Root Crops in November

Root Crops to Plant in Central Virginia in November

We have reached the slow-growing time of year. We have passed our last chance to sow root crops outdoors. Nothing changes fast. Reread Root Crops in October for more ideas, if you are in a warmer climate zone than us. We are in Winter-hardiness zone 7, which has overall minimum average of temperatures of 0° to 10°F (-18°C to -12°C). We are in subzone Zone 7a, with a minimum average temperature of 0° to 5° F (-18°C to -15°C).

In late November, we sow our fourth radishes in our hoophouse. See Root Crops in September for more about our succession of hoophouse radish sowing dates. We sow Easter Egg, and White Icicle. It is too late for us to sow Cherry Belle or Sparkler types – they get too fibrous. This sowing will feed us for the month of February. Unlike the late October sowing which lasts for 8 weeks, this sowing will only be good for 4 weeks.

See Root Crops in September for information on figuring sowing dates for winter hoophouse succession crops (radishes are the example)

Late September in our hoophouse: radishes, scallions and new transplants in the beds on either side. Photo Wren Vile

In early November (around 11/9), we often sow our second of three plantings of hoophouse turnips. We sow Hakurei, Early White Egg, Oasis, and Red Round. These will be harvested 2/25-3/10 (with thinnings for greens from 1/11).

Sometimes we make our second sowing in late October, if we have space available then and want bigger turnips. We may make a third turnip sowing in very early December if space opens up then. The third sowing is only worthwhile if thinned promptly and eaten small, as the plants will start bolting in early March.

See Root Crops in October, for details of thinning and harvesting.

Root Crops to Harvest in Central Virginia in November

Large Smooth Prague celeriac.
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Florence bulb fennel. Photo
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

If you are unsure how soon temperatures will drop in your area, see Weatherspark

Enter your city, airport or zipcode and you’ll get access to helpful graphics on seasonal temperatures, cloud coverage, rainfall, snow, sunshine, humidity, wind, water temperature at nearby large bodies of water. Also tourism, which I had not previously thought of as a type of weather! After that comes an assessment of growing conditions (considered only as days without frost) and growing degree-days, solar energy, and more.

In Louisa County, where we are, the average daily low temperature in November makes a precipitous but erratic slide from 45°F (7°C) to 36°F (2°C), with a small chance of going as low as 24°F (-4°C) by the end of November. Most of our root crops other than sweet potatoes and potatoes can wait to be harvested until late November, but we would rather proceed with harvesting and storing, as the daylight gets shorter and the chance of cold, wet working conditions get higher.

Green kohlrabi.
Photo Small Farm Central

We continue clearing root crops outdoors and storing them (in this order):

· 25°F/-4°C, bulb fennel
· 20°F/-7°C, turnips, winter radish, celeriac
· 15°F/-9°C, kohlrabi, beets (15-20°F/-9 to -7°C, depending on variety)
· 12°F/-11°C, carrots, Cylindra beets
· 10°F/-12°C, parsnips, probably OK to 0°F (-18°C)
· Horseradish is not killable by cold temperatures, as far as I can tell. But if the ground is frozen, you can’t dig it up.

Wash and store roots in perforated plastic bags under refrigeration, or in a root cellar or other cold storage place.

Our 9/6 sowing of hoophouse radishes will have finished and our second sowing will mature and brighten our meals from 11/6 to 12/25 approximately. Our first sowing of hoophouse turnips (10/15) will produce edible little roots as thinnings later in the month.

See Washing, sorting and storing root crops in Root Crops in September.

See my list of Winter-Kill Temperatures of Cold-Hardy Vegetables 2020 for a more complete picture of “Harvesting in Time”

Other Root Crop Tasks in Central Virginia in November: Long term storage of sweet potatoes and white potatoes

Sweet potatoes

After curing, store boxes of sweet potatoes at 55-60°F (13-15.5°C), 50-60% humidity. Curing is complete when the skin is undamaged after rubbing two together. If the heating in your curing space is variable, be sure to check several boxes of sweet potatoes closer to and further from the heater. We once had a sad thing happen after a new heater had been installed. We were checking the most accessible boxes only, not the ones at the back near the heater. We got wrinkly sweet potatoes. If your crop is not curing as fast as you hoped, check the temperature, and do what you can with fans to move the air around without blasting directly on any particular box. Also check the humidity and adapt as needed. We found that splashing water directly on the concrete floor of our basement was the most successful method.

Restack the boxes (in a rodent-proof storage cage, if you are using an outbuilding).

