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
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.
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!
This August, our okra has been doing really well. We planted 3 beds rather than our usual one or two, and the harvest was piling up in our walk-in cooler so much that we cut down one of the beds!
Okra does not like to be chilled! We need to deal with the American tendency to store almost everything in the fridge. Chilling injury of okra causes dark damp spots on the pods, which lead to pitting and slimy breakdown.
Okra can be stored at 45°F–50°F (14°C–15°C) in unperforated plastic bags for up to 15 days. This compares favorably with only 2 days without a bag or 7 days in a perforated bag. The plastic bags keep the humidity high.
Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus), a tropical annual in the mallow family, is widely adapted where the frost-free season is long enough. Those in cold climates should choose fast-maturing varieties and transplant into black plastic. In areas with cold nights, okra can only be grown in a hoop-house. Those in hot climates will need to deal with the exuberant growth in midsummer. Okra is heat and drought tolerant and has few serious pests or diseases.
I have written a few posts on okra in recent years.
Okra seedlings in Winstrip 50-cell trays. Photo Pam Dawling
Generally only one planting of okra is made each year, although it is possible to sow in spring and fall in hot climates, using a fast-maturing variety for the later sowing. Or sow only in the summer for a fall crop, and don’t fight cold spring soil temperatures.
In hot climates, okra plants benefit from being rejuvenated in the middle of the summer, by cutting them back (with a machete, or tree loppers) to 6” (15 cm) stubs after the first heavy harvest (perhaps in the fifth week of harvesting) and after market prices start to decline. For large areas, use a tractor mower.
The plants will produce again in the fall, when prices have risen again, and fall yields can be higher than spring crops. Side-dressing at this stage can also boost production. As well as revitalizing the productivity, this process keeps the plants at a manageable height.
Alternatively, to avoid losing all your crop at once, lop progressively along the row, perhaps cutting 5% of the plants each day, starting after they reach shoulder height. Other growers tell of cutting back plants to a height of 4’ (1.2 m), which causes the plant to branch more.
Okra Yield and Harvest
3-9 days after flowering, pods will be mature (it takes 40 days from flowering to mature seed).
For maximum yields it is important to harvest at least every second day. If pods are missed, they will mature and limit the future flowering and therefore the yield. Average yields are about 3–4 tons/acre (6.8–9 t/ha) on bare ground in the South. Yields on black plastic are considerably higher.
For smaller plantings, expect 50–100 lb/100′ (7.6–15 kg/10 m). We grow 90′ (27 m) for 100 people, which provides enough for some pickling too.
Carmine Splendor okra plant. Photo Pam Dawling
We harvest six days a week, using pruners, or a small serrated knife. The stems are quite tough. Some people find their skin is irritated by the spiny leaves and like to wear long sleeves when harvesting. We cut Cow Horn at 5” (13 cm) or bigger. Some years we have attached a piece of card to special pruners for the job, showing the size to cut. Do not make assumptions about toughness without testing with a thumbnail, or snapping off the tip. We’ve also been surprised to find it necessary to show new people the difference between a rounded “empty” pointed flower bud, and an angular firm pod.
Our harvest starts in mid-July and runs until frost, a period of 12 weeks or so. At the end of the season, we find we need to dig out the massive trunks and consign them to a spot on the edge of the woods that we call “The End of the World.”
Pickled Okra
Pickled okra, garlic scapes, beets, kale. Photo by Bridget Aleshire
Okra is very tasty pickled, a good choice if you have high yields and a demand for off-season value-added products.
I found a recipe for shelf-stable pickled okra from Lana’s Cooking. I do think shelf-stable canned pickles, that don’t need refrigeration, are the best. Why fill your refrigerator with pickles when they can sit on a shelf, leaving refrigeration for fresh produce? I’m not paid to mention this website, and I admit I haven’t tried it myself, but this site has all the hallmarks of a good recipe: It has step-by-step instructions on stove-top waterbath canning, beautiful photos and clear explanations, with links to more online resources in case you need them.
Logo for Lana’s Cooking
The ingredients are fresh okra, vinegar with 5% acidity, garlic, dill seed, pure canning salt, and whole black peppercorns. There’s a printable recipe card at the end of the post, for those who enjoy a screen-free kitchen. Fill the jar tightly with okra pods standing on the blunt ends (tips up). Add a whole peeled garlic clove and the salt and spices. If you like hot spicy pickles you can add a little hot pepper. Pack more okra (tips down this time) into the jars, without crushing the pods. Fill the jars with a hot vinegar and water mix. See the recipe for all the details you’ll need. For instance: “Process for 10 minutes for altitudes up to 1,000 ft; 15 minutes for altitudes 1,001 – 6,000 ft; and 20 minutes over 6,000 feet.” Nothing is left to guesswork or chance. Best flavor is achieved 4-6 weeks after canning, and you can store the canned pickles for a year (maybe more, but you will probably have eaten them all before then, so don’t worry!)
Much of this information comes from my book Sustainable Market Farming 2nd Edition.
This month, I’m writing about kohlrabi, an eye-catching and very storable brassica crop. Kohlrabi can be grown in central Virginia where I live in spring and in fall. In cooler climates it can be grown in summer, and in warmer ones through the winter. The winter-kill temperature for kohlrabi grown in the open, with no protection, is 15°F (–9.5°C), similar to red chard, Russian kales, and some varieties of beet, broccoli, cabbage. Kohlrabi production is like that of other brassicas, and the methods of cultivation and harvesting are very similar.
