Tag: Seedlings Schedule

Cooking Greens to Harvest in Central Virginia in January

Harvest in time! Freezing or Bolting Greens!

Outdoors, the temperatures continue to get colder in January. In our garden outdoors, there are collards, kale, spinach, and sometimes chard,  senposai, and Yukina savoy, and over-wintered cabbage (not for much longer!).

Hopefully there is also cabbage stored in the cooler. The most cold-hardy greens are what we depend on for the next two months.

From the hoophouse we continue harvesting chard, Chinese cabbage, kale, frilly mustards, pak choy, senposai, spinach, (including thinnings from the newer sowings),   tatsoi (thinnings from the newer sowings, whole plants from the September 7 sowing), Tokyo bekana/Maruba santoh plants, turnip greens, yukina savoy.

In the hoophouse, the extra warmth combined with the lengthening days causes some of the brassicas to start bolting. After the Winter Solstice the order of bolting of our hoophouse greens is: tatsoi #1 (meaning, our first sowing 9/6), Tokyo bekana, Maruba santoh (all in early January); pak choy, Chinese cabbage, Yukina Savoy #1 (late January); turnip greens #1 (mid-February); Komatsuna, Yukina Savoy #2, tatsoi #2, spinach #1, turnip greens #2 (early March); Senposai, turnips #3, (mid-March); Russian kales (early April); chard, beet greens, later spinach sowings (late April or even early May.)

Our knowledge of what will bolt first informs our plan of where to put the new crops we want to plant. To make space to sow spinach on 1/16, we need to clear the Tokyo bekana (and Maruba santoh) and the first tatsoi by 1/14. We keep a close eye on the Chinese cabbage and pak choy. Normally these will bolt in January, and we harvest the whole plants this month. They will be followed by sowings of kale and collard starts for outdoors on 1/24.

It might seem sad, at first glance, that these big greens will bolt this month if we don’t harvest them in time, but in fact, it all works out rather well. The rate of growth of the “cut-and-come-again” leaf greens slows down in December and January, and while we eat the big heads of Tokyo bekana, Maruba santoh, Chinese cabbage, pak choy and the not-tiny tatsoi, we ignore the leaf greens, giving them more time to grow.

December 15-February 15 is the slowest growing time for our hoophouse crops.

When the daylight is shorter than 10 hours a day, not much growth happens. The dates depend on your latitude. In Central Virginia, at latitude 38° North, this Persephone period (named by Eliot Coleman) lasts two months, from November 21 to January 21. We have found in practice, that soil temperature also affects the growth rate. And so we have a three week lag in early winter before the soil cools enough to slow growth, and then another 3 week lag  in January before it warms up enough again.

Cooking Greens to Sow in Central Virginia in January

Outdoors, we sow nothing.

In the greenhouse we tidy up the workspace, “fire up” the germinator fridges (germination chambers made from the carcasses of dead fridges), and prepare our new Seedlings Schedule (see Special Topic for January below)

Around 1/17 we sow some fast early cabbage, such as the OP Early Jersey Wakefield and the hybrid Farao. (We sow lettuce and scallions then too, to keep them company.) At the end of January we sow spinach in Speedling flats if our hoophouse sowings have been insufficient. We have trialed the bare-root spinach against the Speedling spinach and both do equally well.

In the hoophouse, in mid-January we sow Spinach #4, to transplant in gaps in the hoophouse. We usually clear Tatsoi #1 to make space for this. Of the varieties we tried, Reflect does best for this planting, followed by Acadia and Escalade. This winter we have had difficulty buying Acadia and Escalade and are going to try Abundant Bloomsdale alongside Reflect.

We also sow Spinach #5 for bare-root transplanting outdoors in February or early March under rowcover. This follows the Tokyo bekana or Maruba Santoh as noted above. Reflect and Acadia do well for this purpose, with Escalade close behind. We’ll have to improvise this spring.

In late January (1/24, 1/25), we sow kale and collards for transplanting outdoors in March. I have written before about how well these bare-root transplants work for us, compared to starting these seeds in flats in the greenhouse. It doesn’t work for lettuce at this time of year though – the tiny plants are too fragile and tender.

Follow-on Winter Hoophouse Crops

This is a  sequence of different crops occupying the same space over time. We try to keep the hoophouse fully planted all the time, and one aspect of this is knowing what we are going to sow when we pull an old crop out. Here’s our winter list:

• 11/17: We follow our 1^st radishes with 3^rd  scallions
• 12/23: 1^st baby brassica salad mix with 5^th radishes
• 12/31: Some of our 1^st spinach with our 2^nd  baby lettuce mix
• 1/15: Our 1^st tatsoi with our 4^th spinach
• 1/16: Our Tokyo Bekana with spinach #5 for planting outdoors
• 1/24: Our pak choy & Chinese cabbage with kale & collards for outdoors
• 2/1: Our 2^nd radishes with our 2^nd baby brassica salad mix
• 2/1: Our 1^st Yukina Savoy with our 3^rd mizuna/frilly mustards
• 2/1: Some of our 1^st turnips with our 3^rd baby lettuce mix
• 2/1: More of our 1^st spinach with dwarf snap peas

Cooking Greens to Transplant in Central Virginia in January

Outdoors, we transplant nothing.

