Cooking Greens in July

 

Early spring cabbage with alyssum to attract beneficial insects.
Photo Pam Dawling

Here in central Virginia in July, we have chard and spring cabbage for cooking greens, the last broccoli, and some collards early in the month.

Sowing the fall greens is well underway. We also start transplanting cooking greens this month – it’s very hot, but this is when we need to do it, to have the crops mature before it gets too cold for them.

Cooking Greens to Harvest in Central Virginia in July

See June’s Cooking Greens post for more about chard, a biennial that will not bolt in the summer heat. We can eat it whenever we like; it is always there, always harvestable, from late May to late December. It’s so easy to care for, and nothing bad happens if we ignore it. Some years it even survives our winters.

Our broccoli comes to an end in early July, when it gets bitter, and has only tiny side-shoots left. We are harvesting our cabbage. We sowed early cabbage in our greenhouse in late January and transplanted it around March 10. We sowed our main-crop cabbage February 7 and transplanted around April 1. In our early cabbage, we grew Farao (F1, 60d, 3lbs, 1.5 kg), Early Jersey Wakefield, (OP, 63d, 2-3lbs, -1.5 kg)), and flat, mid-sized, Tendersweet (F1 71d). For the maincrop, we have more Farao and Early Jersey Wakefield, along with Red Express, Kaitlin and Tribute.

A cabbage, with curled back leaf on the head, showing maturity.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

We store cabbage beyond our immediate needs in net bags in the refrigerator. None of these spring varieties are long-storers, but they should see us through the summer until mid-October when we have fresh outdoor fall cooking greens. We eat a 50lb (23k) bag of cabbage each week, so we aim to get 12 bags into storage, by the time the harvest ends in mid-July. Additional cabbage beyond the 12 bags (if any) gets made into sauerkraut. Our main sauerkraut making season is when we harvest the fall cabbage, which is usually a bigger planting.

That’s it for cooking greens harvests here until late August, when our fall planting of Senposai will start to yield. Some years we have sowed Tokyo Bekana or Maruba Santoh for a quick harvest. Both are very fast growing tender chartreuse (yellow-green) leafy plants that can be served chopped and lightly cooked. Tokyo Bekana a Brassica rapa chinensis type and takes 45 days to full maturity. Maruba Santoh, Brassica rapa pekinensis, is similar to Tokyo Bekana but less frilly. Fairly bolt tolerant. Only 35 days to maturity.

We have sometimes planted these for salad leaves to get us through late summer lettuce shortages. The wide white stems of the mature plant provide crunch for salads, along with the delicate leaves; or the baby leaves can be harvested. Both have a mild flavor and even so, I have been surprised that many people don’t even notice they are not eating lettuce – I suppose enough salad dressing masks all flavors!

An adolescent Tokyo bekana plant.
Photo Pam Dawling

Cooking Greens to Sow in Central Virginia in July

In May, I described our planning for our fall brassica nursery seedbeds. In June I described our schedule of weekly sowings, hooping, netting, watering and weeding. Weeks 3-6 fall in July, so now I’ll tell you about those. Weeks 7 and 8 are in August.

We sow the fall brassicas weekly throughout July – see the Special Topic for June for all the details. Each week we resow anything from the previous week that did not germinate well or became casualties. We sow these top-ups for any varieties with germination less than 80%, in a fresh row, with a new label, to avoid confusion.

In week 3 of our Fall Brassica Transplanting Schedule, (the first week of July) we sow broccoli and cabbage for the second time (insurance!), and senposai, Yukina Savoy and Chinese cabbage (if we are growing it that year) for the first time.

In week 4, (the second week of July) we sow the Chinese cabbage, senposai and Yukina Savoy for the second time, and collards for the first time. If we have to resow broccoli or cabbage, we choose the faster-maturing varieties.

In week 5 (the third week of July) we sow collards for the second time. Week 6 has no new sowings, only resows for anything that didn’t come up well..

It’s also possible in warmer areas to sow Swiss chard or leaf beet for a fall crop. This might be a useful Plan B if some other crops have failed. The last planting date is ten weeks before frost. The winter-kill temperature is 15°F (–10°C) for multi-colored chard, 12°F (-11°C) for red chard and 10°F (-12°C) for green chard (Fordhook Giant). Asian greens can also be direct-sown this month. We prefer transplants for several reasons: it’s easier to protect close-packed seedlings from pests than whole beds; it gives us extra time to grow a round of buckwheat as cover crop in the beds, and improve the organic matter and reduce weeds.

A netted bed of brassica seedlings on July 4.
Photo Pam Dawling

Cooking Greens to Transplant in Central Virginia in July

Now is the time to prepare our plot for the fall broccoli and cabbage transplanting as I described in June, mark out the rows and start transplanting.

We aim to transplant most brassicas at 4 true leaves (3-4 weeks after sowing in summer), but it often slips to 5 weeks before we get finished. I recommend transplanting 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. It would make an interesting experiment to see which actually does best: 3 week transplants, 4 week transplants, or 5 week transplants with 2 leaves removed. Possibly the larger root mass of the older plants would be an advantage. On the other hand, old, large transplants can head prematurely, giving small heads. By that point in the year, my scientific curiosity has been fried by the sheer workload of crop production!

Week 4 (the second week of July): Transplant week 1 cabbage (especially the slower-growing “late” varieties). Cover: hoop and net or rowcover.

Week 5 (the third week of July): Transplant Chinese cabbage, Tokyo Bekana, Maruba Santoh sown in week 3. Yes they really will be big enough at 2 week-old! Transplant week 2 sowings of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and any week 2 resows. Cover: hoop and net or rowcover.