Kohlrabi is an unusual crop that is sure to attract attention at your market booth or be a discussion piece in CSA bags, in your garden and on your table. It is a swollen stem base, with leaves individually sprouting from the globe. When the tap root and leaves are trimmed off, it resembles a sputnik (the first manufactured Earth satellite, in 1957). It is tender and crunchy with a flavor between a cabbage and a turnip. It’s easy to grow and doesn’t wilt as soon as you harvest it. It can be eaten raw (sliced or grated) or cooked, and the leaves can also be cooked and eaten. It stores well, offering flexibility about when it is eaten or sold, which is always an advantage for growers.
Kohlrabi can be direct sown or transplanted, whichever suits you best.
Kohlrabi Crop Requirements
Brassicas grow best on fertile well-drained soil with adequate moisture. They require a lot of potassium, so a sprinkling of wood ash, kelp meal, or granite dust could be helpful if your soil is a bit short of potassium. Calcium, boron, iron, manganese, and molybdenum are also important for good brassica crops – healthy, biologically active soils can usually supply enough of all these. If not, amend as needed. Optimal growing temperatures for most brassicas are 60°F–65°F (15°C–18°C).
Because fall brassicas are transplanted in summer, it’s possible to grow another vegetable crop, or some good cover crops, earlier in the year. An overwintered cover crop mix of winter rye and crimson clover or hairy vetch could be disked in at flowering and followed by a short- term warm-weather cover such as buckwheat, soy, or southern peas, all before the fall kohlrabi. A spring-sown cover crop mix of bell beans (favas), barley, and oats does well before all fall brassicas at Roxbury Farm in New York, supplying all the nitrogen required by the brassicas, which are heavy nitrogen consumers. To minimize pests and diseases, don’t use brassica cover crops.
Rotations Including Brassicas
A rotation of 1 year in 4 is ideal for brassicas 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.
We always plant our kohlrabi in permanent raised beds as we cultivate these with a BCS walk-behind tiller and can work them a bit sooner than the flat fields, where we must wait for the soil to dry enough to use the tractor and disks.
Kohlrabi Varieties
Interest in kohlrabi is growing.I’m encouraged to see that Johnny’s now sells 7 varieties, Fedco has five, Baker Creekhas 6 and High Mowing has 8!
We like the open-pollinated Early White Vienna and Early Purple Vienna (58 days from sowing) and the purple hybrid Kolibri(45 days), which is more expensive but beautiful, quick-growing, and uniform. Purple varieties seem slightly more resistant to cabbage worm and also less susceptible to cracking. A mixture of the white (green) and purple colors looks very attractive, and they’re both white under the skin, so our strategy is to grow 25%–35% purple and mix them in; 4 g = about 1,275 seeds, sows 135′ (41 m). 5,500–9,000 (avg. 6,500) seeds/oz, (200–320, average 230 seeds/g).
Superschmelz kohlrabi (60 days from transplanting) can also be summer sown for fall harvest. It produces 8″–10″ (20–25 cm) bulbs, which are an attractive globe shape and remain tender. The world record (variety not disclosed) weighed almost 97 lbs (44 kg), leaves included.
Kossak (80d to maturity) is a good storage variety that maintains its sweet, delicious, and tender dense white flesh in storage for 2–4 months.
The other type of kohlrabi is the slower-growing giant winter storage variety, such as Gigante (130 days from sowing in spring for late fall harvest). It regularly exceeds 10″ (25 cm) in diameter and 10 lbs (4.5 kg) in weight. Gigante’s crisp, white, mildly tangy flesh doesn’t get woody even when it gets enormous.
A September sowing of kohlrabi. Too late in the year to thin and grow to full-size, kohlrabi makes good salad and microgreens. Photo Bridget Aleshire
How Much Kohlrabi to Grow
We grow 360 row feet (110 m) of fall kohlrabi for a hundred people. We sow in mid-late July, and transplant around July 29–August 12 at 8″ (20 cm) apart in the row, with 9″–10″ (23–25 cm) between rows – 4 rows in a 48″ (1.2 m) wide bed. If direct sowing, you could sow in drills or in stations (groups of several seeds sown at the final crop spacing).
Systems for Growing Kohlrabi Transplants
The same systems you use for growing transplants in spring may also work well for fall: flats, cell-packs, outdoor nursery beds. We use an outdoor nursery seedbed and bare-root transplants because this suits us best. The nursery bed is near our daily work area so we’ll pass by and water it. (Our greenhouse is off to one side of our gardens.) We’re always relieved to close the greenhouse transplant season in May, as we no longer need to water little plants many times each day to keep them alive. Having the seedlings directly in the soil drought-proofs them to some extent; they can form deep roots and don’t dry out so fast.
Other people manage fine with flats in June and July, but we avoid it. If you use flats, it can help to have them on benches in an enclosed shadehouse, or outdoors, above the height of flea beetles. Ira Wallace of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange tells me 3′ (1 m) is high enough. Richard Jones, in his book Beetles, says flea beetles can jump at least 100 times their body length.
