Cooking Greens in March

 

Cooking Greens to Harvest in Central Virginia in March

Eat Your Greens! More Bolting Greens in the Hoophouse, Sigh.

Outdoors, we can still harvest collards, kale and spinach. We also have very nice spinach in our coldframes, where the crop gets better protection from the cold than the outdoor beds.

From the hoophouse, in the cooking greens department, we still have plenty of Bulls Blood beets (the leaves are getting a bit big and leathery for salads), chard, frills (frilly mustards such as Ruby Streaks, Golden Frills, Scarlet Frills), White and Red Russian kales, and spinach.

In the hoophouse, the extra warmth (at last!) and the considerably lengthening days are causing lots of the greens to bolt. This year our turnips, tatsoi, senposai, and the Koji were all bolting before the end of February, although other years these have not bolted until mid-March (or the later sowings at least). We are harvesting lots of greens, trying to eat them all before we lose them!

We are keeping an eye on our Russian kales, chard, beet greens and later spinach sowings. They usually last till late April or even early May, but this milder winter may mean they will bolt earlier this year.

Cooking Greens to Sow in Central Virginia in March

Outdoors in early March, or preferably mid-February we direct sow spinach if our January transplant sowings failed. This year, we have plenty of transplants. In early March we sow turnips, and give them rowcover.

In the greenhouse in early March, we sow broccoli #3, in open 3” (7.5 cm) flats. This sowing is intended as a gap-filler for the first two sowings, if any plants die after transplanting, or if we don’t get enough plants from the first two sowings.

In late March, we sow sow chard and leaf beet. Leaf beet, also known as perpetual spinach, is a chard, with thinner stems and smaller leaves than most Swiss chard. It is the closest in flavor to spinach for growing in hot weather that I have found. Because it is a biennial, it will not bolt the first year.

In the hoophouse, we do not usually sow any cooking greens. Because the hoophouse is much warmer on sunny days, annual greens (all the brassicas) will quickly bolt. We do better to focus on outdoor planting.

Cooking Greens to Transplant in Central Virginia in March

Outdoors, we transplant cabbage #1 from flats in early March (3/10). These are fast-growing early varieties such as the hybrid Farao (65 days) and the OP Early Jersey Wakefield (63 days). This year we are also trying the larger but slower Early Flat Dutch (85 days)

In mid-March, we transplant collards, mustard, kale (last date 4/1), and senposai. We use rowcover over all our early transplants outdoors, for a few weeks until the weather is milder. By then, we usually need the rowcover somewhere else for new transplants or sowings.

It is important to protect young cabbage and broccoli with 5-8 true leaves from cold stress (<40°F/4.5°C for a few days, or longer at 50°F/10°C). At this stage they are particularly sensitive to cold, which can cause early bolting (and very low yields).

In the hoophouse, after February 20 we use young spinach transplants to fill gaps only in the outer thirds of the beds, leaving the bed centers free for tomatoes, etc. in mid-March.

Other Cooking Greens Tasks in Central Virginia in March

In the greenhouse, we are busy spotting (see February Special Topic) all our plants to give them two weeks of greenhouse protection and 10-14 days in the coldframe before their transplant date. During early to mid-March, this means the senposai, mustard, broccoli and main crop cabbage, as well as collards and kale (if we don’t have enough of those for bare-root transplanting from the hoophouse).

Special Cooking Greens Topics for March: Trap Flea Beetles, Extra Month of Greens in the Hoophouse

A row of mustard greens can be used to lure flea beetles.

They like the pungent compounds in brassicas.  Once you have lured the flea beetles you need to deal with them before you create a flea beetle breeding ground. Flaming the mustard plants is one possibility. If you have poultry that likes eating flea beetles, you could cut off some of the leaves and carry them to the chicken run. Bug vacuums are also a possibility. Another approach is to hold an inverted bucket lined with sticky trap compound over the plants and rap the stems with a stick. If you’re lucky, the pests will stick in the bucket.

Hoophouse transition to give an extra month of greens.

Preparing our hoophouse beds for our early tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash is very different from our fall bed prep for winter greens. We stretch a long tape measure down the center of each bed, and put a flag every 2 ft (60 cm). All our transplanted crops in spring are at this spacing. We then prioritize harvesting the greens which are close to the flags. A day or two before transplant day, we dig a hole at each flagged spot and add a shovelful of compost to each hole. After transplanting the new crop plants, and watering them in, we start harvesting the greens directly to the south (in front of) the new plants. As the plants get larger, we pull more of the greens between the transplants. Anything that is touching leaves is too close and has to go. After a few weeks we also need to harvest the last of the greens, to the north of the transplants, which by then have reached a good size. This method gives us an extra month of greens and initially the relatively large greens protect the small transplants from too much direct sun or from cold breezes. If the night will be frosty, we pull rowcover over the beds – the greens hold the rowcover off the tender plants.