Peruvian (“white”) potatoes

Potatoes stored in crates in our root cellar.
Photo Nina Gentle

Sort white potatoes in storage 2 weeks after harvest. See Root Crops in August

Root Cellar: Cool to 50°F (10°C) after one month, then 40°F (4.5°C), airing once a week or less if cooling not needed. See Special Topic for July

Special Root Crop Topic for November in Central Virginia Vegetable storage without electricity.

· Meeting the storage requirements of various crops helps maximize their season of availability
· Some vegetables need to cure before storage and the curing conditions are different from those needed for storage. Curing allows skins to harden and some of the starches to convert to sugars.
· Many crops may be stored without electricity, perhaps in buildings that serve other uses at the height of the growing season.

· Washington State University Extension’s Storing Vegetables and Fruits at Home, is a good introduction to alternatives to refrigerated storage, using pits, clamps and root cellars. Drawings below are from WSU Storing Vegetables and Fruits at Home
· Also old versions of the USDA Agriculture Handbook 66.

Home vegetable storage options, from WSU

Four Sets of Storage Conditions

By providing storage spaces with 4 types of conditions, 25 crops can be stored.

· In my chart in Sustainable Market Farming, the Summary column indicates the general conditions needed for each crop, and allocates each crop to one of 4 groups:
· A= Cold and Moist: 32°F–40°F (0°C–5°C), 80%–95% humidity — refrigerator or winter root cellar conditions. Most roots, greens, leeks
· B= Cool and Fairly Moist: 40°F–50°F (5°C–10°C), 85%–90% humidity — root cellar. Potatoes
· C= Cool and Dry: 32°F–50°F (0°C–10°C), 60%–70% humidity — cooler basements and barns. Garlic and onions
· D= Warm and Dry to Fairly Moist: 50°F–60°F (10°C–15°C), 60%–70% humidity — basements. Sweet potatoes and winter squash.

Our winter squash storage cage. Photo Twin Oaks Community

Winter squash and pumpkins – storage

We built a rodent-proof cage with wood shelves. You could use shallow crates to avoid handling each individual squash.

In-ground protected vegetable storage. WSU

In-ground storage

Depending on the severity of your winter, some cold-hardy root crops (turnips, rutabagas, beets, carrots, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes and horseradish) and also leeks can be left in place in the ground, with about 12” (30 cm) of insulation (straw, dry leaves, chopped corn stalks, or wood shavings) added after the soil cools to “refrigerator temperatures.”

Hooped rowcovers or polyethylene low tunnels can keep the worst of the weather off. There could be some losses to rodents, so experiment on a small scale the first winter to see what works for you. We have too many voles to do this with carrots or turnips.

Besides being used as a method for storage of hardy crops deep into winter, this can be a useful method of season extension into early winter for less hardy crops such as beets, celery and cabbage, which would not survive all winter this way. Access to crops stored in the ground is limited in colder regions — plan to remove them all before the soil becomes frozen, or else wait for a thaw.

Storage clamps (mounds)

Cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, parsnips, horseradish, Jerusalem artichokes, salsify and winter radishes (and any root vegetables that can survive cold temperatures) can be stored with no electricity, by making temporary insulated outdoor storage mounds (clamps).

Mark a circular or oval pad of soil, lay down straw, pile the roots up, cover them with straw and then with soil, digging a drainage ditch round the pile. For ventilation, leave a tuft of straw poking out. Slap the damp soil in place to protect the straw and shed rainwater.

For the backyarder, various roots can be mixed, or sections of the clamp can be for different crops. Those growing on a large scale would probably want a separate clamp for each crop. It is possible to open one end of a clamp or pit, remove some vegetables, then reseal it.

There is a balance to be found between the thermal buffering of one large clamp and the reduced risk of rot that numerous smaller clamps provide.

Pits and trenches

Dig a deep, wide pit (3+ feet deep) in a dry area where water will not stand, lining it with heavy plastic and straw. Alternate layers of vegetables with layers of straw, finishing with straw. Put a loose sheet of plastic on top, (not sealed down). Cover with more soil.

To deter rodents, bury large bins such as (clean) metal trashcans, layer the vegetables inside with straw, and cover the lid with a mound of more insulation and soil.

Or bury insulated boxes in the ground inside a dirt-floored shed or breezeway. A new life for discarded chest freezers! Insulated boxes stored in unheated areas need 6-8” (15–20 cm) of insulation on the bottom, sides and top.

