ (75 cm) beds, and if it seems close packed to you, don’t worry. It’s for biointensive close-packed crops. This provides maximum yields for the space and provides a “canopy effect” where the crop leaves shade the soil, suppressing weeds and reducing water evaporation.
The next chart is days to harvest, including days the seedlings are in flats, days to maturity, harvest window, how long the crop is occupying the bed, and the interval between succession plantings of that crop. Next there’s help on creating a crop calendar: how often to sow or transplant that particular crop, and what to follow it with after harvest. Combine the calendar (planting schedule) with a crop map.
The controversial topic of companion planting comes next. This is folklore about which crops like to grow beside or interplanted with another. As JM says, these schemes don’t usually show much benefit. I appreciate such honesty. You can certainly grow fine crops without doing any companion planting. But if the idea appeals to you, there are notes here on some you might try. Some are workable because one crop is tall and slender, the other short and sprawling, so you get good use of the space. It’s not magic, or love between plants, it’s physics.
Start with learning and applying the practices you can see make the fundamental difference to yields (or hear from other local growers). Next year, add more fine tuning. Pay attention to what makes a difference and what doesn’t. Focus on the practices that give the biggest results for your time and effort.
The section explaining the importance of skilled watering is very valuable. I was surprised to read that the most common mistake is watering too much, and too late in the day. Here in Virginia we often water with sprinklers overnight, to reduce evaporation losses. But our climate is so different from Quebec! Drip irrigation is definitely best for most crops except broadcast seed or close rows of direct-seeded crops. It provides the most effective use of water and the least chance of contributing to foliar diseases. But using drip in small gardens can be irritating unless you planned very skillfully.
A row of squash plants with ProtekNet to keep bugs off until flowering. Photo Pam Dawling
Gardeners who have no experience of netting or row cover will appreciate the explanations here. These tools can make a big difference for a fair price and not much extra work. The whole tools section gives wise and experienced recommendations on what to buy and what to leave in the store.
The chapter on seed starting indoors includes important tips like running a fan a few hours a day to dry the leaves and strengthen the stems. Transplanting after giving the soil good preparation is another of the keys to success. Better to delay planting until the soil is rich and well-aerated. Hurrying plants from indoors out into the shock of outdoor conditions without hardening them off can cause stunting and even death. Apply both the art and the science to your gardening for best, most satisfying, results.
An example of the photos in In Your Garden.
There is a helpful Transplanting Chart, setting out how many days to expect the seedlings to stay in the tray (flat) or pot, and giving transplanting tips. For this book, a simplification to using only 128-cell trays and 4″ (10 cm) pots will save those with small gardens from investing in a multiplicity of containers.
Next are 3 seasonal chapters. There is a consistent format for these crop chapters. When and How, Growing Conditions, Common Issues, Companion Planting, Technical Details (spacing, varieties, fertilization, crop duration and planting dates for the Northeast), and Yield, Harvesting and Storage Tips. Growers outside the Northeast can read between the lines and modify dates to suit their climate. Also, don’t be surprised by different bugs and diseases. In Virginia, we have Mexican bean beetles, but not striped bean beetles. We have two distinct sweet corn pests: Corn Earworm and European Corn Borer. I recommend your state Extension Service or University Entomology Department for help identifying insects in your area.
The spring vegetables chapter starts with asparagus, alphabetically ends with radishes, and includes “fresh onions”: immature sweet bulb onions up to golf ball size, scallions and even leeks. Some crops can be sown again in late summer. The summer chapter goes from eggplant (no okra or watermelons!), through hot peppers (with the warning that one plant can produce 20-30 fruits, so scale your planting accordingly!), to tomatoes (5 plants can deliver 20-30 tomatoes per month in peak season in the Northeast). Fall vegetables start with garlic, include greens, winter squash and winter radishes such as daikon. Culinary herbs are next. A chapter on mid-winter harvests comes later in the book, with a chart of suitable cold-hardy crops, their days to maturity, direct sowing and transplanting dates for areas at 45N latitude.
The crops chapters are followed by information on feeding the soil based on a strong foundation of four principles: Feed each crop what it needs, not more; open the oil without tearing it apart; feed the soil, not just the plants; rotate crops and use green manures to reset the system. Each principle is explained over a two page spread with a large photo. Crops are divided here into heavy feeders, moderate feeders and fast growers with a low nutrient demand.
There is information on what your observations can tell you about your soil, and how to make compost, design a four-part crop rotation, and a few general ideas on green manures (clover, vetch, oats, rye, phacelia, buckwheat and mustard). The chapter on harvesting and preserving the abundance stresses the importance of maintaining a healthy living soil, and of eating the crops soon after harvest, before they lose flavor and nutrients.
I usually seek much more technical details in books about growing vegetables, and it is interesting to me that JM has chosen to write a beginner home gardener book. I admire his decision to do this. I also don’t usually study “coffee-table books” so thoroughly. I find myself critical of the large amount of white space, the eye-candy non-informative photos (there are plenty of informative ones!), the giant-font-size sidebars. It’s a beautiful, inspiring book. Don’t be afraid to take it outdoors and get it a bit grubby! There’s also a Web PDFand anEPUB
Weather Spark chart of average daily temperatures in Louisa County, Virginia
To find out more about your local weather statistics, go to WeatherSpark.com, and first look a the graph of average High and Low air Temperatures, and the chart below that. Here the average daily high in October is 71F (22C), the average nightly low is 49F (9.5C) and the overall daily average is 59F (15C). In November average temperatures are 9F (5C) lower and in December another 9F (5C) colder. The soil will stay warmer than the air for quite a while, which helps seed germination.