Week 6 (the fourth week of July): Transplant week 3 sowings of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, senposai, Yukina Savoy, collards; week 4 Chinese cabbage, Tokyo Bekana, Maruba Santoh, and any week 3 resows. Cover: hoop and net or rowcover.

We plan to have transplanting crews 6 days a week for an hour and a half or two hours in late afternoon or early evening, for 2-3 weeks, not counting the kale transplanting, which happens later. We water the seedlings one day and again one hour before digging them up. We plant to the base of the first true leaves, to give the stem good support, and we firm in well, so the roots have good contact with the soil, and do not die in an air pocket. After transplanting, we water generously within half an hour of planting, and again the third day, and the seventh, and then once a week. We use overhead sprinklers, and don’t easily have the option of watering every day. If you have drip irrigation, you can more easily give a little water in the middle of each day, which will help cool the roots.

A harvest cart with cabbage, kale, squash and lettuce.
Photo by Wren Vile

Other Cooking Greens Tasks for July

No visible brassicas month! In early July, the last of our spring brassica crops get harvested, and all the seedling brassica crops are under netting. There are no brassicas for the harlequin bugs to feed on and multiply in, for at least one month. We hope this will break their lifecycle. When we transplant the young brassicas, we cover those all with netting or rowcover for a few weeks.

Special Cooking Greens Topic for July: Unusual Hot Weather Cooking Greens (More in August)

All the following are warm weather crops, so wait till the soil temperature is at least 60°F (16°C) before direct sowing. If sown after mid-June, they can follow an earlier crop such as lettuce or peas.

Leaf amaranth, Amaranthus species.

Amaranths are found across the globe. There are two basic types: seed amaranths, used as a grain, and leaf amaranths. Callaloo is another name for leaf amaranth (but sometimes other crops have this name), widely used in the Caribbean. Amaranth leaves make tender and nutritious cooked greens.

This tropical annual plant thrives in really hot weather. It is a huge plant, 4’-6’ (1.2-1.8 m) tall. Some are very attractive, looking like coleus.

Carol Deppe in The Tao of Vegetable Gardening recommends All Red for a spectacularly colorful leaf, especially for salads, and Green Calaloo and Burgundy for fast-growing greens. She reports they all taste the same to her raw, and all taste the same when cooked. So choose based on your preferred color and rate of growth.

Joseph’s Coat, Amaranthus tricolor, is an eye-catching plant with red, green, and yellow leaves that may also include patches of pink, bronze, purple and brown.

William Woys Weaver (Heirloom Warm Weather Salad Greens, Mother Earth News) is a fan of ‘Bliton’ or ‘Horsetooth Amaranth’, Amaranthus lividus (Amaranthus viridis). He reports that it is the easiest and most prolific of summer greens.

In colder regions, start seed indoors, and transplant when it’s warm enough to plant beans or corn (Frequent advice for many of these hot weather greens). In warmer regions, direct sow in rows after all danger of frost is past, or broadcast with the aim of getting plants 4” (10 cm) apart. Succession-sowing in summer to provide continuous harvests.

Thin the seedlings to at least 6” (15 cm) apart (use for salads) and each time the plants reach 8-12” (20 -30 cm), harvest the top 8” (20 cm) for cooking. This pinching back will encourage bushier plants with new leaves and prevent reseeding. If grown for a single harvest, pull plants about 12” (30 cm) tall.

The crop is ready 50 days after sowing. It is tasty steamed or stir-fried like spinach. The tender leaves have a sweet nutty flavor.

When the plant is older, the stems get too tough, and then only the leaves and new shoots should be used. Some people say that amaranth should not be eaten raw, but I have failed to discover why, and others recommend it as salad.

In parts of the South, it has become a weed – “Grow responsibly,” as Barbara Pleasant says in her Mother Earth News blogpost Warm Weather Spinach Alternatives. If your farm has lots of amaranth weeds, you won’t want to risk adding another.

Red-root pigweed is an amaranth. If you have this weed and its striped flea-beetle, you will also find your edible crop full of holes and not saleable. For this reason, we don’t grow amaranth crops.

Aztec Spinach, Huauzontle, (Chenopodium berlandieri).

The chenopods (goosefoot family) are now considered a subfamily of the Amaranth family, which is related to true spinach. This plant has bigger leaves, more tender stems and better resistance to bolting than common lambsquarters, which is also edible.

Broadcast and thin to 4” apart, harvesting young leaves for salad just 30 days after sowing. When 12” tall, harvest the top 8”. This could be less than 8 weeks from sowing, depending on your climate. After the first harvest, thin the plants to 12”-15” (30-38 cm) apart, and the bushy new growth will provide leaves for future harvests. Each plant can produce a pound (0.5 kg) of colorful leaves, which steam in just one minute, and keep their color when cooked. Later, the plants with flowerbuds are cooked for breakfast. Wrap the stems with buds around a soft white cheese, dip the whole thing in batter and then fry the fritters, and simmer in a chili sauce. This may be more a springtime dish than a summer one, depending when the plants start to flower.

Hot weather increases productivity, while cooler fall weather increases the color intensity of the leaves. Succession-sowing in summer may be the solution to providing a later crop.

There is also a red version – the lower leaves turn bright red as they mature, and stay red when cooked. An attractive red and green plant, this crop can make a dramatic statement in the vegetable garden. Aztecs grew it between rows of corn. It can grow to 8’-12’ (2.4-3.7 m) tall, although it is a skinny plant, not bulky.

Magenta Magic orach.
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Orach (Atriplex hortensis) is another member of the Chenopod family, and comes in several attractive green, red and purple color schemes. It is also salt-tolerant. It can be tricky to transplant, needing plenty of water. The plants produce small leaves, and set seed liberally, although it is not usually invasive. Thin to 6” (15 cm) apart. Orach has a star role as elegant baby salad leaves, but it can also be grown to full size and eaten steamed. The flavor is good, and the color is retained after cooking.