For our seedbeds, we use insect netting (ProtekNet) on wire hoops. In warm weather, I prefer netting against bugs because it lets in lots of air. Rowcover also protects against bugs, but provides less airflow, which can make the seedlings more likely to die of fungal diseases in hot weather.
Kohlrabi is a less-common brassica. This is Early Purple Vienna. Photo Kathryn Simmons
Germination of Kohlrabi Seeds
The most challenging part of producing fall brassicas is getting the seedlings growing well while the weather is hot. Unlike some cool-weather vegetables such as spinach, brassicas will germinate very well at high temperatures: the ideal is 77°F–85°F (25°C–29°C), but up to 95°F (35°C) works. Given enough water, summer seedlings will emerge in only 3 days. Once they have emerged, the challenge begins. As well as temperature and moisture in the right ranges, the seedlings need light (very plentiful in midsummer!), nutrients, good air-flow, and protection from bugs. Guarding the plants from bugs is the most challenging for us. We deal organically with flea beetles, harlequin bugs, and, sometimes, cabbage worms. Our main defenses are farmscaping and insect netting.
Search my previous posts for more on pest control. Brassica pests seem less interested in kohlrabi than in other brassicas, and as people are less likely to eat the leaves, there is room to tolerate a certain number of leaf-eating pests, while still having an attractive crop and a high enough yield.
“No visible brassicas” month
In an attempt to break the relentless lifecycle of the harlequin bugs, we now try to have a month from late June to late July with no brassicas visible in our garden. We make sure to mow down the spring broccoli trunks, the kale, and collards and harvest or pull up any other brassicas. We net new transplants and remove the netting a month later, allowing us to hoe and weed.
Brassica seedlings under Proteknet. Photo by Bridget Aleshire
Timing for Fall Kohlrabi
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. Although it can be hard to think about sowing seeds in midsummer, it’s very worthwhile because brassicas develop delicious flavors as they mature in the cooler fall days,. Weeds and pests slow down then, too – once established these crops need little care.
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!), then subtract the number of days from seeding to transplant (21–28), plus the number of days from transplanting to harvest for that variety (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.
Example: Early White Vienna Kohlrabi, 58 days from sowing to harvest in ideal weather.
Consult https://weatherspark.com to estimate when it will get too cold in your location to leave kohlrabi in the ground. Here, in winter-hardiness zone 7a, our average annual minimum temp is 0°F-5°F (-15°C to -17.7°C), although most winters don’t reach those temperatures for very long. Our average winter low is about 25°F – 32°F (-4°C to 0°C).
Kohlrabi is hardy to 15°F (–9.4°C). The temperature is not likely to drop to 15°F (-9.4°C) before the beginning of December here.
Adding 40% more time, allowing 80 days, we could sow kohlrabi in early August and get a crop at the end of October.
Or mid-August for early November.
Or early September for the end of November or very beginning of December.
If you sow too late, use the seedlings for salad. Kohlrabi also makes a good microgreens crop.
Sowing Kohlrabi Seeds
Our rough formula for all transplanted fall brassicas is to divide our final crop row length by our in-row plant spacing and then sow extra to be sure of having enough good ones on transplant day. For kohlrabi to be planted 8″ (20cm) apart, to plant 360’ (110 m) we’ll need 540 perfectly lovely transplants.
We aim to sow 3 seeds/inch (1 cm apart). We make two sowings one week apart, to ensure we have enough plants of the right size. Each week after the first sowing, we weed the previously sown plants, and thin them to 1″ (2.5 cm) apart. We resow to make up the numbers if germination is low.
Young kohlrabi plants. Photo Kathryn Simmons
Transplanting Kohlrabi
We aim to transplant most brassicas at four true leaves (3–4 weeks after sowing). It is better to transplant crops at a younger age in hot weather than you would in spring because larger plants can wilt from high transpiration losses. If we find ourselves transplanting older plants, we remove a couple of the older leaves to reduce these losses.
We transplant in late afternoon or early evening. We water the soil in the plot if it is dry, because it is very important at this time of year to get adequate water to the plants undergoing the stress of being transplanted. Likewise, good transplanting technique is vital. With drip irrigation, you can more easily give a little water in the middle of each day, which will help cool the roots. With only overhead sprinklers, you may not have the option of watering every day.
Bed of young kohlrabi. Kathryn Simmons
Kohlrabi Harvest
Harvest storage kohlrabi while the anchor (tap) root is still round, before it begins to elongate. We harvest our Vienna kohlrabi from October 20 to November 15. For storage cut off the tuft of leaves at the top of the plant and also the wiry root. It’s easiest to cut a disc off the bulb rather than try to cut through at the point between the bulb and the wire, where it is very tough.
Kohlrabi Winter Storage
Kohlrabi can be stored in a refrigerator or refrigerator-like conditions such as a CoolBot, 32°F–40°F (0°C–5°C), 80%–95% humidity. Basically Cold & Moist. Kohlrabi stores well in perforated plastic bags in a walk-in cooler. In a plentiful year, we have eaten stored kohlrabi throughout the winter into early spring.
Cover of Beyond the Root Cellar by Sam Knapp
A Few More Good Resources for Storage Information
Beyond the Root Cellar: The Market Gardener’s Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetables for Off-Season Sales and Food Security, by Sam Knapp
This month, I’m writing about edible flowers, starting with squash blossom beignets.
