For years I have been mentioning “Miami Peas” in my presentations about cover crops. At the Carolina Farm Stewardship conference I was asked what they are, by Mark Schonbeck, who knows cover crops well. (This is one of the wonderful benefits of attending conferences – meeting peers and mentors, and learning new things.)
I said it is a frost tender cover crop pea of the field pea type (not a southern pea). I can’t remember where I first heard about this cover crop, and we haven’t been using it on our farm, so it was time for a reality check when I got home. I can’t find any reference to Miami peas apart from the ones I’ve made! I believe it’s a type of Canadian field pea, but maybe it no longer goes by the Miami name, or maybe it never did! It’s embarrassing to promote untruths.
This short term green manure smothers weeds well and adds nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil. Peas are often mixed with vetch, oats, or rye as an effective cover crop. The sprouts are delicious and you can even harvest the peas themselves for soup. This annual prefers cool well drained soil and has no frost tolerance. Sow 3 to 4 lbs per 1000 sq. ft.
For clarity, here’s what I now believe:
“Forage pea” and “Field pea” are terms that include the hardy Austrian winter peas, that we do use and are big fans of, as well as frost-tender spring peas, also known as Canadian field peas.
SARE lists Canadian field peas as Spring Peas. SARE is a very reliable source of information. They say
These annual “spring peas” can outgrow spring-planted winter peas. They often are seeded with triticale or another small grain. Spring peas have larger seeds, so there are fewer seeds per pound and seeding rates are higher, about 100 to 160 lb./A. However, spring pea seed is a bit less expensive than Austrian winter pea seed. TRAPPER is the most common Canadian field pea cultivar.
Other spring pea varieties are Dundale and Arvika
There’s also a tropical Pigeon Pea, Cajanus cajan, which can grow in the Southern US, but that looks pretty different, and I don’t think that’s what I meant.
Pigeon Pea flowers, Cajanus cajan Photo Wikipedia
Forget industrial hemp
I have been alarmed at how many small-scale growers are trying industrial hemp. Partly I’m hoping it won’t cause a shortage in locally grown food! I also wonder how well an industrial field crop grows on a small scale, and how the growers would deal with the permits, the processing and the marketing.
Read this report from The Modern Farmer about how industrial hemp is unsuccessful for most growers and how the market is swamped with would-be suppliers:
Check their website for details about other workshop sessions too. I believe my handouts, and those of other speakers, will soon be available on their website.
Click the diagonal arrow symbol to view this full screen., and click the forward arrow to start viewing.
Here’s our list of tasks for October. If you garden in zone 6 or 7, your list might be similar. If you live in a very different climate zone, leave a comment about your list for October, and how many weeks different your area is from ours.
During the month
Weed and thin fall crops in raised beds, especially spinach and kale. Thin carrots to 3”, kale to 12”.
Lettuce Factory: Transplant sowing #37 to fill cold frames; #38, 39, 40, 41, 42 in Greenhouse beds (9″ spacing).
Frost Alert:
Watch the forecast and if frost is expected that night
When frost threatens, harvest all peppers exposed to the sky. Corona is one of our favorite orange peppers. Photo credit Kathryn Simmons
Harvest peppers facing the sky, tomatoes, cauliflowers, corn, cowpeas, limas, eggplant, melons, cukes, okra, winter squash, Blues cabbage (hardy to 25°F), if not already done.
Double hoop and cover: lettuce, celery (hardy to 16°F with row cover).
Spring hoop and cover: squash, cucumbers.
Cover celery to extend the harvest into mid-winter. We like Ventura. Photo credit Kathryn Simmons
Rowcover (no hoops): beans, Chinese cabbage, pak choy, Tokyo bekana, seedlings for hoophouse, collards (hardy to 10°F, but cover keeps quality).
Cold frames: Row cover between 32-28°F. Add lids between 28-15°F. Add quilts below 15°F.
Foliar spray greens with seaweed a few days before frost, to toughen them up.
Use overhead irrigation on peppers & tomatoes at night and some raised beds with tender crops.
Early Oct: Finish sowing spinach, kale by 7th for overwintering (last chance).
Transplantlettuce #37 to fill cold frames; #38, 39 in Greenhouse (9″ spacing).
Roll updrip tape from winter squash and sweet potatoes.
It’s time to roll up the drip tape from the watermelon, winter squash and sweet potato patches, in preparation for disking and sowing winter cover crops. Photo credit Kathryn Simmons
Movestored garlic from basement to fridge – store below 40°F or above 56°F, never 40-50°F.
Mid Oct: Till finished raised beds and sow wheat or rye before the end of the month.
Garlic Beds: Compost (5-6 tractor buckets), till and prepare beds.
Transplant lettuce #40, 41, 42, 43 in Greenhouse as needed, filling any gaps.
Get soil tests done, when soil is not too wet.
5thfall disking: By mid-month disk and sow cover crops where possible. Sow wheat or rye as covercrops – too late for oats or most clovers (Austrian Winter Peas Sept 15-Oct 24). Could sow winter wheat mid-Sept to early Nov (good for small plots that are hard to reach with the tractor) and after sweet potatoes).
Harvestpeanuts mid-late Oct after a light frost. Wash, dry, cure 6 days in solar dryer facing east (don’t heat over 85°F), store.