Good King Henry, Chenopodium bonus-henricus, aka Mercury or Lincolnshire Spinach, has thick long-stemmed, arrow-shaped leaves. It is rich in vitamins A & C, and calcium This hardy perennial is a fairly untamed plant that bolts easily, vigorously self-seeding. So don’t expect a long picking season. Early in the year the emerging shoots may be picked and eaten like asparagus.

Magenta Lamb’s Quarters, Chenopodium album, has beautiful colorful leaves.  It has a mild flavor raw or cooked. This is basically a giant weed, which grows to 6’ (1.8 m) and re-seeds readily, so keep it from seeding if you don’t want an invasion.

Strawberry Spinach/Beetberry Greens, Chenopodium capitatum is an ancient plant from Europe. It is similar to lambsquarters in habit, but only 18” (45 cm) tall. The triangular, toothed leaves are thinner than spinach, very nutritious, and high in vitamins. This plant is also grown for the small, mildly sweet, strawberry-like fruits at each leaf axil. It can re-seed vigorously and become invasive.

Edible Celosia, Celosia argentea comes from tropical Africa, where the fresh young leaves are used in a dish of various vegetable greens, combined with onion, hot peppers, eggplant, vegetable oil, and fish or meat. Peanut butter may be added as a thickener. The ingredients are boiled together into a tasty and nutritious soup. Ira Wallace at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange reports that in their trial in Virginia it didn’t suffer from a single pest attack.

Next month I’ll tell you about some more hot weather greens.

Spring hoophouse harvests and greenhouse seedlings

Pink stemmed mizuna in our March hoophouse Pam Dawling

Sorry for the delay in posting this. Apparently a driver hit an all-important cable and the whole county is without internet. Rural living can’t be beat!

Here we are in March. Nothing new to harvest outdoors yet, although the garlic scallions are getting close. But the hoophouse is serving us well. Every day we harvest 5 or 10 gallons of salad mix and either some cooking greens, radishes or scallions. The photo above is a new delight: Pink Stemmed Mizuna from Osborne Seeds

We’ve finished the hoophouse turnips, and are now making serious headway on the kale. We grow both Red Russian and White Russian kales.

White Russian kale from Fedco Seeds in our hoophouse in March.
Photo Pam Dawling
Red Russian kale from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in our hoophouse in March.
Pam Dawling

We use orange flags to denote where to harvest next, as we have a large hoophouse (30 x 96 ft) and many different crops. It is often obvious as we get closer. Here’s three different ways we are harvesting right now:

Baby lettuce mix after and before harvesting.
Photo Pam Dawling

As you can see we harvest baby lettuce mix by cropping it about an inch above the soil. I think this is the third cutting of this patch. I like to make our salad mixes about one third lettuce, one third brassicas of some kind and one third spinach. The brassica mix below is now bolting, so I pulled it up as I harvested. All brassica flowers are edible, and the buds are just like tiny broccoli.

Brassica (mustard) salad mix after and before harvesting.
Photo Pam Dawling

The spinach I’m harvesting today is our third sowing, and we are cutting outer leaves and chopping them into the salad mix.

Spinach after and before harvesting.
Photo Pam Dawling

For those wondering what the silver stuff is: these three crops are all in our narrow north edge bed. We have 24″ (60cm) bubblefoil insulation stapled onto the hipboard. It reflects back both light (in short supply low on the north wall) and heat.

In the greenhouse we have reached Peak Broccoli Flats season. We have 16 flats for our first planting in the coldframe, 16 of the second and four of the (backup plan) third sowing in the greenhouse.

Some of the many flats of broccoli in our greenhouse in mid-March.
Photo Pam Dawling

We use open wood flats for these kinds of hardy seedlings. We sow 4 rows into 12 x 24 x 3″ flats and then spot out into 12 x 24 x 4″ flats (40 plants each) to grow to final transplant size.

Broccoli in an open seed flat, and seedlings spotted into deeper open transplant flats.
Photo Pam Dawling

That’s it for this week! Hope to see some of you tomorrow at the Virginia Festival of the Book! 

My panel is the Land Use and Foodsheds in the Mid-Atlantic,

Thu. March 21, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM

New Dominion Bookshop

404 E Main St, Charlottesville, VA 22902

Fall vegetable production – my presentation

<div style=”margin-bottom:5px”> <strong> <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/SustainableMarketFarming/fall-vegetable-production-60min” title=”Fall vegetable production (60min) – Pam Dawling” target=”_blank”>Fall vegetable production (60min) – Pam Dawling</a> </strong> from <strong><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/SustainableMarketFarming” target=”_blank”>Pam Dawling</a></strong> </div>

Here’s the presentation I gave at the VSU  2013 Commercial Berry and Vegetable Filed Day at Randolph Farm, Petersburg on Thursday (6/27). Actually this slide show has some extra slides that I had to cut out to fit the time available. Registration for the field day had doubled compared to last year and reached 500. I don’t know how many were at the presentations, maybe 250. The other option was to continue the outdoor exploration of the research plots.

One section I would have loved to have seen, if I hadn’t been signing and selling books, and answering questions about VABF, was Clif Slade’s “43560” (Forty-three five sixty”) plot. He is aiming to demonstrate the viability of earning $43560 per year from one acre (43560 square feet) of intensive vegetable production. There are some You-Tubes about this project on http://www.youtube.com/user/VSUCoopExtension/videos

Around mid-July, check out http://www.vsuag.net/
for a video compiled by Michael Clark, combining my slideshow and me speaking.