Root Cellars for crops needing cool, damp conditions

· Potatoes do best in a dark cellar, at 40° – 50°F (5° -10°C). With a good in-ground root cellar, potatoes store for 5-8 months. Ventilate as needed, to maintain the cellar in the ideal range.
· Below 40°F (5°C) the starches convert to sugars, giving potatoes an unpleasant flavor and causing them to blacken if fried.
· Root cellars can be used for apples, cabbage, or root vegetables, but be careful what you mix.
· Some people pack the unwashed roots in boxes of sand, wood ash, sawdust or wood chips. Perforated plastic bags or crates are easier.
· Pepper plants can be hung upside down in a cellar to ripen, or store. Cabbage can also be hung upside down.
· Cabbage, celery, leeks can be replanted side by side in boxes or tubs of soil.

Our root cellar for potatoes. Photo McCune Porter

Ethylene

Ethylene is generally associated with ripening, sprouting and rotting. Some crops produce ethylene gas while in storage — apples, cantaloupes and ripening tomatoes all produce higher than average amounts. Environmental stresses such as chilling, wounding and pathogen attack can all induce ethylene formation in damaged crops. Some crops, including most cut greens, are not very sensitive to ethylene and so can be stored in the same space as ethylene-producing crops. Other vegetables, however, are very sensitive to the gas and will deteriorate in a high-ethylene environment. Potatoes will sprout, ripe fruits will go over the top, carrots lose their sweetness and become bitter.

Storing potatoes

Potato crates in our root cellar.
Photo Nina Gentle

Storing potatoes

This is part of a monthly series on growing potatoes, a dietary staple.

PART ONE: Planting potatoes (April)

PART TWO: Growing potatoes (May)

PART THREE: Potato pests and diseases (June)

PART FOUR: Harvesting potatoes (July)

PART FIVE: Storing potatoes (August)

PART SIX: Planning to grow potatoes again (September)

I have a whole chapter about potatoes in my book, Sustainable Market Farming, and another on root cellars (including construction), where much of this information can be found.

This year’s new Victory Gardeners now need to learn how to store your harvest, so it can supply your household for as long a s possible. As more commercial growers aim to produce local food sustainably year-round, the storage of vegetables for sale over the winter becomes important. Understanding the needs of different crops can help reduce your electricity bill and carbon footprint, and maximize the amount of produce you can store for later sale. Only critical crops need refrigeration. Potatoes should not be refrigerated. Many others may be stored without electricity, perhaps in buildings that serve other uses at the height of the growing season.

Our in-ground root cellar. Photo McCune Porter

A 1978 publication from Washington State University Extension, Storing Vegetables and Fruits at Home, is a good introduction to alternatives to refrigerated storage, using pits, clamps and root cellars. There is also good information in USDA Agriculture Handbook 66. 2016 revision. Many growers are still using the 1986 version, but it’s worth checking newer recommendations and additional advice. UMass Extension has a good site on post-harvest and storage resources. Nancy and Mike Bubel’s book Root Cellaring has a wealth of information, including how to build a root cellar.

Don’t expect a one-shed-fits-all solution to crop storage. I identify five different sets of storage requirements, for different storage crops. This one is specific to potatoes, which don’t want colder conditions: Cool and moist: 40°F–50°F (5°C–10°C), 85%–90% humidity. With a good in-ground root cellar, potatoes can be stored for 5-8 months, but other options can also work. A max-min thermometer will help you keep the storage space in the right range.

We removed all the soil to renovate our root cellar roof. Photo McCune Porter

Reasonable expectations

Only store sound potatoes. Garbage in, garbage out. Damaged and poor quality vegetables will not store well. Always handle all crops for long-term storage gently, to avoid bruising. For long-term storage, make sure crops are fully mature but not over-mature when you harvest. Potatoes need firm skins that don’t rub off when you rub with a thumb. This is different from some crops, such as beets and sweet potatoes, that don’t have a “ripe” stage, but are ready when they reach the size you like. Very small vegetables don’t store well. Expect that a small percentage of your crops will go bad in storage — it’s not a sign of failure, just a reminder that life has limitations.

Cure, then store

Potatoes are one of those vegetables that need to cure before storage in conditions that are different from those needed for storage. Curing allows skins to harden and some of the starches to convert to sugars. See the post on Harvesting Potatoes in July. Potatoes need curing in moist air (90% humidity) for one to two weeks at 60°F–75°F (15°C–24°C). You may be surprised at how warm this is. Wounds in the skin will not heal below 50°F (10°C).

We sort our potatoes after two weeks of curing and find this usually reduces the chance of rot so that we don’t need to sort again. With potatoes, the rate of deterioration drops right down after a few weeks. Remember to keep white potatoes in the dark while curing as well as during storage.