Which Squash Varieties to Grow for Blossoms
Any summer squash, zucchini or winter squash blossoms can be used for beignets, which are a kind of fritter. Usually the male flowers are used, as harvesting female flowers would eliminate their chance of producing squash. Squash blossoms only live for a day, so you can’t have both blossom and fruit from the same flower.
If you are pulling up or tilling under a row of squash because you have too many, there is no reason not to cook the female flowers as well as the males. Female flowers have tiny squash developing immediately behind the flower. Male flowers have longer thin stems. In the first photo of Gentry yellow squash below, the flower is a male. The immature squash have thicker stems. The second photo shows a female flower with a tiny squash developing behind it. the flower is still fresh, showing you the developing squash will be quite obvious, even at a very young stage.
Gentry yellow squash with a (thin-stemmed) male flower prominent, and several small squashes. Photo Pam DawlingGolden Glory zucchini. Open, disease-resistant plants. A female flower with a tiny squash behind it is in the center of the photo. See the striped cucumber beetle poking its head out of the flower? Photo Pam Dawling
If you want to grow plants mainly for the blossoms, choose a vining zucchini, as these produce the most and the biggest flowers. Costata Romanesca is a good large bush one that also produces tasty zucchini.
Costata Romanesco zucchini. Fedco Seeds photo.
Butter Blossom was a zucchini developed specifically for blossoms, but seems no longer available. The web directs me to Butterbush, which is a compact bush butternut, slow developing and not sounding promising.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds has a short video on this topic:
Harvesting Squash Flowers
One trick is to be ready to harvest blossoms early in the season when the plants produce an initial flush of male flowers. Don’t kill your golden goose, though, by removing all the male flowers and leaving no chance of pollination. You can leave some male flowers on the plants once there are female flowers, and/or use a paintbrush to transfer pollen from male flowers to the stigmas of female flowers as soon as they open in the morning. Don’t dally, as once the female flowers close, you’ve missed your chance.
Harvest the blossoms early in the morning, while they are still crisp. You can use either closed or open flowers for beignets. The advantage of open flowers is their size compared to unopened flowers. Their disadvantage is that they might contain insects, so be sure to check and shake our any you find.
Snip through the stems with pruners and gently settle the flowers in a very clean tote. Some cooks remove the stems and sepals before dipping in batter, but you can use the stem as a handle and remove it later. Or let the diners deal with it. Don’t wash the flowers, as this can make the batter soggy. Simply discard any grubby flowers.
I’m no cook, but basically you make a batter, as simple or fancy as you like, using two cups of plain flour for around 15 open flowers. Batters with and without eggs work equally well, I am told. The batter should be a little thinner than pancake batter.
Heat an inch or more of oil in a pan, dip the blossoms in the batter until well-coated, then fry in hot oil for a few minutes, turning as needed. Drain, salt, and serve hot. Cooked beignets can be frozen for reheating later, although to me that sounds a poor choice compared to eating them immediately!
Some recipes suggest you use either a tempura type batter, or chili relleno style fluffy batter. Some recipes stuff the flowers before frying with soft cheese, garlic, herbs, Parmesan.
These are a fun, delicate treat, not a belly-filling farmer dinner, and we all need some fun in our lives!
Tiny squash can also be used for beignets, and squash vine tips can be cooked the same way or stir-fried without batter.
Squash vine shoots for cooking. Photo Irena Hollowell
Other Edible Flowers
There are plenty of other edible flowers, mostly used in salads or as garnishes, without cooking them. Johnny’s has a good selection and also a 4-page printable guide. Both links are full of inspiring photos. They recommend nasturtiums, calendula, bachelor’s buttons for salads; marigolds, dianthus and violets for garnishes; mint, basil and borage flowers to flavor summer drinks; beebalm, anise hyssop and marigolds to add zip to desserts. Arugula, fava bean, pea, mustard and strawberry flowers also feature in their Edible Flowers Guide, along with more herb flowers, snapdragons, stocks, sunflowers (I just learned the whole sunflower plant is edible, which conjures up quite an image!).
Nasturtiums planted in with squash to deter pests. Photo Pam Dawling
Garden Betty, whose writing I am quite a fan of, has a huge and beautiful post on edible flowers, including many not yet mentioned here: alyssum, amaranths, begonia, catmint, celosias, chamomile, clovers, cosmos, dahlias, dandelions, daylilies, dianthus, echinacea, evening primrose, fuchsia, phlox, gardenia, gladiolus, hibiscus, hollyhock, honeysuckle, hostas, impatiens, jasmine, lilac, nigella, okra, orchids, petunias, plumeria, primroses, roses, stocks, tulips, yarrow, and zinnias.
Yarrow flowering in our hoophouse, to attract beneficial insects. The flowers are edible. Photo Pam Dawling
I recommend this site and its clear photos, for anyone venturing into new flower-eating territory. Garden Betty (Linda Ly) describes the flavor profile of each plant. Her list is compiled from all the flowers she’s personally tasted over the years.
She cautions about harvesting and eating flowers you don’t know, or that might be contaminated with pesticides. Start with small quantities if you are uncertain of the ID, especially if you tend towards allergies and sensitivities. She gives the Latin botanical names, so you can be sure of any you are growing from seed.
This site also gives links to books, such as her The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook, her How to Eat the Parts of Plants You Didn’t Know You Could Eat and 28 Edible Weeds and Invasive Plants That Are Actually Delicious, for sale as a digital downloads.