Our sweet potato plot doesn't look like this yet. We're weeding as the vines start to run. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Our sweet potato plot doesn’t look like this yet. We’re weeding as the vines start to run.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

Meanwhile, back at the farm, I’m sowing fall broccoli, cabbage and senposai, weeding sweet potatoes, sowing another succession of beans and one of edamame. More of our time is spent harvesting these days. Today we pulled a bag of beets, 2 buckets of beans, 2 buckets of lettuce (we’ll have a short gap until the next bed comes in), 6 buckets of broccoli, one bucket each of cukes, squash, zucchini, turnips and kohlrabi. Most of our crops are getting harvested every two days at this point (except lettuce, cukes and zukes). So no cabbage, kale, chard, scallions, blueberries or celery today.

Twin Oaks Garden Task List for May

Turnips interplanted with radishes - two spring crops from one bed. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Turnips interplanted with radishes – two spring crops from one bed.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

During the Month:

Lettuce Factory: Sow heat-resistant lettuce outdoors, every 8 to 6 days, #10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Transplant 120/week (1/3 bed). #7, 8, 9, 10, 11 this month.

Deal with potato beetles with Spinosad [or Neem] once larvae are seen, if >50 adults/50 plants or >200 larvae/100 plants. Spinosad: Spray when bees not flying (early morning or late evening.) Shake well, 1-4 Tbsp/gall. Expect to need 1.5-2 hours and 9-10.5 galls. Clean and triple rinse the sprayer. Do not flush in creek or pond. Repeat if needed in 6-7 days – could spot spray where larvae are seen. Flame weed potatoes before 12” high, if needed.

Deal with asparagus beetles, if necessary. See notes under April.

Early May:

Flat of home-grown sweet potato slips. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Flat of home-grown sweet potato slips.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

Continue cutting sweet potato slips until we have enough.

Transplant when hardened off: celery, celeriac, lettuce #7, main tomatoes (2’).

Set out drip tape & bioplastic mulch , transplant Romas (2’),  peppers (18” when soil 70°F, dogwood blooms dropping), hot peppers, and melons #1, sweet potatoes

Sow peanuts (120d), asparagus beans in bed w/ celery, okra, sunflowers. limas #1, cow peas #1 (68d)

Roll out driptape and bioplastic mulch for watermelons.

Cover Crops: Sorghum-Sudan, soy, buckwheat, or pearl millet as summer cover crops, now frost is past.

Mid-month:

Plant sweet potatoes, 16″ apart, with 4-4.5′ between ridges, 5’ at edges of patch. Install drip irrigation on ridges and plant at every other emitter. Ideal if soil temp is 65°F for four consecutive days before planting.  If weather dry, dip roots in mud slurry before planting.  Plant 2-3” deep, with at least 2 nodes in ground, and at least 2 leaves above ground.  If slips are long, plant horizontally to increase production.

Transplant lettuce #8, eggplant (2’ apart, single row in center of bed, spray off flea beetles with jet of water & cover immediately), watermelon, insectaries, (okra if not direct-sown – mulch later, when soil warm).

Set out drip tape and biodegradable mulch and transplant melons and watermelons at four weeks old max. Cover for 3 weeks. Move rowcover off broccoli (12 pieces) and strawberries (~8 pieces) Watermelon needs 12 pieces.

In greenhouse sow tomatoes #3, filler watermelons & Romas. Sow cukes & squash #2 if spring is late and cold, and direct-sowing not wise.

Sow beans #2 (5/14, 28 days after #1), edamame #2, carrots #6, sunflowers.

Till between rows of corn #1 & transplant in gaps and/or thin to 8”.

A bed of various varieties of onions. Credit Kathryn Simmons
A bed of various varieties of onions.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

Weed onions 3 weeks before expected harvest date, and broccoli.

Garlic: Harvest garlic scapes, remove mulch from garlic, and weed.  Move mulch to weeded broccoli.

Check maturity of potato onions and garlic. Likely harvest order is fall potato onions 5/25-6/10, hardneck garlic 5/30-6/15, spring potato onions 6/3-6/18, bulb onions 6/11-6/30, softneck garlic 6/5-6/15.

#4 Spring Tractor Work mid-May – Disk areas for June potatoes, corn 3,4,5, & later succession plantings of beans, squash, cucumbers.

Late May:

Mow between no-till paste tomato rows before mulching with hay. Fill gaps, weed, tuck mulch.  Set up posts and string weave the tomatoes, using thick baler twine for lower 3 rows. Really try to keep up with weekly string-weaving.

String weave 1 row around peppers, using short stakes.

Clear empty coldframe and mulch with cardboard or plant something.

Till each corn twice, undersowing at 2nd tilling (30 days), when 12” high, with soy for #1-5, oats/soy for #6. Thin corn to 8”. Avoid cultivating corn after it’s knee-high—roots are shallow.

Sow corn #2, cowpeas #2; cukes #2 (picklers and slicers), summer squash & zukes #2 5/24 (or in greenhouse 5/14, transplant 6/7), watermelons #3, winter squash 5/26 (put woodash with seeds to deter squash vine borer). If squash sowing is late, don’t sow Tahitian butternut – slow.  Cover cucurbits (perhaps not winter squash) against cucumber beetles. Max. cuke beetle population is mid-May; keep susceptible plants well-covered until flowering.

Transplant lettuce #9, 10, 11; Roma paste tomato replacements for casualties, insectary flowers. Fill gaps in eggplant, peppers, melons, watermelons.

Store any seeds not needed until fall or next spring, in basement (radishes, onions, winter squash, watermelon).