When filling stackable crates, leave space for the crates to lock into each other.
Photo Nina Gentle

Preparation for storage

Plan your storage sites, buy a thermometer for each site, and gather suitable containers. Clean and prepare your storage space before going out to do a big harvest. Wood crates are good for nostalgia and agritourism, but plastic is kinder on aging backs and less likely to harbor diseases. Containers should rest on shelves, pallets or blocks of some kind, and not be set on bare concrete floors. This helps improve ventilation and reduce condensation.

For traditional storage without refrigeration, potatoes (and most other root crops) store best unwashed (less wrinkling), though this can make them harder to clean later. If you might not be able to keep temperatures low enough, choose stackable crates rather than closed bags. When you have choice in the matter, try to harvest potatoes from relatively dry soil, so they are less likely to grow mold. The packing of your containers should allow for airflow, but you don’t want the produce to shrivel up, so be observant. Sometimes night ventilation offers cooler, drier air than you can get in the daytime. Keeping root cellar temperatures within a narrow range takes human intervention, or sophisticated thermostats and vents. If needed, electric fans can be used to force air through a building.

Ethylene

Ethylene is an odorless, colorless gas, generally associated with ripening, sprouting and rotting. Chilling, wounding and pathogen attack can all induce ethylene formation in damaged crops.

Some crops, including most cut greens, are not very sensitive to ethylene and so can be stored in the same space as ethylene-producing crops. Potatoes are very sensitive to ethylene and will sprout in a high-ethylene environment.

Some crops, such as ripening fruits, produce ethylene gas while in storage. Don’t be tempted to set that bargain box of very ripe bananas you bought on the way home near anything you don’t want to sprout or ripen further. Propane heaters and combustion engines produce ethylene. Be careful if using your garage to store potatoes.

Our 10’ x 11.5’ (3 x 3.5 m) cellar will hold 10,800 pounds (4900 kg), or around 5 tons (tonnes)of potatoes. Photo Pam Dawling

Basement storage rooms and root cellars

Traditional root cellars are made by excavating a large hole near the house, lining it with block or stone-work walls, casting a well-supported and well-insulated concrete roof, then covering the top with a big mound of soil. The doorway may have bulkhead doors or an entry way with additional doors. The more modern version is to construct an insulated cellar in the basement of a building such as a CSA distribution barn or your house. See the Bubels’ book, or the Washington State publication for drawings and instructions on making these. Provide wide doorways with ground-level access if possible (roll that garden cart right in!). Good lighting and drainage are important, so you can see if everything is storing well, or hose the shelves and floor down if it isn’t. Mouse-proofing is worth considering upfront. Our 10’ x 11.5’ (3 x 3.5 m) cellar will hold 360 crates with an ample central path. That’s 10,800 pounds (4900 kg), or around 5 tons (tonnes).

Black snakes control mice in the root cellar. Photo by Nina Gentle

Root Cellar Ecosystem

Store potatoes in a moist, completely dark cellar, ideally at 40°F (5°C), up to 50°F (10°C). Ventilate as needed during times of cool temperatures, to maintain the cellar in the ideal range. We need to actively manage conditions in our root cellar to cure the potatoes and help them store well. We have no automated ventilation, or even ventilation ducts. We simply leave the door open at night when we want to cool it down, or in the daytime in winter. We just choose a time when the forecast temperature is in the range we’re aiming for. Yes, mice do come in the open door! We encourage black snakes to live in our cellar, to keep the mice under control. (How do we encourage snakes? I mean we don’t drive them out, and if we need to, we move one or two in there.) This can be a bit unnerving, as the cellar is dark. (We chose not to have a light, as leaving it on by accident could cause a lot of potato greening before we noticed our mistake.) We have developed a special door-opening technique so we can co-exist with the snakes, who like to hang out on the top of the doorframe. We unlatch the door, open it a crack, then bang it closed, before opening it fully. Any resting snakes have by then dropped to the floor where we can see them and avoid them. (No snakes have been hurt in this process!) People who don’t like snakes will be really motivated to fit a rodent-proof vent system!

I wrote a blog post about Root cellar potato storage, on 8/07/2018. It includes a fuller version of our Root Cellar Warden instructions below. Here is the shorter, post-harvest version of our “Root Cellar Warden” instructions:

After the potato harvest, the potatoes need to be at 60-75F (15-24C) with good ventilation for two weeks. Leave the door open on mild nights (or days) every 2 or 3 days, and close it later. The newly harvested potato is still respiring and needs fresh air. Lack of sufficient oxygen during curing results in Black Heart, a condition where the tubers develop nasty black lumps of dead tissue in the centers, so be sure to provide good ventilation during curing.
After 14 days, the potatoes need sorting to remove Use First and Compost ones. Usually this is done by bringing the crates outdoors. You will need buckets, rags, gloves. It’s important to do this in the 3^rd week after harvest, and not leave it longer, to minimize the spread of rot. Keep the crates away from walls, which sometimes collect condensation. The potatoes benefit from the airflow if they are not touching the walls.
After 14 days, cool the cellar whenever a mild night or chilly day is forecast, down to 40-45F (4.5-7C).