Harvest to Table logo
Stephen Albert of Harvest to Table in Northern California has run a great website with loads of good information, for decades. Nowadays it may be using AI (it gets repetitive), but the real info is in there, if you look. It is run as a SubStack, and has a generous free subscription version. Check outThe Complete Guide to Fall Vegetable Gardening: Planning, Planting, Growing, and Harvesting. This guide explains planning a fall garden, including deciding when to plant and calculating days to maturity; choosing crops; and everything from preparing the soil and protecting plants, to harvesting and extending the season. It includes crop-by-crop guides with details for planting, growing, and harvesting.
Watch for Nature’s Signals of the Deepening of Fall
The signs are there before the weather forecast lets you know. Stephen Albert lists these:
Nights begin cooling into the 50s and low 60s F (10–16°C).
Daylight hours become noticeably shorter
Soil temperatures decline
Morning dew becomes more common.
Tomatoes and squash begin slowing their production.
Sunflowers finish blooming and begin setting seed.
Goldenrod, asters, and other late-summer wildflowers come into bloom.
These natural signals indicate that cool-season vegetables will soon thrive.
By the time these things are obvious, you will hopefully have planned your fall and winter vegetable garden. The goal is to get crops established while there is still enough warmth and daylight to bring them to harvest.
Over-wintered Acadia spinach emerging undamaged from under the ice and snow. Ken Bezilla
Next figure when you think it will get that cold, with help from WeatherSpark.
Work backwards from the harvest date you want. Check the days to maturity for each crop. Then allow extra time, perhaps two weeks, for the shorter days and cooler temperatures of autumn. Different crops will have different last planting dates.
Soil thermometer. Photo by Green Living/Taylor
The Importance of Soil Temperatures
Also watch the soil temperature, which will tell you what you can plant when.
As the soil moves through several temperature ranges, be ready to plant different crops.
75–80°F (24-27C): Begin transplanting broccoli, cabbage and kale; direct-seed crops such as beets and carrots (and water them whenever needed).
65–75°F (18-24C): This is a good temperature range for many fall vegetables, including lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, Swiss chard and Asian greens. If your Swiss chard survives the winter it will feed you plenty of leaves in spring
55–65°F (13-18C): This is an excellent range for later sowings of spinach, arugula and radishes, provided you still have enough days to mature them before it gets too cold.
Winter cover crops for vegetable gardens in zone 7a. Pam Dawling
I switched to a different office suite and my post today has disappeared. I recreated the first paragraph but the problem repeated.
I hope to get the real post up Thursday morning.
Pam
For October, I’m writing about ramps. October is a good time to plant ramps bulbs and seeds. Bulblets are better planted in early spring. Ramps thrive in USDA Winter Hardiness Zones 3-7. Some of this material is from my second edition of Sustainable Market Farming, and the sources quoted here.
Today, ramps are a wild-edible delicacy in most places and defines a sort of Appalachian or Eastern U.S. “terroir”, but what was once a commonly found plant is now a rarity as land development and sprawl, deforestation, and over-harvesting by some foragers has decimated the population.
Ramps, (Allium tricoccum) (aka wood leeks or wild leeks) combine some of the flavors of leeks, onions, and garlic. They are a traditional and newly fashionable food. Ramps are a native woodland perennial that can be wildcrafted sustainably or raised in a suitable woodland.
“The ramp has broad, smooth, light green leaves, often with deep purple or burgundy tints on the lower stems, and a scallion-like stalk and bulb. Both the white lower leaf stalks and the broad green leaves are edible. The flower stalk only appears after the leaves have died back, unlike the similar Allium ursinum, (Ramsons) in which leaves and flowers can be seen at the same time. Ramps grow in close groups strongly rooted just beneath the surface of the soil.” – Cultivation of Ramps, North Carolina State University
It takes a ramp plant 7 years to reach sexual maturity from seeds and produce more seed. The plants are mature when their leaves reach heights of 6”-8” (15-20cm). From planting bulblets it takes 3-5 years to reach harvest size. So I’ll start by explaining how to wild-craft the leaves, then move on to info on establishing your own ramps.
Ramps research NC State ramps harvest study Jeanine Davis program, 2022
Harvesting ramps leaves
Ramps are a spring ephemeral of deciduous forests that can be wild-harvested sustainably for 1 month in the eastern half of the US and Canada, starting when tree buds appear. By late May, the leaves yellow and die back, and a flower stem emerges.
Wild ramps are being over-harvested, and it is important to make sure that not all these wild culinary delights vanish and they are still able to find their way onto plates in a sustainable fashion. Take only what you can use in a few days. Only 5% to 10% of the ramps in a patch should be harvested each year to ensure their future survival. The most sustainable harvest method is to cut only one leaf, leaving the bulb and second leaf to continue growing. Before harvesting from public lands, check local regulations. There may be limits on where, when and how much.
There are some toxic look-alikes so be sure the plants you pick smell like onion or garlic. If you’re unsure, let a knowledgeable forager confirm your find or just don’t pick them. Do not pick Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis) or False hellebore (Veratrum genus) by mistake.
Harvesting the leaves with bulbs attached is also possible, if the area has plants to spare. To harvest, use a sharp strong knife, such as a hori-hori and slide it into the soil at an angle. Cut the bulb just above the roots, and leave those in the ground to regrow. Take only the leaves and bulb. Some say a wildcrafted whole ramp (with bulb intact) is never a sustainably harvested ramp. Bulbs can be frozen for later use.
See the videoHow to Sustainably Harvest Ramps from Carriage House Farm.It uses a similar knife technique but removes only stem and leaves.
To get started, you can buy seeds year-round, bulbs in September and October, and bulblets in late winter at Gates Hill Farmrampfarm.com. Once you have established some plants, you can divide and replant annually.