Harvest fall planted Potato Onions in dry weather, after tops have fallen, (5/25-6/10, spring planted 6/3-18).  May not all be ready at once. Handle gently. Dry as clusters in barn on wooden racks for 1-2 months, using fans. Service fans or buy new as needed. Eat potato onions >2.5” without curing, unless yield is very low, in which case label & refrigerate, then plant in September. Weight after drying for 1 week is approximately twice the final weight. First sorting is late June. Use the Worksheet and Log Book

Hanging garlic in vertical netting. Credit Marilyn Rayne Squier
Hanging garlic in vertical netting.
Credit Marilyn Rayne Squier

Harvest garlic when 6th leaf down is starting to brown on 50% of the crop (ie .5 green leaves, so that 5 skins cover cloves), or cut open horizontally- when air space is visible between. stem and cloves it’s time to harvest.  [Could replant small cloves immediately for garlic scallions.] Allow 15 mins/bucket harvesting and 15 mins/bucket for hanging in netting in barn,.

Till garlic area, sow soy & buckwheat to control weeds until fall carrot planting.

Plan fall and winter crops for raised beds.

Cover crops: can sow buckwheat, soy, millet, and sorghum-sudan during May.

Perennials: Put up blueberry netting before fruit sets. Weed & water & top up mulch. Mow grape & fall raspberry aisles. New grapevines: remove side branches and fruitlets. Weekly: visit grapes and log progress 4/20-5/30. If asparagus weeds are getting out of hand, mow down one or more rows to keep control.

Our Concord grapes in late May. Credit Bridget Aleshire
Our Concord grapes in late May.
Credit Bridget Aleshire

Harvest: Asparagus, hoophouse beans, beets, beet greens, broccoli, cabbage, first carrots, chard, collards, garlic scallions, garlic scapes, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, peas, radishes, rhubarb, scallions, senposai, spinach, hoophouse squash, strawberries, turnips, hoophouse zucchini. (Clear spinach, senposai, collards, kale, probably in that order)DSC03323

Corn planting time!

Last year's young sweet corn plants with a fiber banana plant to the right. Credit Bridget Aleshire
Last year’s young sweet corn plants with a fiber banana plant and a sunflower to the left.
Credit Bridget Aleshire

A week ago, I showed a group of local Master Gardeners around our gardens. At that point, the raised bed area was a mixed portrait of rowcover and weeds! All the crops were sheltered under cover and all the visible beds were full of weeds. So much has changed in a week. We mowed all the weedy beds, tilled many of them, and removed the rowcover to our strawberry beds and our new cabbage and broccoli planting. We’ve even found time to hoe the planted beds and weed and thin the three beds of beets.

We had more struggles with our broccoli.  A couple of weeks ago, I told you all about the moles gathering nesting material from our first broccoli flats. We dealt with that, planted out what we had left, and moved our second planting to the coldframe. Something browsed on them. Deer? Rabbits? Groundhogs? We sprayed the plants with a stinky deer repellant and scattered hot pepper on them. And covered them at night. Now we’ve planted those out and put the third planting in the cold frame. So far, so good. . .

The black center of this strawberry flower show that it was hit by frost and no berry will develop. Credit Kathryn Simmons
The black center of this strawberry flower show that it was hit by frost and no berry will develop.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

We’ve had a couple of cold nights (hence the need to move the rowcover to the strawberries to protect the blossoms from possible frosts.)

Healthy unfrosted strawberry flower. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Healthy unfrosted strawberry flower.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

But overall the season is warming up. After lots of waiting we are finally getting asparagus. Many of the signs of spring all happened in rapid succession: the lilac is blooming, morning glories and smartweed have germinated, the crimson clover cover crop is starting to flower and I’ve heard the whippoorwills at night.

Crimson clover is a beautiful and useful cover crop. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Crimson clover is a beautiful and useful cover crop.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

The white oak leaves have definitely exceeded the size of squirrels’ ears. This is our sign to sow sweet corn. We did that yesterday. Bodacious, 77-days to maturity, yellow, great flavor for corn this early. These days we hedge our bets and also extend the harvest period by sowing the second half of the patch 3 days after the first half. Contrary to myths you might have heard, it is quite possible to transplant sweet corn, so those in marginal climates don’t need to give up hope. We usually prepare some plugs the same day we sow our first corn outdoors and use these to fill gaps at the first cultivation.  If disaster doesn’t strike and there are no gaps worth worrying about, we give the transplants away to local gardeners who were less lucky, or didn’t get round to direct sowing their own.

We use 200-cell Styrofoam Speedling flats (1″, 2.5 cm cells) with one corn kernel in each cell. We float them in a tank of water until we set them out. Some vegetable seedlings would drown if continuously in water, but corn does not. It is important to transplant the corn before the plant gets too big and the taproot takes off. Two- to three-inch (5–7.5-cm) plants seem OK. The plugs transplant easily using butter knives.

Corn has no tolerance to frost. However, 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 backup helps reduce the risk level.

Here’s an aspect of hybrid corn varieties that confuses many people: There are several genotypes, and if you inadvertently plant a mixture of different types, it can lead to starchy unpleasant-flavored corn. Ignore those cryptic catalog notes at your peril! here’s the Cliff Notes:

Normal sugary (su or ns) types have old-fashioned corn flavor but are sweeter than open pollinated varieties, although the sweetness disappears fairly rapidly after harvest. Not a problem for home gardeners who can cook the corn they harvested earlier that day. Most can germinate well in cool soil. 

Sugary-enhanced (se) and sugary enhanced homozygous (se+ or se-se) types are more tender than (su), and slower to become starchy after harvest. Most, especially the (se+) types, are sweeter than (su) types. We grow (se) and (su) types, and avoid the others – sweetness and simplicity!