Sorting potatoes two weeks after harvest.
Photo Wren Vile

Dormancy Requirements of Potatoes

We researched the dormancy requirements of potatoes in an effort to store ours so they don’t sprout when we don’t want them to.

What I know so far about dormancy is that potatoes need a dormancy period of 4-8 weeks after harvest before they will sprout. So if you plan to dig up an early crop and immediately replant some of the potatoes for a later crop, take this into account. Get around this problem by refrigerating them for 16 days, then chitting them in the light for 2 weeks. The company of apples, bananas or onions will help them sprout by emitting ethylene.

To avoid sprouting, keep the potatoes below 50F (10C) once they are more than a month from harvest, avoid excess moisture, and avoid “physiological aging” of the potatoes, caused by stressing them with fluctuating temperatures, among other things. If eating potatoes do start to develop sprouts, it’s a good idea to rub off the sprouts as soon as possible, because the sprouting process affects the flavor, making them sweet in the same way that low temperatures do.

I have also written blog posts about

Potato Research on Harvest and Storage,

What Makes Potatoes Sprout,

How to Deal with Green Potatoes (one of my most-read blog posts!)

and if you still want to read more about potatoes,

Book Review “Potato: a history of the propitious esculent” John Reader, Yale University Press 2008

Read a whole book about the potato. Abe Books, John Reader

Organic and Alternative Methods for Potato Sprout Control in Storage

Mary Jo Frazier and colleagues at the University of Idaho Extension, in 2004, researched the use of essential oils of mint and cloves to inhibit sprouting in storage. These plant oils can add 20-30 days storage, and then need to be reapplied. There is the issue of flavors carrying over into the tubers.

Other biocontrols to reduce storage losses

There has been some USDA ARS (Agricultural Research Service) research into biological disease control for stored fruit and vegetables. It takes three directions:

Using biologicals such as Aspire yeast, Bio-Save Bacteria (Pseudomonas syringae) or chitins to form a semi-permeable film over the surface of the roots and fruits;
UV light to induce rot resistance. Primarily used for fruit;
Natural fungicides derived from jasmine and peaches, which induce disease resistance in the crop itself.

Currently these methods are only used by large operations, but in the future, they may be useful to small growers.

Potato Research, Mother Earth News Fair PA and Heritage Harvest Festival

Crates of potatoes in our root cellar.
Photo Nina Gentle

Potato Research on Harvest and Storage

Last week I mentioned that while researching potato yield figures, I found an interesting publication, The Potato Association of America, Commercial Potato Production in North America 2010. I’ve been reading that and learning more about potatoes. Here I’m going to focus on harvest and storage, because that’s the bit we’re currently challenged by. I also learned more about planting in hot weather, but that’s for another time.

In England we planted in spring and harvested in October, waiting for the frost to kill the vines. In Virginia we plant in March and June, harvesting in July and October. We have grown Red Pontiac, Yukon Gold and Kennebec here, mostly. They all seem to be determinate varieties. I only just learned there are determinate (varieties with naturally self-limiting growth, generally “early” varieties) and indeterminate varieties (such as “Russet Nugget,” “Nicola,” “German Butterball” and “Elba”). The distinction is explained in Potato Bag Gardening. Growers using towers, grow bags, and cage systems want indeterminate potatoes, which continue to produce more layers of tubers on the stems as they are progressively covered with more soil. Growers wanting a fast reliable crop in the field mostly choose determinate types, which grow as a bush, then flower and die. The Wild Woolly Web does seem to have some contradictory statements about which varieties are determinate and which indeterminate, and some dedicated container growers make assertions not supported by experienced commercial growers. So Reader Beware! I trust Extension and here’s a link to their Ask an Expert page on potato types, and the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Info Center Potatoes.

June-planted potatoes in early September
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Whether the vines die naturally at the end of their lifespan, or they die of disease, or the frost kills them, or you kill them yourself by mowing or flaming, the potatoes will store better if you then wait 2-3 weeks before harvesting. The potato skins thicken up (becoming more resistant to scrapes and bruises) and the potatoes become higher in dry matter. Harvesting is easier if the vines are well dead. We generally bush-hog ours. Decades ago, in England, we had late blight in the middle of the season, and we cut the tops off and made a very smoky bonfire. (I wouldn’t participate in that much air pollution nowadays!) After waiting for a couple of weeks for the late blight spores to die, we dug the potatoes. The idea was to prevent spores getting on the tubers. As I remember, it all worked out OK.