It’s carrot planting time for many of us from spring to late summer, and many growers are searching my site for information. Here are quick links to all of my many carrot posts over the years. Inevitably there is some overlap.
After these links there are seasonal details on planting carrots.
Carrot Seed Viability: you may be wondering if you can still use the seeds leftover from last year. Carrot seeds are generally good for 3 or 4 years if you have stored them carefully. Click the link above to read Factors influencing seed viability and Seed germination testing
See my slideshow on Succession Planting. We sow carrots from mid-February to August. Here’s Video of me presenting Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests ten years ago at New Country Organics (I’ve updated the presentation since then);
Sowing carrots: Surprisingly to me, I have not written much about sowing carrots in spring. From Root Crops in February: Carrots do very poorly with competition from weeds or too many other carrots. You can make use of the Stale Seedbed Technique, preparing the bed ahead of time, and flaming or hoeing one or more flushes of weeds as they germinate.
A young carrot bed in April, ready to hoe and thin. Photo Pam Dawling
Carrots are small seeds, needing a fine tilth (small soil particle size and good texture – not likely to crust or blow away). Good information on crop spacing for maximum yields, or biggest vegetables is in an out-of-print book, The Complete Know and Grow Vegetables by JKA Bleasdale, PJ Salter, and others. Buy it used.
For maximum total yield of carrots, they recommend 1.5” x 6” (4 x 15cm). You get medium-sized carrots. For early carrots go with 4 x 6” (10 x 15cm) to minimize competition and get rapid growth. If you want to have rows more than 6” (15cm) apart, calculate the area of these optimum spacings, then divide by your chosen row space. For example, if your rows are 12” (30cm) apart, the carrots can be as close as 0.75” (2cm) if total yield is more important than individual size, or 2” (5cm) for fast early carrots. We do five rows in a 4’ (1.2m) bed, so the rows are about 10” (25cm) apart, with the outer rows 4” (10cm) from the bed edge.
One of many wheelbarrows full of compost we spread every year. Photo Wren Vile
We aim to spread compost 4-6 weeks before planting, rototill 2-4 weeks before planting, and prep the bed a week or two before. This is more time than we allow later in the year, but in early spring it’s good to seize the opportunities that arise and not take the weather for granted.
This means in January we compost and till beds for our first two beds of carrots, to be sown February 14 and February 28.
In the first half of February we till and spread compost for more carrots (planting dates March 9 to 15).
In the second half of February, we compost the third carrot bed and till the ones we already composted.
Once we get to March, day length has improved and temperatures are starting to climb. There is a noticeable increase in the rate of germination and growth (unlike our February sowings, which are rooted in faith and optimism!).
In early March we till the third carrot bed.
All being well with the weather, we sow carrots #3 in mid-March
In late March, we sow carrots #4
Carrot beds in June. Bridget Aleshire
There’s also a full chapter on carrots with all my information in my book Sustainable Market Farming, 2nd edition. It includes info on varieties, and which types are better for which soils, pests and diseases, crop rotations, cover crops before and after carrots, and more.
Preparing for Carrot Sowing
Planning for a continuous supply; see my slideshow on Succession Planting. Carrots have a much longer window for harvesting than most carefully planned successions, so you can be a lot looser in your planting dates. Mainly, just grow enough! After the spring start-up plan, we sow carrots once a month in April and May. If we need to, we sow once a month in June and July, although summer-grown carrots do not taste as sweet as those grown in cooler weather. We finish with a big sowing at the end of July or early August, 10–12 weeks before the usual first frost, to be harvested in November and stored for winter eating.
Decide how many to plant. Yield: 100 lb/100′ (150 kg/100 m), 30,000 lb/acre (34,000 kg/ha)
Calculate the amount of seed required; Carrot seeds are 175,000–600,000 (avg. 288,000)/lb, 18,000 seeds/oz, 625 seeds/g. 3,000 seeds (0.2 oz, 6 g)/100′ (30 m), 1 seed/cm. 625 cm/g, 600’/oz, 9,600’/lb, 2.5 lb/acre (at 30 seeds/ft in rows 24″ (60cm) apart). 720,000 seeds/acre.
Success with Planting Carrots
Before you plant, understand soil temperature requirements: Use a soil thermometer! Flag its location so you don’t lose track of it! Measure at 4″ (10 cm) deep at 9am. Carrot emergence takes3 days at 50°F (10°C), 10.1 days at 59°F (15°C), 6.9 days at 68°F (20°C), 6.2days at 77°F (25°C), 6 days at 86°F (30°C)and 8.6 days at 95°F (35°C).
Soil thermometer. Worth its weight in gold.
Old books warn against using manure before sowing carrots as it will make them fork. This refers to uncomposted manure, not compost. Compost will increase yields and even reduce the culls with some varieties (research by Dan Brainard and Corey Noyes, at Michigan State University). Compost not only increases the organic matter in the soil but also suppresses some diseases and nematodes (which can cause forked carrots)
Seed spacing and depth: for carrots, aim to sow 30 seeds/ft (1/cm), only 0.25″–0.5″ (0.6–1.2 cm) deep. Close the furrows and tamp down the rows with the back of a hoe or rake. The goal is to get good contact between the seed and the soil. Keep the soil surface damp until the seedlings start to emerge.