Nearly all newer sweet corn types rely on one of two recessive genes, su or sh2. Cross-pollination with other corn groups will produce the dominant genetics of field corn, that is, starch not sugar. Don’t mix Super Sweet sh2 types with any other corn. Also don’t plant Indian corn, popcorn or any kind of flint or dent corn within  600′ (180 m) of your sweet corn. For this reason we grow only sweet corn in our garden. In case you are tempted by variety descriptions of the newer types, though, here’s more about them:

The Super Sweet (sh2) varieties, also known as shrunken, are very sweet and slow to become starchy. They have very poor cold soil germination. The kernels are smaller than other corns, giving this type its name.

Synergistic (se-se-se-sh2) types are combinations of genetics from several genotypes. Each ear has 75 percent (se) kernels and 25 percent (sh2) kernels. They are flavorful, tender and sweet, but only when they are ripe. If picked too soon, they are a watery disappointment. 

“Augmented shrunken” types contain the sh2 gene and some of the tenderness from the se types. 

We’re looking forward to plenty of sweet corn this year – we’re off to a good start!

Goodbye winter, hello summer!

Rhubarb season is almost here. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Rhubarb season is almost here.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

Spring in Virginia is so variable in temperature! But this year is more so than usual. We’ve just had three days with high temperatures of 90F (31C) or more. Not so long ago we had night-time lows of 20F (-6.5C). Late February and all of March was full of snow and rain.

The only thing we managed to plant in the garden for the whole of March was a small amount of shallot bulbs. We’ve been doing an impressive amount of scrambling in the first ten days of April, to make up for lost time. Some crops we had to cut back on, because it got too late to plant. We only have a quarter of the onions we planned, half of the peas, a fifth of the spinach, and no fava beans this year. I realize it would be useful to have “last worthwhile planting dates” for all our spring crops, to help decision-making.

To add insult to injury, a Beast ate half of our early broccoli transplants in the cold-frame one night. Because there were big surface tunnels, I think it was Eastern Moles. They are insectivorous, not vegetarian, but they do use leaves to line their nests, which they make at this time of year. I bought a trap – no luck. I covered the remaining broccoli and lettuce flats as best I could with rat wire “lids” and clear plastic domed food covers – things I had handy from previous depredations. What seems to have worked is to line the coldframes with landscape fabric and set the flats on that, tightly up against the edges, leaving no wiggle room. Wisely, we do a later, third, sowing of broccoli to cover emergencies, so we spotted those out into bigger flats. We’re going to need them this year.

Chitting seed potatoes ready for planting. Credit Kati Folger
Chitting seed potatoes ready for planting.
Credit Kati Falger
Newly emerging potato plant in the spring Credit Kathryn Simmons
Newly emerging potato plant in the spring
Credit Kathryn Simmons

We have at last got our potatoes in the ground, three weeks later than ideal. On the positive side, they had been chitting (green-sprouting) in crates under lights in the basement since the beginning of March, so I could console myself that they were growing anyway. And probably they will come up quicker in the (suddenly!) warmer soil. We cut them for planting once the area was disked for planting and we were pretty sure we could get them in the ground in a few days.

We’ve busily transplanted spinach, kale, lettuce and scallions, and sowed carrots, more scallions and the third bed of beets. We used the Earthway seeder for the beets, and found the radish plate worked better than the beet plate for Cylindra seed, which were smaller than the Detroit Dark Red. We also tried the popcorn plate with some success, when the beet plate jammed.

We flamed one of our first two beds of beets, to kill the weeds that didn’t die properly with our hasty delayed rototilling. We would have flamed both, but the Cylindra popped up overnight earlier than I expected (going by soil temperature), so we’ll have to hoe those really soon, maybe this afternoon.

Spring bed of cabbages planted into rolled hay mulch. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Spring bed of cabbages planted into rolled hay mulch.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

Next we’ll be prepping our cabbage and broccoli beds. We make temporary raised beds, roll out round hay bales over them, then transplant into the mulch. We do this by first measuring and making “nests”, using our hands to open up the mulch down to the soil. The brassicas appreciate the mulch to moderate the soil temperature and keep some moisture in the soil.

Our big weeding projects have been the raspberries and the garlic.(Goodbye, henbit!)

 

Mar 2013 Growing for Market
Mar 2013 Growing for Market

Today we might sow our parsnips. I just wrote an article about them in the March issue of  Growing for Market. This issue also contains articles about increasing hoophouse tomato production, adding solar panels, equipment for tracking the weather, food safety and new interesting cut flowers.

Florence bulb fennel. Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Florence bulb fennel.
Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

The April issue is also out. For that, I wrote about fennel – bulbs, leaves, seeds and pollen. Other articles include one about Johnny’s Salanova lettuce, others about training cucumbers and tomatoes up strings in the hoophouse, a tractor implement for rolling out round hay bales (which is only fun to do by hand the first ten times, max), more on food safety, and an interview/field trip to Texas Specialty Cut Flowers. 

GFM-April 2013-cover-300px

Snow, no electricity, now rain!

Our Herb Garden emerging from the snowCredit Bridget Aleshire
Our Herb Garden emerging from the snow
Credit Bridget Aleshire

What’s new in the garden? Not much! We got snow last Tuesday night, at least 7″. That’s a lot for us, especially in March. Then on Wednesday morning the power went out. Lots of trees and limbs fell on powerlines. I was part way through preparing a slide show on Sustainable Farming Practices for the Virginia Association for Biological Farming Farm School for new and beginning farmers and ranchers. No chance of doing that. Or of gardening.