A well-covered sweet potato patch. Photo credit Kathryn Simmons
Harvest sweet potatoes before soil temps go much below 55°F, or night air goes below 50°F: on 3 mild days – generally in the week that first frost usually occurs (10/7-14). Even a few hours exposed to temps below 50°F will cause chilling injury. (Frost on the leaves does not of itself damage the roots). Clip vines, dig carefully, set tubers in plant-clusters to dry on the soil. Select seed tubers (med-size tubers from high-yielding plants). Save 100 Georgia Jet, 100 Beauregard, 20 each White and Jubilee. Cure in boxes with wood spacers and cover with newspaper, in basement with furnace going full time, for 7-10 days (85-90°F, 80-90% humidity). Use fans. Splash water on floor. Curing is complete when skin is undamaged after rubbing two together. Restack boxes in storage cage.
Harvest white potatoes before the first frost (average Oct 14) if possible. Cure in root cellar at 60-75°F for 2 weeks, with good ventilation, then cool the cellar to lower temperatures: 50°F by 10/31, then 40°F for the winter.
Late Oct:Transplant lettuce #44, 45, 46 as filler in Greenhouse. Double hoop and cover spinach.
Planning: List successes & failures from labels. Prepare Garden Planning Schedule, Crop Review Sheets. Clean labels after info is recorded. Pray for a killing frost. File crop record info. Audit labor budget and plan endgame. Plan main garden layout. Hold Crop Review meeting.
Clearwinter squash, tomatoes and peppers in order to sow cover crops, by 10/24 if possible. Sow rye alone or with crimson clover or winter peas. Crimson clover by 10/14; AWP, wheat by 11/8
6th fall disking: After the killing frost, or end of Oct if no frost: pull up tomato stakes and roll up drip tape, disk nightshades, melons, winter squash, sweet potato and white potato patches.
Check through veg in storage, squash once a week, white potatoes two weeks after harvest.
Perennials:Last mowing of clover in grapes in early Oct, not too short, and not too late in the year. Weed & mulch strawberry beds, and remove extra runners. Renovate if not already done. Start weeding, fertilizing and mulching the blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb and grapes.
Time to say goodbye to the rhubarb until April. Photo credit Kathryn Simmons
October Harvests: Asparagus beans, beans, beets and beet greens, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupes, carrots, cauliflower, celeriac, celery, chard, Chinese cabbage, collards, corn, cow peas, cukes, edamame, eggplant, horseradish, hot peppers, kohlrabi, komatsuna, leeks, lettuce, limas, maruba santoh, okra, pak choy, peppers, radishes, Roma paste tomatoes, scallions, senposai, spinach, tatsoi, tokyo bekana, tomatoes, turnips and turnip greens, winter radishes, winter squash, yukina savoy, zucchini. Could lightly harvest rhubarb before frost.
We’ve managed to work in the garden most of the time we’d planned to this week, even though we’ve had a lot of rain. Since the start of September, in just 5 days, we’ve had 2.4″ and it looks like rain brewing now. Before that we had a week without rain, but before that a week with 2.1″. The soil is saturated, and hoeing anything would be a complete waste of time even if it was possible. We just have to watch the weeds grow in most places, while we focus on what we can do.
Great news on our big carrot weeding – we finished that this morning! I made a new Task List for the week and it mentions a lot of weeding, which sounds daunting. I remind myself that compared to the carrot weeding, most of the upcoming weeding tasks are small. One 90′ bed of squash plants doesn’t take long at all, and even a 90′ bed of turnips isn’t so much!
Tender Grey Zucchini from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
I saw that our fifth sowing of squash has tiny squashes on it, so we’ll add that to our harvest list, along with the number 5 and number 4 plantings. That’s good news, because I want to “do in” the old #3 planting soon. It’s beside the watermelon, which is just about finished, and I’d like to pull the drip-tape out of there, and roll and store it for next year. Then as soon as the soil is dry enough to not get too compressed by the weight of the tractor, we can disk up that area and sow winter cover crops. Winter rye, Austrian winter peas, and crimson clover in this case, for next year’s mid-season sweet corn.
I just ordered two rolls of DeWitt Sunbelt landscaping fabric (weed barrier) for our new strawberry beds. We’re going to try burning holes in the fabric to plant through. The goal is to have more strawberries and fewer weeds. I’ve met and read about other growers who do this, and it seems to me to be our best hope. We can roll up the fabric and reuse it in a year or two, when those strawberry plants are worn out. Other members of the crew are less enthusiastic than me to try this, so we’ll see how it goes. If it doesn’t work well, I’ll be selling the landscape fabric in June 2014, so watch out for it! Really, though, I do expect it to work well and convince the others.
I’m on the point of ordering strawberry plants too. We’re getting plugs of Chandler strawberries from Cottles in North Carolina. (Call or email them for info on plants, mostly their website is about selling fruit and vegetables.) We bought from them in 2010 and the plants did very well. Plugs are the easiest way to grow new strawberries. They are little plants in plastic cell-flats. Shipping is rather expensive, naturally, because you are getting the potting soil too. But in this area, plugs planted now will be harvestable next year. In the past we used to buy bare root plants, which are just how they sound, and are only sold during the dormant season, for planting in early spring. Then you are not supposed to let them flower the first season, so you have to weed for a whole extra year before getting any fruit.