There are about 50 seeds per ounce, roughly 2 per gram. Ramp seeds require a warm period followed by cold stratification to break dormancy. If there is not an adequate warm period after sowing, the seed stays dormant until the second spring. This explains the wide range of 6-18 months to germinate ramp seeds. It’s easy to see how wild ramps get seriously over-harvested.
Collect ramp seeds in August and September
If you were wild-crafting ramps in spring, late summer/early fall is time to pay the piper. Collect seed and scatter it over the patches you dug from. Or collect seed to grow in woodlands at home – without of course, taking too many away from a place they could grow naturally.
Establishing a ramp planting
Ramps grow best in deciduous woodlands with adequate moisture. There are projects to re-establish ramps in a number of regions in the Eastern United States.
NC State Extension, Cultivation of Ramps (Allium tricoccum and A. burdickii) Revised 2025, has lots of reliable information on cultivation, harvesting, pests, and conservation status. This publication cites Forest Farming Ramps. Agroforestry Notes. AF Note 47. 2014. USFS. Although published in 2014, the plants grow the same way, and the publication has useful info on habitat, lifecycle, site selection and preparation for cultivation as a forest understory. The online links, are, naturally not much use now.
PennState Extension: Emerging Research on Ramps; Pugh, Cathryn, & Norman, Calvin. Ramps (Allium tricoccum). PennState Extension, 2023. psu.edu/ramps-allium-tricoccum Cathryn Pugh & Calvin Norman
Many other publications on tree crops, Key Perennial Crops, black walnuts, Asian pears, persimmons, honeyberry, mulberry, serviceberry, aronia, cider apples.
Our hoophouse on solarizing day, August 5. Note we kept the big shadecloth over the roof until we had done the work of installing the plastic over the soil. Photo Ken Bezilla
Solarization Benefits We Hope For
I wrote Solarization of Our Whole Hoophouse on 8/12/26. This summer we decided to solarize the whole hoophouse. We hope to reduce fungal diseases in our winter crops, draw down the weed seed bank, and kill lots of nematodes. We planned to solarize for the whole of August (4 weeks). We started that on August 5, and solarized until September 3, a full 4 weeks later.
A One-Month Break from Usual Hoophouse Work
It was a nice break to do nothing in the hoophouse for a month except run the drip irrigation twice a week. We left the drip tape in place so we could water the soil and keep it alive below the hot zone. It was an unearthly sight to just have a sea of plastic in there, and one of the crew popping in there to turn on the irrigation reported that to was quite surreal to walk barefoot on the hot plastic.
We agreed to use the time to do some infrastructure repairs, and did get a new window made and the other one repaired.
We repaired our big all-encompassing shadecloth and reset the grommets to be a better fit with the spacing of the hooks in the baseboards.
We researched horizontal airflow fans to replace our hippy-rigged box fans, but we balked at the $1000 price tag. Maybe EQIP grants would help?
We did our crop planning for the winter and made a map. We cross-checked the schedule against the map and made sure everything fit. We did some perimeter weeding and laid down landscape fabric.
A Bad Choice Narrowly Avoided
We had the notion that if we had thought of it in time, we might have spread mature compost on the beds before spreading the plastic and killed the weed seeds that landed on the compost pile while we ignored it all summer. We got behind with the mowing, and we know grass and spiny amaranth seeded somewhat on to the pile. Fortunately, we didn’t do that! Sterilized compost has most of its microorganisms killed! Instead, we re-composted the weed-seed-infested pile and got a new pile in the meantime.
Hoophouse soil thermometer showing 100F (38C). Photo Ken Bezilla
De-Solarizing Day
On de-solarizing day we allowed a little lead time (not enough!) to disperse some of the 120F (49C) heat by flinging open the doors and windows. The soil temperature was 100F (38C). The peak air temperature during the month may have reached 140F (60C) although no one wanted to linger in there long enough to really study the thermometer. It had been 80F (27C) before we solarized and is back down to that temperature in as I write this in late September.
Normally we leave the big shadecloth in place over the whole hoophouse until mid-September or so, but this year we wanted maximum heating for the solarization, so we removed it a couple of days after solarizing (when it stopped raining).
We had bought 32’x100’ (9.7×30.5m) plastic which was just right for the footprint of our 30’x 96’ (9 x 29m) gothic hoophouse. We unrolled it down the center bed (it was folded in several concertina folds from each edge to the middle). We mimicked that kind of folding to pack it away.
The first step of removing the hoophouse solarizing plastic: folding the edges to the middle. Photo Ken Bezilla
We started by removing the buckets of rocks we had set round the edges to hold the plastic down. Next we folded both sides to meet in the middle. We got old towels to wipe the underside of the plastic dry. We used some of the drying time to teach broadforking and cultivation and raking to new crew members. We noticed how warm the soil was to our hands.
Wiping the solarizing plastic dry between folds. Photo Ken Bezilla
Next we brought the outer folds in to meet in the middle again, and repeated the mopping operation. Later we thought a sponge mop might have been a useful tool. We used more drying time to start to return things we had stored in a shed during Solarization Month.
Removing hoophouse solarizing plastic: second fold of edges to the middle. Photo Ken Bezilla
We repeated the folding until a simple folding in half made a sensible size for rolling, and ended up with a fat roll of plastic tied up with rope. We wrote on it to deter anyone who might think of using that plastic for any other purpose.
The last fold of the the hoophouse solarizing plastic, making it ready to roll once dried. The dried stems are from a buckwheat cover crop we covered with the plastic. Photo Ken Bezilla.
