Squash (and Zucchini) Success all Summer!

Gentry yellow squash in our hoophouse in late May.
Photo Pam Dawling

The category “summer squash” includes yellow squash, patty pan squash and round squash, as well as zucchini, a specialized kind of summer squash. They are easy to grow – the main challenges are pests, diseases and moderating the quantities available. When a succession of healthy plantings can be maintained, these crops can crank out high yields of a vegetable almost everyone likes.

Varieties

For early crops, look for fast-maturing varieties. We like the green and yellow Zephyr squash, yellow crookneck Gentry squash, (both hybrid bush types), and the yellow Golden Glory and pale green Tender Grey OP zucchini. Squash is one crop where we think it pays to use hybrids. Open pollinated varieties tend to be less predictable, less productive and less reliable.

I posted about our Squash Variety Trial and Hoophouse Squash Trials a few years ago.

Rotting unpollinated squash.
Photo Pam Dawling

We were having trouble with Unpollinated Hoophouse Squash. The challenge is that early in spring, there are not many pollinating insects around, and those that are here, are working outdoors and not so likely to find their way into the hoophouse. We largely solved those problems by choosing varieties that are capable of a fair amount of self-pollination, such as the beautiful Golden Glory zucchini and Zephyr, a beautiful bi-color hybrid yellow squash with green ends, which seems better than some squash in self-pollination. It got a low rating in one variety trial I looked at, though it did OK for us.

Golden Glory zucchini. Open, disease-resistant plants
Photo Pam Dawling

We have tried growing some annual and perennial flowers in the hoophouse to attract the pollinators in. perennials are more likely to flower at the appropriate time than annuals, even if sown in the fall. We gave up on flowers in pots, as they dry out too fast in the hoophouse.

This spring, with yarrow and shungiku flowering at the right time, we didn’t have many unpollinated squash at all. Is this the secret to early season success with squash?

Sowing for Continuous Harvests

This frost-tender warm weather crop germinates at 60°F (15.5°C) minimum, and does best at 85°F (30°C). Germination takes 5-10 days. During growth the ideal temperatures are 75-85°F (24-30°C) in the day and 65°F (18°C) at night. From sowing to harvest takes 40-50 days. Lilac in full bloom is a phenological sign for the spring being warm enough to direct-sow squash.

Squash plants mature quickly and are then attacked by various insects and fungi, so it makes sense to plant successions every 2-4 weeks until late summer. To make the pest evasion successful, make the sowings in widely separated parts of your farm, and destroy the old sickly plants as soon as the new plants are producing. We plant 6 times during the year, aiming to have a new planting come into production every 25 days, starting 5/15, and ending with the first hard frost.

Summer squash plants under ProtekNet insect netting.
Pam Dawling

As mentioned, we transplant our very first summer squash and zucchini (sown 3/1), on 4/1 with rowcover, in the hoophouse. Our first planting outdoors is sown in the greenhouse 3/25, transplanted with rowcover 4/20, about 10 days before the frost date, depending on the weather. Some sources say to sow the second planting a month after frost and the third 3 weeks after the second.

After the first plantings indoors and out, we sow directly in the ground 5 times, 5/24, 6/23, 7/15 and 8/5 (70 days before our average first frost). 8/5 is our last worthwhile planting date. See my post Last Chance Sowings. Also see my post on Succession Planting for working back from your frost date to determine your last worthwhile planting date. Pay attention to the weather as you approach your average first frost date, and be ready to harvest mature crops and protect plants with rowcover. In many parts of the country, a frost or two will be followed by a few more weeks of warm weather, so getting past the first few frosts is worth the effort. It’s easy to get extra harvests for a month or two from mature plants you already have.

See my book Sustainable Market Farming, for more on seed specs, details of sowing, including growing transplants, as well as crop rotations, pests and scheduling succession sowings.

Harvest squash daily to keep them coming

The more you pick, the more you get! Early in the year, growth is slow. We start out harvesting our hoophouse squash and first outdoor squash every other day. Soon we switch to daily harvest (except Sunday). Monday morning squash can be monsters! See Harvesting Squash.