If at all possible, harvest when the soil moisture is 60-80% of field capacity. Not too dry, not too wet. This reduces damage from scraping. If using a digger, don’t set it digging too deep, or too much soil will be damped on the harvested potatoes.

Tuber temperature will also impact bruise and rot susceptibility. Ideally soil temperature will be 45-65F (7-18C). Because soil temperature lags 3-4 hours behind air temperature rise each day, in cold weather, try to harvest around 6 pm or a bit later. In hot weather, harvest in the morning.

When freshly harvested, potatoes are tender, breathing things. Avoid bruising, which is damage that does not break the skin, by not dropping potatoes more than 6” (15 cm), or throwing them towards a container. Don’t bang them to knock off extra soil.

When harvesting in summer, we stack the crates of potatoes under a big tree overnight to lose some of the field heat before moving them to the root cellar early next morning. Potatoes you take from storage can be no better than the quality of the potatoes you put into storage!

The first part of the storage period is the curing. The potatoes are still actively respiring, so they need a good oxygen supply. Failure to ventilate the cellar enough can lead to Black-heart, where the inner tissue of the potatoes dies and turns black. During the curing period, the skins further toughen up, and cut surfaces and superficial wounds heal over, enabling long term storage. The temperature should be as close to 50-58F (10-14.4C) as you can get. The lower end of the range is best for fresh eating (as opposed to junk food manufacture). Hotter temperatures will promote more rot, and age the potatoes faster, leading to early sprouting. Relative humidity should be 90%, but not 100%! If there is too much condensation, use a fan and open the cellar doors, when temperatures are closest to the goal. Curing takes 10-14 days.

We find that a single thorough sorting after 14 days can remove almost all of the storage problems that are going to happen. Not sorting at this point lets rots spread.

After the curing period, the potatoes become more dormant and do not respire so actively. They don’t need as many air changes as during curing, but if the cellar is too warm, you will need to aerate more. The temperature during the storage period should be 40-50F (4.4-10C), and closer to the lower end of the range is best. Constant temperatures or a steady decline is the goal, not dramatic fluctuations. Humidity should still be 90-95%, to keep weight loss to a minimum.

Potatoes have a natural dormancy of 60-130 days (depending on the storage temperature). After that period, they will start to sprout. Some plant extracts, including clove oil, can add 20-30 days storage, and will then need to be reapplied. I do not know anything about this myself, and do wonder how you remove the clove flavor from the potatoes!

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Speaking Events

I have two speaking events coming up in September

2019 Mother Earth News Fair Pennsylvania.

September Friday 13- Sunday 15, 2019

Location: Seven Springs Mountain Resort, 777 Waterwheel Dr., Seven Springs, Pa. 15622

I am giving two 60 min workshops

Hoophouse winter lettuce: Green Forest, and Red Salad Bowl, two of our fifteen varieties.
Photo Wren Vile

Lettuce Year-Round on Friday 9/13 12.30-1.30 pm at the Grit Stage

This presentation includes techniques to extend the lettuce season using row covers, cold frames, and hoop houses to provide lettuce harvests in every month of the year. The workshop includes a look at varieties for spring, summer, fall, and winter. Pam Dawling considers the pros and cons of head lettuce, leaf lettuce, baby lettuce mix, and the newer multileaf types. She also provides information on scheduling and growing conditions, including how to persuade lettuce to germinate when it’s too hot.

Cool Season Hoophouse Crops on Saturday 9/14 3.30-4.30 pm at the Building and Energy Stage

Learn how to fill your hoop house with productive food crops in the cool seasons. Pam Dawling discusses suitable crops, cold-hardiness, selecting crops, calculating how much to harvest and how much to plant, crop rotation, mapping, scheduling, seasonal transitions, succession planting, interplanting, and follow-on cropping.

Book-signing at the Bookstore Saturday 4.30-5 pm. Buy new books at the Bookstore and bring your grubby used copies to be signed too!

Demos at New Society Publishers booth, of tomato string-weaving and wigglewire system for fastening hoophouse plastic to framework
Friday 3 -3.30 pm, 4.30-5 pm; Saturday 10-11 am, 1.30-2.30 pm; Sunday 9-10 am. 1-2 pm, 3.30-4 pm

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Heritage Harvest Festival, Monticello, Charlottesville, VA

September Friday and Saturday 21-22, 2019

Buy tickets online

Workshop with Ira Wallace

10:30 – 11:30 am Saturday in the Heritage Tent

Winter Gardening: No Tech to High Tech

Learn tips on growing cold-hardy vegetables (not only kale!) out in the open and with varying degrees of protection from rowcovers, low tunnels, coldframes and hoophouses (high tunnels). We’ll consider crop choices, planting dates and harvesting so there’s always something to eat for everyone from winter market gardeners to small backyard growers. We’ll explain ways to maximize production with succession planting and follow-on cropping.