We sow a few Indicator Beets at the beginning of the bed. Beets germinate
We sow “indicator beets” with our carrots so that we know when to flame-weed them Photo Kathryn Simmons
one day sooner than carrots at almost any temperature. When we see the red loops of the beet stems emerging, we know it’s the day to flame weed the carrots. (From Workhorse Crops for March)
Carrots do very poorly with competition, so try to start early carrots in a bed that had only light weeds the year before. Later sowings can make use of the stale seedbed technique, where the bed is prepared ahead of time and one or more flushes of weeds are germinated and flamed or hoed off.
Carrot row thinned to 1 inch. Kathryn Simmons
Growing Great Carrots: Thinning and Weeding
Remember to thin carrots as soon as you can see them well enough to do so. We usually hoe between the rows first, then crawl along thinning and weeding. It does take time! But you won’t get good carrots without thinning, unless you either have a precision-seeder that drops one seed per inch, or pelleted seed which you can sow at one per inch.
Precision seeders like the Jang are expensive, but worthwhile if you need to use it every week. Pelleted seed costs more than raw seed, and its big advantage is traded off for two other disadvantages: The soil has to be kept well-watered until germination or else the clay coating will imprison the seed forever, and the seed does not store for long – don’t keep any over for next year.
It pays to sow in parallel rows an even distance apart. This makes for fast and effective hoeing with fewer mistakes.
Most summer squash and zucchini are in the species Cucurbita pepo. They are easy to grow —the main challenges are pests, diseases, and moderating the quantities available. These crops can crank out high yields of a vegetable almost everyone likes.
Where insects are a problem for summer squash, vigorous plants of other squash and gourd species can bear all season in those areas. Growers with bad pest problems can try:
Tromboncino squash (60d OP), a C moschata squash; Light green fruits grow long, curving to a bell at one end. Vigorous vining plants that can be grown on a trellis. Harvest at 8”-10” (20-25 cm) long when the flavor is fine and sweet. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. On the coast of France and Italy, Tromboncino d’Albenga and Trompette de Nice were traditionally grown as summer squash and a few fruits left to ripen for winter storage.
Zucchino Rampicante (60-70d OP) C moschata; Italian heirloom, vigorous vining squash; long slender 15” (38cm) fruit with a bulb at the bottom. One of the best eating summer squash: very tender, mild tasting. The long neck makes great slices with no seeds in them! Insect and disease resistant. Baker Creek.
Long de Nice (C moschata); Fruit range in size between 10-20 lbs (4.5-9 kg) each with a long neck and fine-grained flesh with few seeds. Vines spread at last 15ft (4.5m), consider trellising. One or two full-grown squash per vine, but you’ll get more if you harvest them immature. Generally not as long as Rampicante or tromboncino. Baker CreekLong de Nice squash. Baker Creek
Luffa(Luffa acutangula and aegyptiaca vegetable sponge, 65d OP, zones 7-13), Very long vines, consider trellising. Tastes similar to summer squash when harvested at 4” (10cm) for eating raw, pickled, cooked with other vegetables. The mature fruits are harvested when the skins dry brown, to use as vegetable bath sponges or pot scrubbers, with an incidental seed harvest at the same time.
Maturing Luffa. Seed from Survival Garden Seeds
Cucuzza (Lagenaria siceraria, snake or serpent gourd, 60-75d OP grows in zones 2a-11b.) Cucuzza edible gourds have more resistance to squash bugs. Just be sure to harvest them relatively small (while skins can be pierced by a fingernail, 12” (30cm) max) for good flavor. These are very vigorous, sprawling plants, which, happily, are also prolific. One option is to plant a row of regular zucchini alternating with these bigger plants —when the zucchini succumb to disease, the sprawlers will take over. Vines can reach 25’ (7.6m)
Cucuzza Seeds from Italy. Growitalian.com
Lunga Da Pergola (Lagenaria siceraria, 60d to 6” (15 cm) fruit). Edible gourd, vigorous vines. At its best small, about 6” (15cm) long, when fruits will be slightly sweet and tender. Fruit can grow up to 5’ (1.5 m) long. A very productive strain with white mottling on the gourd and leaves.
Serpent Gourd Lunga di Pergola. N E Seeds
Some zucchini varieties are especially attractive to cucumber beetles and may be grown as a trap crop: Cocozelle summer squash, Seneca, and Dark Green zucchini. When beetles accumulate in the trap crop, flame it or till it in.
Crop Requirements for Squash and Gourds
Summer squash thrives on high levels of organic matter. Although only a light to moderate feeder for nitrogen and phosphorus, it requires quite high levels of potassium. Foliar seaweed spray can be used to make up for nutrient deficiencies. This crop does best with plentiful, but not excessive, moisture. That said, be careful not to overwater the seeds before they germinate, or they will rot.
This frost-tender warm-weather crop germinates at 60°F (15.5°C) minimum and does best at 85°F (30°C). Germination takes 5–10 days. During growth the ideal temperatures are 75°F–85°F (24°C–30°C) in the day and 65°F (18°C) at night.