So I went to help our Dairy Crew hand milk five Dutch Belted cows. Usually they are machine-milked. Most people are not adept at hand-milking, so the job can take a long time. But I hand-milked a couple of Jersey cows at a community I was part of in England years ago, and milked goats at another. Hand-milking is one of those skills you don’t forget. Although my shoulder and arm muscles did complain! In between milkings I read a lot. I made use of my solar lantern from d.light, which had been sitting on my windowsill, waiting to be needed.  Back in November I bought several of their smallest model (S2, $13.95) and gave most of them as gifts. 10% of the net proceeds of online purchases go to their Give Light Program, which provides solar lanterns to kids without electricity. They’re built to be easy to use as a flashlight or a task light or desk lamp in the fields or the home. The first evening I was able to use it for 3 hours! Next day, I can’t believe I forgot to put it back on the windowsill! Sigh!

Young Blueberry bush in snowCredit Bridget Aleshire
Young Blueberry bush in snow
Credit Bridget Aleshire

As the snow started to melt, we were able to do some garden tasks. We’ve been pruning blueberries, redcurrants and grapes. Sunday and Monday were warm and melted most of the snow, but today it’s raining again. When will we ever get any tilling or disking done? We have planted absolutely no new crops yet this year! We scratched two beds of carrots from our spring plans, because we still have plenty of stored carrots, and we need to reduce the (theoretical) work load. Well, it’s a real work load, but theoretical while we can’t do it. Today I decided to scratch the bed of fava beans as 3/14 is our last date for planting here in central Virginia. Next to go will be the onions, if we can’t get to them soon. Bulbing of onions is controlled mostly by daylength (and a bit by temperature, which has been lower than usual). Soon they will start to make bulbs even if they are still in their seedbed in the hoophouse. Our last date for transplanting kale and collards is 4/1. I’m starting to think about scratching some of those. We won’t be able to make up for all the lost time, and there’s no point in doing a load of work for what, by then, could be a very short-lived crop. In May it gets hot and kale and collards start to bolt. Mid-June is the latest they ever survive. We’d do better focusing on our broccoli and cabbage.

Enough moaning! Time to get back to work preparing for the Farm School presentation and the Virginia Festival of the Book. Come and see me Thursday March 21 at 6-7pm at the downtown public library, Charlottesville, Virginia. I’ll be on the Locavore Panel with Jackson Landers. See my Festival of the Book post at the top of my blog page.

Starting Seedlings

Seed flats in the greenhouse
Seed flats in the greenhouse

We’ve been starting seedlings since late January, and the greenhouse is filling up with flats of lettuce, cabbage, kohlrabi, spinach, scallions and broccoli. We’re eating our way through the lettuces that grew overwinter in the compost in the block-work greenhouse beds, and shoveling out the compost to fill our flats. All our seedlings are grown in 100% home-made compost. We screen compost to fill the beds in September and transplant lettuce there in October. When we need the compost for the seedlings, it has mellowed nicely and has plenty of worms. This beats buying in bags of compost, or chipping lumps off a heap of frozen compost outdoors in January! Our greenhouse has a masonry north wall and a patio-door south wall. It has no heating apart from the sun (this is Zone 7). This space is warm enough and just big enough for all our seedlings once they have emerged. For growing-on the very early tomatoes and peppers, destined for our hoophouse, we use an electric heat mat and a plastic low tunnel in one corner of the greenhouse. Many seeds benefit from some heat during germination and are then moved into slightly less warm conditions to continue growing. This means it’s possible to heat a relatively small space just to germinate the seeds in. We use two broken refrigerators as insulated cabinets, with extra shelves added. A single incandescent lightbulb in each supplies both the light and the heat (we change the wattage depending on what temperature we’re aiming for). Some people construct an insulated cabinet from scratch, with fluorescent lights suspended above the flats.

Our coldframes and greenhouse
Our coldframes and greenhouse

We use traditional coldframes for “hardening-off” our plants (helping them adjust to cooler, brighter, breezier conditions). They are rectangles of dry-stacked cinder blocks, with lids of woodframed fiberglass. Having heavy flats of plants at ground level is less than ideal for anyone over thirty-five! Shade houses and single-layer poly hoop structures with ventable sidewalls and benches for the flats are a nicer option. Some growers report that some pests are less trouble when flats are up on benches. Others say flats on the ground produce better quality plants. According to the nighttime temperatures, we cover the coldframes with rowcover for 32°F–38°F (0°–3°C), add the lids for 15°F–32°F (–9°C–0°C) and roll quilts on top if it might go below 15°F (–9°C). For brassicas, lettuce and our paste tomatoes (a big planting), we use open flats — simple wooden boxes. The transplant flat size is 12″ × 24″ × 4″ deep (30 × 60 × 10 cm). It holds 40 plants, “spotted” or pricked out in a hexagonal pattern, using a dibble board. For sowing, we use shallower 3″ (7.5 cm) flats. Usually we sow four rows lengthwise in each seedling flat. We reckon we can get about six transplant flats from each seedling flat. This allows for throwing out any wimpy seedlings, and lets us start a higher number of plants in a smaller space. Because we transplant by hand, and because we hate to throw plastic away (or spend money when we don’t need to), we use a range of plastic plant containers. For crops where we are growing only a small number of plants of each variety, we use six- or nine-packs, or a plug flat divided into smaller units.