No extra fee for the workshop, included with the price of general admission

Booksigning: SATURDAY, SEPT. 21^st, 11:45am – 12:15pm, MONTICELLO SHOP TENT (WEST LAWN). Buy new books at the Bookstore and bring your grubby used copies to be signed too!

December view in our hoophouse, showing lettuce mix and turnips.
Photo Wren Vile

Sweet corn, potatoes and okra

Sweet Corn

We sowed our first sweet corn on 4/18, eight days earlier than usual this year, because we had auspicious weather. We look at the leaves of the white oaks to decide when it is warm enough for corn planting. The oak leaves should be as big as squirrel’s ears. Phenology signs like this are especially useful when the weather is extremely variable, which we are getting more of as climate disruption has got us in its grip.

Our first sweet corn sowing is always a bit of a risk. In fact we often prepare for this by sowing some corn seeds in styrofoam Speedling flats, the same day we sow the first corn planting outdoors. Read more about this seedling technique and transplanting corn.

Our third planting of sweet corn on the left, fourth in the middle, 5th (barely emerging) on the right.
Photo Pam Dawling

We’ve been harvesting sweet corn since July 2, which is two days earlier than our target start date, so we’re very happy. Initially, of course, we got smaller amounts, but we are now harvesting three times a week and getting good amounts. We are back up to 6 sowings this year, after we had to cut back for a couple of years. For a hundred people we sow an average of 1100 ft (335m) each time we plant, with each planting intended to last us 15 days (7 or 8 pickings). Our goal is sweet corn from July 4 to mid-October (our average first frost is October 20, a 13 year average from our own records).

Three varieties of sweet corn in one planting. On the left Bodacious; in the middle, red-flowered Kandy Korn; on the right, Silver Queen not yet fully grown.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Each sowing includes several varieties (with different numbers of days to maturity) on the same day, so a planting will give us at least two weeks of delicious corn. In this photo from a previous year, you can see (from left to right): later-maturing Silver Queen, not yet at full height; red-flowered Kandy Korn; fast-maturing shorter Bodacious. Each plant is only going to provide two or three ears, so to have enough, and to have a continuous supply, it is necessary to plan ahead. See the Succession Planting section ahead.

Sowing sweet corn

We have switched to sowing corn with the EarthWay seeder, with a homemade next-row marker. This is much quicker than sowing by hand, but does rely on providing overhead irrigation consistently until the seedlings emerge. Another trade-off is that we get more weeds germinating in the (watered) aisles than we did when we only watered the furrows at planting time. Drip irrigation would be another approach. So far we have not lost corn to crows, which was the reason we took to the handsowing-under-ropes method some 20 years ago. Back then we also sowed our fist corn with a tractor seeder, but we had to follow that with putting up ropes, or we lost it all to birds. Details of our hand-sowing method are in this post from May 2016.

Staying on top of weeds in the sweet corn

Once we get to late June, more of our time in the garden is taken up by harvesting (a sign of success), leaving less time for weeding. We have a system I like that helps us stay on top of sweet corn weeds. Each time we sow sweet corn, we hoe the previous planting (about two weeks old), thin the plants to one every 8″-12″ (20-30cm) in the row, and wheel hoe or till between the rows. We have two Valley Oak wheel hoes that we really like. The handle height is adjustable and they are available with different width hoes (and other attachments). Our tiller is a BCS 732 from Earth Tools BCS

Don’t let this happen to you! Weedy young corn.
Photo by Bridget Aleshire

We also hoe the rows of the corn planting before that one (about 4 weeks old), and till between those rows and broadcast soybeans (which we till in lightly). Soybeans will grow in partial shade, handle the foot traffic of harvesting, and provide some nitrogen for the soil. For the last corn of the season, we undersow with a mix of soy and oats. After the harvest ends, we leave the patch alone, and the oats survive the first frosts (which kill the corn and the soy) and go on to be our winter cover crop for that plot. When it gets cold enough, the oats do die, and the plot becomes an easy one to bush hog and disk in the early spring for our March-planted potato crop. I like that opportunity to eliminate one round of disking, and to get a winter-killed cover crop established

As we harvest corn we pull out any pigweed that has somehow survived our earlier efforts. I learned at a Sustainable Weed Management workshop, that pigweed puts out its seeds in one big bang at the end, so pulling up huge pigweed is worthwhile, if it hasn’t yet seeded. (Actually you can see it for yourself, but before the workshop I hadn’t noticed!) Our soil has improved over the years, so it is now possible to uproot 5ft (1.5 m) pigweeds. Sometimes we have to hold the corn plant down with our feet, but we do almost always succeed in getting the weeds out, without damaging the corn.