Sowing Squash and Gourds
Seed can remain viable for up to 5 years, if stored in a cool, dark, dry place. Seeds should be sown 0.5″–1″ (1–2.5 cm) deep, 6″–12″ (15–30 cm) apart, in widely spaced rows if you are not trellising. Sow deeper in hot weather, when it helps to turn on the drip irrigation, and sow each seed right by an emitter. Water at sowing, then not again until seedlings emerge. For a slightly earlier harvest, you can pre-sprout the seed.
Covering the row with netting will keep the pests away. If possible, use hoops or a rope above the row, pulled taut between stakes, to hold the netting above the leaves, as cucurbits are susceptible to abrasion damage. Remove the netting as soon as you see female flowers, to allow for pollination.
Transplanting Squash and Gourds
When transplanting squash, take care to disturb the roots as little as possible. If you sow 2 seeds in each cell, be sure to pinch off the smaller one as soon as possible to remove the competition.
As soon as the plants have one or two true leaves, at about 3–4 weeks of age, transplant in a mild spell, burying the entire stem below soil level, up to the seed leaves (carefully!) to protect it from damage. Cucurbits started indoors grow long spindly stems, which are quite fragile. Make the hole deep enough, slip the plant out of the container, perhaps on the blade of a knife, pop it into the hole, and close up firmly.
Plant 2’–3′ (60–90 cm) or more apart in the row. Transplanting allows a crop to be established earlier than would be possible with direct sowing in spring. Alternatively, a crop can be gained from a summer window in the planting schedule for a bed, after an early spring crop. Transplants do not grow as sturdy a root system as direct sown squash do, so I would not recommend transplanting if direct sowing is possible.
Pests of Squash
Squash bugs are probably the most common pest. The adults are long gray insects that emerge from overwintering in wooded areas once temperatures reach about 70°F (21°C). They are more attracted to pepo squash than they are to moschatas. Plants attacked by squash bugs look baked to a crisp, with curled bronzed leaves. Squash bugs can do a lot of direct damage to leaves, and they also vector yellow vine disease. They feed on young seedlings for preference and lay groups of spaced bronze eggs on the undersides of leaves. The eggs hatch in 10 days, and the nymphs suck sap from the plants. There are many generations each year, and numbers quickly build. Drop handpicked adults into soapy water rather than crushing them as the smell of the crushed bugs attracts more. It is also possible, but not easy, to crush the hard-shelled eggs. An alternative is to tear off egg-covered leaf pieces and drown the eggs in soapy water. Squash bugs can be trapped overnight under boards on the soil near the plants —in the morning, lift the boards and collect the bugs.
For more info on squash bugs, see the ATTRA publication, Squash Bug and Squash Vine Borer: Organic Controls, that includes pest lifecycles, systems-based management practices, mechanical and physical practices, and biological and botanical controls. Buckwheat can be interplanted to attract tachinid flies that parasitize squash bugs.
Striped cucumber beetles are our worst pests some years, even compared to squash bugs. In the hoophouse, we handpick the adults inside squash flowers in the mornings while they are still sluggish. Long pointed tweezers are our tool of choice. Our hope is that, by battling this first generation, we will reduce numbers for the rest of the season. To attract beneficial insects that are predators or parasites of the cucumber beetle, grow buckwheat, cilantro, dill, or winter peas near the squash plants, timed so that they flower when the rowcover or netting is removed from the squash plants. Another method of reducing pest attacks, especially useful after flowering, is Surround kaolin clay spray. It does need renewing after rain or overhead irrigation. If all else fails and action is imperative, Spinosad will kill them (and some other insects too).
The adult squash vine borer is a fairly large orange-and-black fuzzy moth with glassy black wings. It is active in May and early June, and there may be a second generation in late July/early August. The small flat brown eggs are laid singly at the base of the stem. The larvae hatch after 1 week, and are white with a brown head. They spend 4–6 weeks in the stem, eating upwards and growing to 1″ (2.5 cm) in size. Then they dig into the soil and pupate for the winter.
Plant symptoms include wilting of the whole plant and stem holes surrounded by frass (caterpillar poop). To save the plant, act at the first sign of trouble and pick out the grub, then pile soil over the injury to help the plant recover. Injecting Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) into the stem is another solution. For prevention, rotate crops and use netting or rowcover over plants until flowering. Another technique to try is pinching out the growing tips of the vine when it is 1’–2′ (30–60 cm) long, which causes the plant to branch and increases the odds that some part of it will survive.
Diseases of Squash and Gourds
I haven’t yet done a Plant Diseases of the Month Series, so I’ll include info here.
As always, aim to avoid diseases by ensuring good air flow and appropriate water levels.
Powdery mildew (PM) (a white coating starting on older leaves) is a common fungal disease in hot dry weather. Drip irrigation helps reduce the spread of PM, compared to overhead irrigation.
Downy mildew (yellow angular spots with leaf curling and a purplish cast to the undersides of leaves) happens in cool wet weather late in the season, and plants can recover if the weather heats up.
Anthracnose (dark brown spots on the leaves and round sunken spots on the fruit) is a fungal disease worse in warm wet weather from mid-season onwards.
Angular leaf spot, Pseudomonas syringae pv. lachrymans (browning of the leaf between the veins and small round spots on the fruit) is a bacterial disease more common in cool damp weather. The symptoms can resemble those of downy mildew.
Black rot/gummy stem blight (Didymella bryoniae) is a fungus occurring with wet soils, in wet weather (cool or warm).
Mosaic viruses can be spread by aphids. Succession cropping helps evade these.