In the hoophouse, we fill gaps that occur in the beds. We replace spinach with spinach, brassicas with brassicas wherever possible. We use the Filler Greens which were sown October 10 and October 20 (brassicas such as senposai, Yukina savoy and the frilly mustards) and October 24 and November 9 (spinach). In December I mistakenly said that December 25 is our official last date for using the brassica fillers because there is not enough time for them to make worthwhile growth before they bolt. But I really meant January 25! Sorry!

• Until January 25, fill gaps with Asian greens, spinach or lettuces as appropriate to match their neighbors.
• From January 25 to February 20 fill all gaps everywhere with spinach transplants, except for places that will be sown in new crops in February.
• From February 20, only fill gaps on the outer thirds of the beds, leaving the bed centers free for tomatoes, etc. in mid-March.

Other Cooking Greens Tasks in Central Virginia in January

We continue to harvest the hardier greens, and if (when) low temperatures are forecast, we might decide to clear the vulnerable crops and put them in the cooler.

See Cooking Greens for November for more details on winter-kill temperatures

During December we had two nights at 17°F (-8.5°C). The Koji are looking quite damaged. We grew more of this than we could eat before temperatures got too cold. Next year I hope for a return to the more cold-tolerant Yukina Savoy instead. We have not covered the spinach, because of issues with rowcover fibers getting in the food, and we’ll see how much production we get without rowcover. I’m expecting it to be a lot less, as spinach (like kale and lettuce) makes some growth whenever the temperature is 40°F (4.5°C) or more. That happens much more often under rowcover on sunny days than in the open. Savoyed spinach which we prefer) is hardier than smooth-leafed varieties. 10°F (-12°C) could kill the larger leaves and 5°F (-15°C) could kill it off entirely. This would be unfortunate as we expect to harvest a lot from out over-wintered spinach in the spring. Maybe temperatures won’t get that cold this winter, but I’m not holding my breath. Some spinach (Bloomsdale Long Standing, Bloomsdale Savoy, Olympia) is hardy down to 0°F (-18°C). We, however, have not been focused on growing the variety with the best absolute cold-tolerance.

Our chard is pretty much dead. The green is hardier than the multi-colored, which died a while back. Green chard is hardy to 12°F (-11°C), but ours is already weather-beaten. Because we have nice chard in the hoophouse, we no longer try to preserve the outdoor crop in winter.

I’m expecting January temperatures to bring the outdoor Koji and senposai to an end.

Special Cooking Greens Topic for January: Lots of Planning!

We get our Crop Review, Seed Inventory and Seed Orders out of the way before the end of the year, then dive in during January to line everything else up for the next growing year. We use a lot of spreadsheets, and also maps and lists. First we prepare our new Seedlings Schedule, then our complex Fall Brassica Spreadsheet and Map, Field Planting Schedule, Hoophouse Schedule for March to September crops (those are not cooking greens!), and then our Raised Bed Plan and our monthly Garden Calendar.

The Seedlings Schedule Spreadsheet is most pressing, as we start greenhouse sowings in mid-January. Updating the spreadsheet from last year’s to create the new spreadsheet takes us three hours, plus proofreading and corrections. As we go, we make a list of questions or points to fix later, and we use highlighter on cells with unsure data to go back to. Our seedlings schedule has a column for the planned sowing date, one to write in when we actually do that sowing (in case it’s different), columns for the germination date, and the hoped-for transplant date, the vegetable, variety, how many row feet we want to plant, how many plants we will transplant in 100ft, and then a column with a calculation of how many plants we want to grow (allowing 20% extra on most crops). We will be spotting our transplants into flats of 40 plants, so next we calculate how many spotted flats we will need (simply the number of plants divided by 40). From that we calculate how many seed flats to sow. We reckon on getting 6 spotted flats from one seed flat, so again it’s a simple division. And we round up.

For crops that we sow in cell-packs (plug flats) we add another 20% to the Plants number. Lots of things can go wrong in January and February and we want to be sure to have enough plants. Also a lot of these early cell-packs are tomatoes for the hoophouse and we might want 15 different varieties.

All our spreadsheets have a Notes column, either with a pre-recorded reminder or hint, or with space to write in anything unusual or a different idea for next year. We check this and revise the sowing and transplanting dates accordingly.

Once we have the new spreadsheet set up, we get ready for the slow part of the job. One nice thing about spreadsheets is that you can sort the data each time you want a different perspective. We want to end up with a schedule in date order, but as far as feeding in the crop data, an alphabetical list by crop is much easier.

First we go through the current year’s Seed Order updating Varieties and Row Feet. Then we go through the Seed Order line by line, cross-checking to ensure that everything ordered gets sown (crops for transplanting only).

When we’re satisfied with that, we resort the data by transplant date, then by Vegetable, then Variety. We take the previous year’s Outdoor Planting Schedule (Field Planting Schedule) and revise the Seedlings Schedule accordingly.

Before we’re done, we check the highlighted cells and resolve any unresolved issues on our piece of paper. We check germinator shelves in use on any one day: We have space for 24 flats at once. Check the number of Speedlings in use at one time, we have 27. We refer to last year’s Seedlings Schedule for days to germination.

With all that work done, we can resort the data by Sowing date, then by Vegetable, then Variety. We proofread for sense before tidying up the formatting, and making sure all the columns fit on one sheet. We revise the instructions before we forget!