Succession Planting for Sweet Corn

In Sustainable Market Farming I have a chapter on succession planting, and my slideshow on Succession Planting is one of my most popular ones. You can watch it right here.

Succession planting 2019 pam dawling from Pam Dawling

I posted on Mother Earth News Organic Gardening blog about Growing Sweet Corn for the Whole Summer. You can read it here:

Growing Sweet Corn for the Whole Summer – Organic Gardening …

Our sweet corn sowing dates and harvests from those plantings are

4/26, harvest 7/9 (with a few ears from 7/4)
5/19, harvest 7/24
6/6, harvest 8/8
6/24, harvest 8/23
7/7, harvest 9/7
7/16, harvest 9/22

Avoid mixing types of corn.

There’s a confusing aspect of hybrid corn varieties: There are several genotypes, and if you inadvertently plant a mixture of different types, it can lead to starchy unpleasant-flavored 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. Ignore those cryptic catalog notes at your peril!

Dealing with raccoons, skunks and curious cats in the corn

We have trapped (and then killed) raccoons in our corn most years, and the past few years we’ve tried deterring them with nightly radio broadcasts. We have the large live mammal traps, and we found for raccoons, we needed to stake the trap down to the ground. I followed 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. You can read more about how I let the skunks out. I’ve also caught some of our cats by accident.

Raccoons don’t seem to like Silver Queen as much as Kandy Korn, maybe because the husks are tighter and harder to rip off. Actually I like Kandy Korn better than Silver Queen too.

Okra

We have started harvesting our okra. It’s a little later than it might have been because we had to replant. The first planting had leggy seedlings due to not enough light soon enough in their lives. Then we planted it out with novice helpers, and they didn’t plant them deep enough. The feeble stems couldn’t take it. We made an attempt to hill them up to give more protection to the stems. Another mistake we made was over-watering. When we pulled up some of the dead plants for our postmortem, they reminded me of retted flax stems – the fibers were still there, with the soft tissue rotted away. This is why I think the problem is that we over watered rather than under-watered.

This year we are trying Carmine Splendor, a red okra from Johnny’s, as well as our usual favorite Cow Horn from Southern Exposure.

Cow Horn okra pods.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

We like Cow Horn for its tall plants, high productivity and the fact that the pods can get relatively large without getting fibrous. They are still tender at 5-6″, which is the size we used to harvest at. Some years we have attached a card to the handles of the pruners we use for this job, with a life-size drawing of a 5″ pod. This helps new crew get it right.

We do find it very hard to convince our cooks that we have specially chosen this “commune-friendly” variety so they don’t have to deal with fiddly little okra pods when cooking for 100. We’ve had to compromise and harvest at 4″. Hence the venturing-out to another variety, accepting people are hard to convince about Cow Horn!

We grow a 90′ row, with plants about 18″ apart in the row. This is enough for the hundred of us (some people never eat okra despite the cooks’ best efforts!)

Carmine Splendot okra plant.
Photo Pam Dawling

Carmine Splendor is a 51 day (from transplanting) F1 hybrid, with sturdy 5-sided pods that are deep red when small. I haven’t tasted them yet.

Potatoes

Our June-planted potatoes are starting to come up through the hay mulch, and we need to walk through and free the trapped shoots. This means we walk through investigating the spots where we expect there to be a potato plant but we don’t see one. If we find a trapped shoot, we open up the mulch to let the plant see the light. We do this same job with garlic in late November or early December.

This week we are harvesting our March planted potatoes. I just dug 30lbs for tonight’s dinner. Yes, lots of diners! The rest of the crop will be harvested using a digging machine on Thursday.

We harvested our March-planted potatoes 21 days ago, and we are in the process of sorting them and managing conditions in our root cellar to cure the potatoes and help them store well.

Click here for our “Root Cellar Warden” instructions from last year.

Dormancy Requirements of Potatoes

We are researching the dormancy requirements of potatoes in an effort to store ours so they don’t sprout when we don’t want them to!

Tobacco Hornworm pupa

Just had to add this, which I dug up yesterday. These brutes are about 2″ (5 cm) long. They are heavy and they move slightly. Also, check out the comments on the last post and be sure to see SESE’s Ken Bezilla’s Instagram of a hornworm in black light.