Disadvantages of Solarizing
I was sad to say goodbye to the hoophouse bell peppers as they were the best we’ve had in years. Usually we keep the peppers until October and do our winter crop planning so that the pepper area is the last planted in winter crops, but we made that sacrifice! For several years our peppers didn’t do well, as the salinity of our soil had got too high. We now do salt wash-downs in September and March. This year the peppers were spectacular! Big plants, huge peppers! Rather disappointing to have to pull them at the beginning of August.
Bullnose pepper in our hoophouse June 27. Photo Alexis Yamashita
Several days into the solarizing I realized with dismay that we had killed off all our zipper spiders and probably their egg cases. The spider corpses were still attached to the framework. Zipper spiders seem to be homebodies. Surely they could have found a way to leave? But mostly they do die at the end of summer, just not on open display. In recent years we have not had any of these spiders outdoors, but many in the hoophouse. They do good work consuming the insects they trap.
Zipper spider on the pepper plants in our hoophouse on September 10 a previous year. Photo Pam DawlingZipper spider egg cases hanging from the hoophouse plastic. Photo Wren Vile
One big disadvantage of our choice was that the work of bed prep and planting in there after de-solarizing was dreadful! We had hot sunny weather, and the allocation of each day’s prep work took 3 hours or more. By lunchtime it was 120F (49C) in there on many days. Exhausting work! But it didn’t seem worth putting the big shadecloth back in place as we normally remove it around September 20.
Hoophouse fall bed prep. Broadforking in plastic sandals is not recommended! Photo Ken Bezilla
Apart from the workers suffering the effects of the heat, the soil also dried out a lot faster, and we had to keep working (no rest!) to break up the big lumps of soil before they became bricks.
We prepped one bed and got ready to sow. We decided to use wire hoops and a 6’ (2m) roll of shadecloth like we do outdoors for lettuce in hot weather. That worked well, although the bed edges did dry out fast, maybe because the paths were still holding heat from the solarizing. So we had to handwater the bed edges daily for a week or so.
Spinach seedlings from pre-sprouted seed in the hoophouse in September. Photo Pam Dawling
One of the first crops we sow is spinach, using seed pre-sprouted in the fridge for 6 days. No way would it have germinated in that hot hoophouse soil! On sowing day, the spinach seed showed little sign of sprouting, but we sowed, watered well, shaded it, and it came up great! The extra attention paid off. This spinach will feed us all winter until about March, as we just harvest leaves. By September 21, all the early crops in that bed had emerged (scallions, Bulls Blood beets, tatsoi, radishes as well as the spinach). We needed to remove the shadecloth from the bed once everything had emerged, so the seedlings didn’t get leggy. 12 hours of daylight isn’t so much.
The perennial weeds growing in under the baseboards did not die. Once we removed the plastic the wiregrass (Bermuda grass) raced across the edge bed and started colonizing the next bed. Fortunately juvenile wiregrass is relatively easy to pull up.
De-solarizing our hoophouse. Note the vigorous wiregrass along the south baseboard. Photo Ken Bezilla
Most years we grow summer cover crops in the hoophouse, thus keeping the soil-life active and adding organic matter. This summer offered no gain of organic matter, which I do regret.
Advantages of Solarizing
We have sowed an outdoor seedbed with things to transplant into the hoophouse in October when we have more beds prepared. Work is progressing well, although we’ve had to scramble some days to stay on track. Because using transplants from outdoors is part of our usual plan, we did not have to make any changes to the beds after the first one, om account of high temperatures.
The advantages of solarizing will become apparent in the next 6 months. Two weeks after uncovering the soil we did find a tiny tomato seedling, but the seed could have been dropped from our clothes after the solarizing month, rather than being a survivor. It was interesting to see it.
For myself, I’m unsure if I’d want to do this again. The advantages are going to have to be huge – like no more nematodes. I’ll write more as the next year unfolds.
Book Review: Saved by Seeds, Embracing Diversity, Adaptation, and Resilience. Chris Smith. Chelsea Green.
“Seeds compress future potential and deep past into miniscule abundant objects” (Dr Courtney Fullilove.)
I always enjoy Chris Smith’s writing and speaking, ever since his first book The Whole Okra. This book includes his love affair with okra, as well as beans, tomatoes, and sorghum seed growing. Also here are six chapters exploring aspects of seed saving, seed sovereignty, preserving purity, encouraging diversity, adaptation and resilience and seed selection. For those drawn in to the seed saving community, the appendices provide details hard to find elsewhere.
Chris’s home in Asheville, NC is a 5-hour drive from the nearest coast and was thought to be a climate haven. A place that would be less impacted by climate change than many other places in the US. But on 15 September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene moved over Asheville and by some measures caused a 30,000-year flood. Many lives were lost as entire towns were swept away. Felled trees devastated the energy infrastructure, flood waters and landslides ruined water distribution, and cell services were unavailable for weeks in some areas.
We cannot avoid climate change and have reached the limits of adaptation to it. We urgently need to work on quick recovery and mitigation.
Utopian Seed Project logo
In 2018 Chris founded the Utopian Seed Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating, researching, and celebrating resiliency in food and farming via crop diversity.
This is not a text book on growing seeds, although it has that information too. It’s an inspirational book on why and what if we challenge the current orthodoxy of heirloom preservation. Chris is neither advocating for heirloom preservation, nor advocating for hybrid seeds, either.
Heirlooms are not the David champion against Goliath hybrids, although Chris admits that publicly critiquing heirlooms is like picking a fight with everyone’s favorite granny. See the book for a comparison of seed savioring vs. seed saving. Don’t hold on to what was but seek what can be.
Seed strains can usefully and pleasantly evolve, with deliberate or accidental crosses, as has been happening over much of human history. The strict heirloom preservation movement is a more recent phenomenon. Chris started there, and moved to embrace diversity, adaptation, and resilience to find varieties adapted to his garden.