Bacterial wilt (Erwinia) causes sudden dramatic wilt and death of the whole plant. It is spread by cucumber beetles.
This post is adapted from a chapter in my second edition of Sustainable Market Farming, with some additional information on squash varieties.
The second edition of Sustainable Market Farming, release April 15, 2025
Young sweet corn plants in July. And solar panels. Photo Bridget Aleshire
It’s sweet corn planting time for many of us again and many growers are searching my site for information. Here are quick links to my many sweet corn posts over the years. Inevitably there is some overlap. There’s also a full chapter on sweet corn with all this information in my book Sustainable Market Farming, 2nd edition.
After these links there are seasonal details on planting sweet corn.
Success with Planting Sweet Corn: Before you plant, understand the 6 sweet corn genotypes and avoid producing starchy unpleasant-flavored corn caused by planting warring types; soil temperature requirements; amount of seed required; seed spacing and depth; an overview of our corn-growing methods; sweet corn crop requirements; dealing with weeds; transplanting sweet corn; my slideshow on Succession Planting.
Preparing for Sweet Corn: Crop rotations; planning for succession plantings for a continuous supply; planning preceding cover crops for next year; problems with living mulch; under-sowing for a follow-on cover crop; caring for growing sweet corn; staying on top of weeds; sweet corn growth stages.
Sweet corn growth stages. University of Illinois Extension
Growing Great Sweet Corn: More on caring for sweet corn as it grows, including resources; under-sowing sweet corn; succession planting, including a link to my slideshow on this topic; last worthwhile sowing date; fast-maturing sweet corn varieties; sweet corn season extension including transplanting; pests and diseases of sweet corn; harvesting sweet corn.
Sweet Corn, Potatoes and Okra: includes my slideshow on succession planting, sowing with an EarthWay seeder; using a wheel hoe between corn rows; hoeing sweet corn; our sowing and harvest start dates; dealing with raccoons, skunks and curious cats.
Our first sweet corn of the season. Bodacious Photo Pam Dawling
Rain, corn and beans: Seed spacing with year-old seed if you must; sowing by hand; Video of me presenting Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests ten years ago (I’ve updated the presentation somewhat since then); sowing transplants in Styrofoam flats and floating them in a tank of water. The photo got lost from that post, so here it is now.
When harvesting our fifth planting of sweet corn (Bodacious, Kandy Korn, Sparkler and Silver Queen), I beefed up our raccoon traps following the suggestions from Joanna Reuter of Chert Hollow Farm, staking the traps down and smearing peanut butter high on the stake in the back of the cage. Well, the first morning I caught a small, very white skunk! I let it out carefully. The next morning I caught the same skunk again. And the third morning, again. The little animal never seemed ferocious or scared, more curious about how to get out. I was more scared than it was, I think! I bet you’re wondering how I released it. Well, I gently laid a large plastic bag over the top and nearside of the trap (just in case. . . ) and gingerly unlatched the door. Then I used a strong stick to lever up the door a bit, as it is a tight fit. Then I bravely put my foot on top of the trap and pulled the door up by hand. Then I dropped the stick and ran! Later the skunk ambled out. By the third morning I think it was happy with the arrangement. A small can of cat food is a big meal for a small skunk, after all. But I was tired of the game, so I took the traps away. Raccoons don’t seem to like Silver Queen as much as Kandy Korn anyway, maybe because the husks are tighter and harder to rip off. Actually I like Kandy Korn better than Silver Queen too! Meanwhile we are working on setting up a temporary electric fence around the last corn patch, with our new solar charger.
A Way to Garden
For a valuable second opinion, see Margaret Roach (who grows in Massachusetts) in A Way to Garden:
Ensure you have compatible sweet corn varieties, and that none of your seed is older than one year.
Plan where your corn will go, and calculate how much seed you need.
Use a soil thermometer! Flag its location so you don’t lose track of it! Sweet corn needs warm soil. Catalogs usually indicate the soil temperature (measured at 4″ (10 cm) deep at 9am) recommended for each variety. 50°F (10°C) is the absolute minimum, and applies to treated seed and OP or (su) varieties only. 60°F (15.5°C) is better for most, and 65°F (18°C) or higher is required by some varieties.
Corn has no tolerance of frost, but escape from a late spring frost is possible if the seedlings are less than two weeks old and not yet very tall, as the growing point may still be underground. Thus, in a spring that promises to be warm and dry, it is possible to risk an early planting as much as 2-3 weeks before the last frost date. Having some transplant plugs for a back-up helps reduce the risk level.
Common phenology signs for the season being advanced enough to sow corn are that white oak leaves are the size of squirrels’ ears and that ragweed is germinating.
Sow shallowly 6” (15 cm) apart, in rows you’ll be able to walk between. 30”-36” (76-92 cm) works well. Close the furrows and tamp down the rows with the back of a hoe or rake, or do the “soft shoe shuffle” with your feet. The goal is to get good contact between the seed and the soil.
Water as needed.
Emergence takes 22 days at 50°F (10°C), 12 days at 59°F (15°C), 7 days at 68°F (20°C), and 4 days at 77°F (25°C).
Our first sweet corn harvest of the year. We like to leave the husks in the field, but it does mean they need good washing before cooking. Pam Dawling
Long de Nice squash. Baker Creek