One year we tried soil blocks for early lettuce transplants, shown here on our custom-made cart
One year we tried soil blocks for early lettuce transplants, shown here on our custom-made cart

The first crops sown are not necessarily the first ones planted out. Our spinach gets sown Jan 24 and transplanted out 4 weeks later. The early tomatoes get planted in the hoophouse at 6 weeks of age (slower-growing peppers go in at 7.5 weeks with rowcover at the ready!). Lettuce goes outdoors after 6.5 weeks, cabbage after 7.5 weeks, cipollini mini-onions after 8 weeks. These are early season timings and as the days warm up and get longer, seedlings grow more quickly. Being a few days later sowing something in early spring makes little difference, as later sowings can catch up by growing faster in the warmer weather. If the spring is cold and late, you may find your greenhouse packed to the gills with flats you don’t want to take outside. We try to put the faster-maturing crops near the doors and keep the open flats, which will need spotting-out, near the accessible north side. But let’s not complain about the bounty of so many plants! Spring is an exciting time of year, full of new growth and new potential. Working in the greenhouse with tiny plants on a sunny day when it’s cold outside is a special treat.

Success at the Virginia Biofarming Conference! Watch the slideshow!

On Saturday 2/8/13 I gave my presentation at the Virginia Biofarming Conference in Richmond. It was Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops. You can watch the slide show here or go to SlideShare.net.

About 120 people came to my workshop – there were about 500 people at the whole conference. I also sold 48 more Sustainable Market Farming books!

While I was tidying up, I loaded my other slide shows onto SlideShare.net too. Here are the links:

http://www.slideshare.net/SustainableMarketFarming/crop-rotations

Growing Great Garlic was presented at the Carolina Farm Stewardship conference in October 2012: http://www.slideshare.net/SustainableMarketFarming/cfsa-2012-growing-great-garlic-pam-dawling

Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests was presented at the Heritage Harvest Festival in September 2012: http://www.slideshare.net/SustainableMarketFarming/hhf-2012-succession-planting-for-continuous-vegetable-harvests-pam-dawling

Producing Asian Greens for Market and Intensive Vegetable Production on a Small Scale are both from the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference in January 2013: http://www.slideshare.net/SustainableMarketFarming/southern-sawg-producing-asian-greens-for-market-pam-dawling
http://www.slideshare.net/SustainableMarketFarming/southern-sawg-intensive-vegetable-production-on-a-small-scale-pam-dawling

Or you can simply go to SlideShare and search for “Pam Dawling”

Next I’m working on how to make the handouts more accessible, although SlideShare does make this less necessary for the workshops where the slideshow includes everything on the handout. The Intensive Vegetable Production on a Small Scale handout does have material I couldn’t include in such a short slideshow.

Meanwhile in our garden we’re weeding the asparagus and sowing more seeds in the greenhouse: celery and celeriac, kohlrabi, broccoli and more cabbage. The first lettuce and cabbage are ready for spotting out. I’m hoping the sun will come out this afternoon and I can enjoy myself doing those tasks. Tomorrow we might prune the blueberries.

Twin Oaks Garden Task List for February

Greenhouse interior with early spring seedling flats.Photo Kathryn Simmons
Greenhouse interior with spring seedling flats.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

PlanningWeek 1:  Revise Crop Planting Quantities chart, Perennials worksheet, Harvest and Food Processing Calendars, Veg Finder, and Phenology Chart. Week 2:  Revise Fall Brassicas Spreadsheet, Onion Plan and Log, Sweet Potato Plan. Revise and post Paracrew Invitation. Week 3: Write Seed Saving Letter. Revise Blueberry Map and Log, Grape Map and Log. Week 4: Revise Crop Planting Specs sheet, revise Garden Planning Calendar, File notes, prune files.

Lettuce Factory: Sow lettuce #3, 4 in flats (short-day fast varieties, every 14 days).

Spread compost & till beds for spinach, beets, favas, lettuce, onions, little alliums, turnips, senposai, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale, collards when soil dry enough.  Till beds for carrots 1-3, with or without compost.

#1 Spring Tractor Work  – Compost and disk areas for broccoli and potatoes when dry enough, or till.

Early Feb: in greenhouse sow: cabbage, collards, senposai, kale, kohlrabi, broccoli #1, celery, celeriac

Sow spinach outdoors if Jan sowings fail: 4oz/bed pre-sprouted. Transplant spinach from hoophouse [or flats].

Sow fava beans (seed is in peas bucket). Plant small potato onions if not done in January.

Mid-month: in greenhouse: Sow lettuce #3, and resow hoophouse peppers as needed. Spot cabbage, lettuce#3, hoophouse peppers, kale, collards, and harden off.

February pepper seedlings in the greenhousePhoto Kathryn Simmons
February pepper seedlings in the greenhouse
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Sow carrots #1 outdoors with indicator beets. Flameweed. Finish planting spinach, (direct sow if not enough transplants).

Buy seed potatoes mid-month and set out to greensprout (chit) before planting: 65°F (19°C) and light.

[Strawberries: plant new bought plants, if applicable.]

Late Feb, sow carrots # 2 (flameweed);

Really finish transplanting spinach. If needed, presprout 4oz/bed spinach for 1 week before sowing.

Till and sow areas for clover cover crops (eg grapes, eggplant beds), or oats, from 2/15.                    

Transplant fall-sown onions ½-3/4” deep, when no thicker than pencils. Weed over-wintered spinach, kale, collards.

In greenhouse sow broccoli #2 (2 weeks after 2nd), (shallots), lettuce #4, hoophouse cukes.

Perennials: Finish weeding. Give compost, if not done in fall, including strawberries and grapes.  See list for January.  Transplant bushes, canes, crowns if needed. Mulch. Finish pruning blueberries, ribes. Prune grapes before 3/21 – see last year’s log notes about replacement limbs needed, etc. Summer raspberries: cut out old canes. Install irrigation. Prepare sites for new grapevines, if needed.

Vates kale over-wintered Photo Twin Oaks Community
Vates kale over-wintered
Photo Twin Oaks Community

Harvest: (Chard?), collards, kale, spinach, leeks.