Slow adaptation doesn’t pay in this time of climate change. We need seeds that are highly adaptive and resilient (and therefore include more diversity). Back to “landraces”: local varieties of plants or animals that have distinctive characteristics born from development and adaptation over time to the local geographic region and that typically show greater genetic diversity than types subjected to formal breeding practices.
Heirlooms can be sirens, distracting us from what we actually need to seek – varieties that are rare may be rare for a reason! Not everything is worth keeping!
Chris says “I’ve been deep in the seed world for over a decade, and from the start I’ve heard and read (and regurgitated) countless stories of the importance of heirlooms, while exploring diversity still feels fringe.”
There’s a concept in journalism called Hallin’s spheres, developed by Daniel Hallin, which describes how systems of status quo define the boundaries of acceptable discourse. I find the spheres to be a useful framework for thinking about our relationship with seeds.
The Sphere of Consensus generally maintains or protects the status quo and is collectively assumed to be true.
The Sphere of Legitimate Controversy includes areas of acceptable debate, but all remain “serious” topics.
The Sphere of Deviance includes ideas that are either invisible or dismissed. In mainstream circles, these are often considered unscientific, impractical, or purely ideological.
Ideas can move between one sphere and another. “Ideas in the sphere of deviance may be considered deviant just because they disrupt the status quo or current political regime . . . At the time of writing, reporting has documented widespread edits to federal agency websites, including the USDA and EPA, where language related to climate change, diversity, and Indigenous communities has been flagged, removed, or replaced. I think it’s time to be deviant and disruptive.”
In Dr. Bennett’s book Plant Genetic Resources, she wrote: “ I see no special advantage in conservation in the form of seed apart from the very eminent one of convenience, and I think that attempts to find other merits in the “steady state” which seed storage represents, seem to come dangerously near to adopting museum concepts.”
“A freezer full of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket.”
“Bennett and others advocated for seeds to be grown and saved by communities in order to maintain the people-seed connection so that the seeds could continue to adapt and evolve.”
We need in situ preservation for ongoing adaptive change. The world of community-centered plant breeding ecosystems points to a vision of a better world.
“Early American plant collecting and farmer adaptation is often romanticized, but American agriculture was built on stolen land, largely by stolen people, and in some cases, stolen seeds.”
The Emergence Network
“The Emergence Network asks, “What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?” One of the responses to the impact of the green revolution on crop diversity has been to preserve crop diversity. But this style of preservation feels similar to billionaire bunkers or an escape plan to Mars. We can and should preserve seeds, but the systems driving their loss are still very much in place.”
“The 2017 Census of Agriculture reported that 95 percent of US farm producers are white, while a 2018 National Agricultural Workers Survey reported that 83 percent of all farmer workers are Hispanic.”
As well as How-to, the chapters cover the history of seeds in the US, botanical and technical info to help seed-savers succeed, examples of seed-saving for some main crops, an overview of diversity, adaptation and resilience applied to seeds, a step-by-step sequence of exploring seed diversity, and more about genetic diversity, including using ultracrosses.
Here you will find the information you need to prevent accidental cross-pollination, save seeds, dry them and grow them next year. The science you need is there. The explanations are clear and amusing (grow enough of your grandma’s rare bean seeds so you can give some away and dilute the risk of her haunting you).
This book doesn’t shy away from complicated things such as mutations and sports, random genetic changes that occur unbidden and you may not even notice. If you do, you may form an opinion: is this a Good Thing, a Bad Thing or an Interesting Thing? Chromosomes carry genetic information, usually in pairs. Brassica oleracea has 9 pairs, Brassica rapa has 10 pairs. Usually if a B rapa and B oleracea cross the result will not be stable. A mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse and cannot produce any offspring of its own. Occasionally in the plant world, a new tetraploid species (with two sets of paired chromosomes) forms and fertility is restored.
This book explains many details of genetic and epigenetic changes as well as inherited seed biomes and the mysteries of non-neuron-based intelligence. Don’t let these complex ideas deter you. You will marvel at our world after reading this.
Chris Smith, author of Saved by Seeds
Chris says “I am quite a pragmatic (non-woo-woo) type of person, but. . .” I’m similar. Plant communication is strange and amazing, challenging to what we were raised to believe. Chris asks “What is possible if we approach seed saving and plant breeding as a partnership between people and plants?” This could perhaps lead to the development of more resilient crops, very much needed in this time of climate chaos.
“We need genetic diversity at the variety level, especially for adaptive systems. Inbred heirlooms and uniform hybrids aren’t going to cut it.” There is a lot of value in diversity. Regeneratively-Grown Climate Blend whole wheat flour is a blend of unique wheat varieties grown using regenerative practices that improve soil health. Climate Blend showed no drop in yield in the 2021 heat dome over the Pacific NW. Other growers reported a 40% drop. “If we have a chaotic climate, our strategy is to have genetic chaos in the field,”
This kind of diversity is the same as the Landrace concept in indigenous farming: diverse populations that always succeed in growing a crop, depending on the conditions. “The term landrace is used in many contexts but generally it describes domesticated crop populations that have evolved intergenerationally (that is, over long periods) through traditional farming practices and natural selection in specific local environments.”
Front cover of The Whole Okra by Chris Smith
The book includes a description of Chris’s multi-year okra trials, which you can read more about in The Whole Okra.
You can also read in this book about Ultracross collards, Ultracross okra; the development of a Purple Peach tomato with delicious Cherokee Purple flavor; the okra progeny of Puerto Rico Everblush (a round, velvety pod with red blushing and tasty flavor) and Aunt Hettie’s red okra (a robust, chunky okra pod with great flavor and high productivity) and more. Chris is breeding for resistance, flavor and more. Diverse seeds create a breeding ecosystem that can quickly evolve, adapt to local conditions, and bring resiliency.
“We must do everything possible to rapidly mitigate our collective human impact on the climate. If we don’t, it’s game over for life as we know it.”
Community-based seed keeping has declined, and with that we have lost a traditional way of advancing seed genetic diversity. It’s time to reestablish seed-keeping as a community activity: everyone a seed saver instead of a handful of seed saviors; infinite seed options instead of a limited number of “perfect” varieties. Chris reports that he resisted being called a plant breeder for a long time because of the term’s strong association with what he perceived as elitist corporate and academic systems. He came to realize that it’s a term that seed communities should reclaim. “The human history of plant breeding is long and vibrant; its narrowing to a pursuit of profit and purity is a recent phenomenon.” Chris recommends Adam Alexander’s book The Accidental Seed Heroes, which I also enjoyed (and reviewed).
During the rise of Monsanto and genetic modification, independent plant breeders and researchers began discussing how the ideas behind open-source software could be applied to seeds. The idea of protecting seed freedoms with open-source concepts led to the formation of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), which was officially established in 2012. They named four seed freedoms:
The freedom to save or grow seed for replanting or for any other purpose.
The freedom to share, trade, or sell seed to others.
The freedom to trial and study seed and to share or publish information about it.
The freedom to select or adapt the seed, make crosses with it, or use it to breed new lines and varieties.
To protect these freedoms, OSSI created a system for plant breeders to register their varieties with OSSI. When seeds registered with OSSI are shared or sold, the OSSI pledge goes along with them. No one can claim ownership in order to profit from a cultivar and prevent others developing it.
An issue has arisen of indigenous seeds used for private profit in a mostly white-led seed industry. If your beliefs include recognizing seeds as ancestors, or as beings embedded within specific cultural and spiritual lineages, then the idea of seeds as the common heritage of all humankind can be deeply inappropriate. This debate led to the Culturally-Informed Community Seeds Pledge, for seeds from plants that have retained ancestral, traditional, or cultural relationships with specific communities and places of origin.
The pledge states, “I respect the natural rights of seeds and their people by producing CICS-Pledged seeds under the pledge’s culturally-informed practices and code of ethics.” People receiving CICS-Pledged seeds are asked to follow the same guidelines.
Seed Savers Exchange (SSE)identified all the varieties they held that had a tribal affiliation. They then asked First Nations community members if they were okay with their seeds being distributed to non-tribal people. All but one respondent said no, they were not okay with it. So SSE took those seeds out of general circulation and reserved them for Indigenous communities.
Appendix A is a US Timeline of the Biological and Legal Enclosure of Seeds from 1790 to 2018. Until 1924, the US government ran a free seed distribution program, leading to profit-based seed companies. In 1889 The US commissioner of patents had ruled that it would be “unreasonable and impossible” to patent “the trees of the forest and the plants of the earth.” In 2018 The United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which recognized the rights of peasants to maintain, control, protect, develop, save, use, exchange and sell their own farm-saved seeds.
Appendix B provides population sizes and isolation distances for common vegetable crops.
Appendix C lists crop types and promiscuity
Appendix D lists seed companies selling Ultracross seed and other genepool collections.
The 8-page Glossary, a bibliography, an index and chapter notes round out the offerings in this remarkable book.
Thoughtful, inspiring, and of practical help, this is a book to treasure.
Seeds in glass jars. Best to label seeds inside and outside the jar. Photo Broken Banjo
Ezrilla, a favorite cold-hardy lettuce. Photo Wren Vile
Lettuce Seed Inventory and Ordering in September
We’re doing a seed inventory and ordering seeds of winter and early spring lettuce varieties, to get us through to the main lettuce growing season starting in early March. By then we will have received our big seed order for the year.
I’ve updated our Lettuce Varieties List, after perusing catalogs and choosing a few promising varieties new to us.
We’ve decided not to grow romaine lettuces in our hoophouse this winter (and maybe never again), due to finding too many frozen or at least cold damaged stems last winter. We already gave up growing bibbs in our hoophouse some years ago (tip burn and restricted airflow encouraging fungal diseases.). So we’re left with leaf lettuces. We particularly like the Multileaf types, also variously known as One-Cut, Eazyleaf, Salanova, or Cut and Come Again lettuce.
Red Hawk Farm hoophouse planted wall to wall with multileaf lettuces. Photo Pam Dawling
These produce “heads” composed entirely of small and medium-sized leaves – the outer leaves do not grow very big. They are bred for uniformly small leaves, with more texture, loft and flavor than baby mixes and faster harvesting. Transplanted 6″–8″ (15-20 cm) apart they produce 40% more than baby leaf mixes. (We transplant at 10″-12″ (25-30 cm), to improve airflow, so our production might not be as much as 40% more than baby leaf mixes.)
The full-size plant can be harvested as a head, providing a collection of bite-sized leaves. But you get higher yields, particularly in winter, if you cut just one side of the plant (or the outer leaves) and let the plant regrow for future harvests. Growing multileaf heads takes 55 days in spring weather, compared to 30 days for baby lettuce.
Lettuce with sclerotinia drop. Photo Pam Dawling
One of our winter lettuce challenges is sclerotinia lettuce drop, a fungal disease we call Solstice Slime. The Missouri Integrated Pest Management site linked here has lots of excellent photos and info on using an IPM approach to tackling this disease.
https://Image of red and green lettuces including some with Sclerotinia Lettuce Drop. <ipm.missouri.edu/MEG/2016/2/recovered/index.cfm>
Our instructions to ourselves say: “Sow 10 winter varieties, 2′ of each. We want to include Multileaf types. Best slime resistance: Buckley, Ezrilla, Hampton, Brentwood, Merlot, Oscarde, Panisse, Red Tinged Winter, Revolution, Rhone, Tango. Next best: Red Salad Bowl, Salad Bowl. (NO: Hyper Red Wave, Outredgeous, Romaines or Bibbs)” Of our eleven favorite slime-resistant lettuces, eight of them are currently available and in-stock from Johnny’s, High Mowing, or Fedco.
Rhone lettuce. Photo High Mowing Seeds
Two varieties on our wish list seem to be discontinued now: High Mowing is out of Buckley and Brentwood and won’t be restocking. They recommend Rhone as a substitute for Brentwood (we grew that one last winter and liked it a lot). They recommend a new Eazyleaf variety called Ezflor as a sub for Buckley, and we hope to try that.
I have notes from last year to try Frisygo, Rubygo, Ezpark from Johnny’s.
Merlox Red Oakleaf lettuce (resistant to Sclerotinia Lettuce Drop) from Fedco
Merlox Red Oakleaf(resistant to sclerotinia) from Fedco sounds very promising – we hope to try that. It’s not a multileaf type, but any winter-hardy lettuce resistant to sclerotinia, especially a red one, is worth trying.
We’re ordering more Oscarde and Red Tinged Winter seed now in case there’s none available next year. We may have enough, but don’t want to take big risks. Red Tinged Winter is a particularly productive and beautiful variety.
In 2026, we had bad germination on everything except Salad Bowl and Oscarde in our 9/15 sowing. I think this was due to inadequate nursery seedbed care. We’ll try to do better this year.
Lettuce Log
We are getting to the end of sowing lettuces for growing outdoors this year (it’s early September). Those lettuces will be harvested in the second half of November.
I’ve just updated my Lettuce Log, which is a work in progress, aiming to provide transplants for continuous lettuce year round for up to a hundred people. We tweaked some of the sowing and transplanting dates in hopes of a more even supply. Of course, every year is different, and all are unpredictable. Part of my strategy for resilience is to sow four different lettuce varieties each time, hoping several will thrive. It’s worked out very well this year. We had a slight shortage in August. Some bolted and we got no food from those ones.
As you can see from the log, the intervals between sowing dates get smaller as the year progresses, starting with 14 day intervals in January and February, decreasing rapidly in March and April to land at 8 days for early May, then 7 days and 6 days until mid-June when we start sowing every 5 days. In mid-August we sow every 4 days, then 3. We no longer grow winter lettuce in our coldframe (as the hoophouse provides a much better environment), so we can take a break from lettuce sowing for the first half of September. In the second half of September we sow for transplanting in the hoophouse and the greenhouse in late October.
Looking next at the column of transplanting dates and the column just before it (Days to transplant from sowing), you can see the length of time it takes a lettuce seedling to grow to transplanting size decreases from 51 days in January/February to mid-20s in May, then 20 or below right through to the end of August. You might well ask why we don’t just start sowing later in January, or even wait till February, and that would be a reasonable question. Probably the later-sown ones would catch up! We’re just enthusiastic to get sowing!
The number of days between transplanting one sowing and the next also decreases from 10 days at the beginning of the year down to 4 days in September. September plantings will each take longer than the preceding one to grow to harvest size.
The Harvest Start and Harvest Finish columns have the least reliable data. I hope to pay more attention to this part in 2027! My general goal is to harvest at least 100 good lettuces (from a planting of 120) every week from late April to the end of November.
The columns to the right include details about when we need to shade the transplants, when we put ice cubes on top of the seedbed, and when we watch out for cutworms. Those are topics for a different time of year.
If you want to start from scratch figuring out sowing and transplanting dates for a continuous lettuce supply in your climate see this post, which includes my slideshow Lettuce Year Round and our graph of succession planting dates.
This month, I’m writing about unusual greens for late fall and winter meals.
Spring Tower celtuce from Johnny’s Selected Seeds
Celtuce, Stem lettuce
Celtuce is the same crop family as regular lettuce. The difference is that it is bred to grow thick, succulent stalks, and that is the part eaten, raw or lightly steamed or stir-fried. It can also be pickled, or used as a gluten-free pasta substitute. Some people say the flavor of the stem is a crisp, nutty cross between romaine, celery and cucumber.
The leaves are eaten by people who like slightly bitter salad vegetables such as radicchio. Young leaves are edible about 5 weeks after planting and the stems are ready when about 12” (30 cm) tall, or shorter if you prefer. Trim and peel the stems, then chop however you like, rounds or diagonally-cut chunks. Celtuce goes well added late into miso or egg drop soup, or with tofu.
Purple Sword celtuce
Celtuce Varieties
As an Asian vegetable, Celtuce is also known as Aa choy. True Leaf Market (Kitazawa Seeds) has a Purple Sword variety. Green celtuce varieties are more widely available, such as Spring Tower from Johnny’s. I was entertained to discover that the fast-maturing spring lettuce Cracoviensis that I grew when I first moved to Virginia has since been classified as a type of celtuce. The killing temperature of outdoor unprotected celtuce is 20°F (-7°C). It bolts readily as spring starts to warm, but the leaves are not bitter and the stem is the prize!
Cracoviensis lettuce, or “red celtuce” Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Sowing and transplanting celtuce
Sow seed 1/8″ (3 mm) deep, about 1/4″ (6 mm) apart a few weeks before transplanting outdoors. For a continuous supply, sow every 2-3 weeks. Shade flats if necessary to keep the soil surface below 75°F (24°C) until germination. Transplant 8″-12″ (20-30 cm) apart in rows 12″-18″ (30-45 cm) apart.
Short term celtuce storage
Celtuce stems will keep for 3 weeks or so in a ziplock bag in a refrigerator vegetable drawer.
Jewels of Opar photo from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Aka fameflower, this is a heat-loving plant that can provide salad leaves in hot weather, and delicate pink flowers on spindly stems (nice filler for flower arrangements) followed by shiny ruby-red or orange-bronze seed pods, which are also useful in floral displays. Unlike celtuce, this is for those in hot climates (or try it in summer in mid-latitudes where lettuce is hard to keep growing in summer.) It grows 1’-3’ tall (30-90 cm) and as much as 2’-3’ (60-90 cm) wide. It doesn’t seem to suffer if grown thickly in the row. It forms dense mounds of succulent leaves (it’s related to purslane). The slightly succulent oval leaves make good salads or sandwich fillers. They are a nice size too: up to 4” x 2” (10 cm x 5 cm).
Jewels of Opar is a native plant and there are also cultivars such as Kingwood Gold and Limon valued by florists. It grows as a perennial in zones 8-10. It does self sow but not in a problematic way in zone 7. The evening-opening flowers attract bees and other polllinators.
September-sown shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) in January. Photo Pam Dawling
This Asian green has a distinctive flavor. It really is a chrysanthemum, not a lettuce, and not a brassica as most Asian greens are. Formerly called Chrysanthemum coronarium, Ismelia coronaria, Xanthophthalmum coronarium, or Pinardia coronaria, it also known as “garland chrysanthemum” or “chop suey greens” in English. It is known as “Kikuna” in western Japan, “tong hao” in Chinese, ssukgat in Korean and cải cúc or tần ô in Vietnamese.
Most chrysanthemums are perennial with poisonous leaves, but shungiku is an edible annual.
The flavor of the leaves was not at all popular with our crowd. I have written about our trial of this in our winter hoophouse to attract aphid predators in early spring. (We sowed in September, but our winter was too cold for them.) There are various colors of flowers. The flowers on the ones we grew were solid yellow, not banded with other colors. We bought seed from Small House Farm. Bevin Cohen says it does attract bees, butterflies and predatory insects, and would probably do well in the winter hoophouse, and could be provoked into bolting early in the spring.
Shungiku chrysanthemum greens. Photo Small House Farm
Rotations including unusual greens
Having non-brassica greens is a help with crop rotations.
A maximum of 1 year in 4 for brassicas is ideal to avoid disease and pest buildup. When possible, plant one year’s brassicas at some distance from the previous year’s, rather than in adjacent plots. The spread of disease can be reduced by avoiding walking through wet crops and by controlling weeds in the brassica family, such as rock cress, pepperweed, garlic mustard, and wild rocket.
Timing for fall crops
Planting dates for fall crops can be exacting because the cooling weather slows down the plants’ growth, and a day or two delay in sowing date can mean a week or two delay in harvest date.
The number of days to harvest given in seed catalogs is based on spring conditions – plants grow faster in warmer temperatures. To determine when to sow for fall plantings, start with your desired harvest date, noting when would be too late! Consult https://weatherspark.com to estimate when it will get too cold in your location.
Next subtract the number of days from seeding to transplant, plus the number of days from transplanting to harvest for that crop (given in the catalog description), plus the length of your ideal harvest period and another 14 days for the slowing rate of plant growth in fall compared to spring.
Some Eat-All Greens in early November. Photo Lori Katz
Eat-All Greens: Fall Cooking Greens
Eat-All Greens were invented by Carol Deppe, who explains them in her book The Tao of Vegetable Gardening . Carol grows and breeds vegetables in Corvallis, OR, in the Pacific NW, in a different climate zone from my home in central Virginia. Carol grows Eat-All Greens by broadcasting seed of one of her carefully chosen crops in a small patch. When it reaches 12″ tall, she cuts the top 9″ off for cooking, leaving the tough-stemmed lower part, perhaps for a second cut, or to return to the soil.
I decided to modify her idea for Virginia. Fall was a promising time of year for us to try this idea, as our spring planted greens only have a short season before they bolt. And summer is too hot, winter too cold. . . We sowed 9/16, got our first harvest on 10/21, 35 days after sowing, our second on 10/28 and our third on 11/3. Unlike Carol, we sowed our greens in rows side by side, enabling us to hoe the weeds. I doubt Carol has weeds.
You can read which greens we grew and which did best in this series of three posts:
By late December the greens were past their best. I seem not to have recorded harvests between 11/3 and 12/10, but I know there were some. We made a last harvest on 12/10, pulling the roots of the radishes and turnips we had in the mix. The daikons, Crimson Giant and White Icicle radishes did well.
We had a low temperature of 6F on January 5th that winter. Not much was left alive. Always enthusiastic to keep updating my list of cold-hardy winter vegetable crops, I took my notebook and walked the rows a few days later. Here’s a (short) list of the survivors:
Best were Morris Heading collards. Also still showing some life were Purple Top White Globe turnips, Ortolani Market Grower arugula and some (not all) of the Hanover kale (which is after all, a Siberian spring kale, not recommended for over-winter growing). I wrote up our whole Eat-All Greens experience for the January 2016 issue ofGrowing for Market magazine
Eat-All Greens rows with frost in December. Photo Bridget Aleshire
I developed clear ideas of what would I do different if we do this again. No chards, no beets, no kohlrabi. Thinner seed sowing, straighter rows (easier hoeing). Try some other Asian greens? Buy some of the specific varieties that Carol Deppe recommends. Maybe sow a week earlier. And a smaller patch! It’s fun!