Harvesting Zephyr yellow squash. Note the long-sleeved shirt.
Photo Brittany Lewis

Early on, it’s important that people don’t pick too small. You need to get critical mass to provide enough to sell or cook, or supply your Food Pantry. Harvesting all the squash at 6” or bigger is important. You might choose a smaller size, once the season is underway. Be sure to explain to workers that they should remove and chop up any that are too big to eat. Don’t let monsters take all the energy from the plant. Look carefully.

Avoid harvesting when leaves are still wet with dew (or rain). To preserve the appearance of the squash avoid scratching the skin of the squash on the leaves. One way to do this is to enclose the fruit in your palm as you cut through the stem. Another is to move the spiny leaves out of the way. Yellow squash has thin stems and can be twisted from the plant. Zucchini stems are thick, and need to be cut.

Some people get quite a rash from harvesting these crops, others just get a short-term itchiness that is cured by rinsing arms and hands in cool water. Wear long sleeves for this job, or use special elastic cuffed protective sleeves.

Using plastic gauntlets or protective sleeves avoids getting skin irritations while harvesting squash. Photo by Pam Dawling

Summer squash will keep 10-21 days (if you are lucky) at 80% humidity and 45°F (7°C). Do not store at lower temperatures or chilling injury can occur. This shows up as a pitted surface which later grows black mold.

Protecting Squash from Pests

One key to reducing pest numbers is to till in old plantings promptly. Flaming is another option (if the soil is too wet to till, for instance).

Squash bugs making more squash bugs.
Photo Pam Dawling

Squash bugs are probably the most common pest. The adults are long gray insects which emerge from overwintering in wooded areas once temperatures reach about 70°F (21°C). They also drift in on storm fronts. They feed on young seedlings for preference and lay groups of spaced bronze eggs on the undersides of leaves. The eggs hatch in 10 days and the nymphs suck sap from the plants. There are many generations each year and numbers quickly build. Drop hand-picked adults into soapy water rather than crushing them, as the smell of the crushed bugs attracts more. Most summer squash are in the species Cucurbita pepo. Growers with bad pest problems can try Tromboncino squash, a C. moschata squash, or Luffa (vegetable sponge) or Cucuzza (snake or serpent gourd), edible gourds which have more resistance to squash bugs. Be sure to cut them relatively small, while skins can be pierced by a fingernail, for good flavor. These are very vigorous, sprawling plants, which, happily, are also prolific. One option is to plant a row of regular zucchini alternating with these bigger plants – when the zucchini succumb to disease, the sprawlers will take over.

In the hoophouse, we do a daily hunt for striped cucumber beetles (and spotted ones, if we find those). We use some toothed tweezers and do this task first thing, before the beetles have warmed up enough to fly much. They spend the night in the flowers, so are easy to find in the morning. Cucumber beetles spread viral diseases. We reckon if we pay attention to killing off these first-generation beetles, we’ll have fewer throughout the gardens all summer. The hunting season for cucumber beetles here is on average about a month long.

Striped cucumber beetle in squash flower.
Photo Pam Dawling

Adult squash vine borers are fairly large orange and black fuzzy moths with glassy black wings. They are active in May and early June here, and there may be a second generation in late July/early August. The small flat brown eggs are laid singly at the base of the stem. The larvae hatch after one week, and are white with a brown head. They spend 4-6 weeks in the stem, eating upwards and growing to 1” (2.5 cm) in size. Then they dig into the soil and pupate for the winter. Plant symptoms include wilting of the whole plant, and stem holes surrounded by frass (caterpillar poop). It is possible to save the plant if you act at the first sign of trouble and pick out the grub, then pile soil over the injury to help the plant recover. Injecting Bt into the stem is another solution. Squash vine borer adults are reputed to be repelled by radishes sown in a 12” (30 cm) diameter circle around each squash plant, or in bands down either side of a row. It’s fine to harvest some of the radishes, but make sure to leave enough that their leaves touch, to provide a continuous barrier. Some growers recommend mixing wood ash or charcoal in the soil with the seeds at planting.

To repel aphids that transmit mosaic diseases, reflective foil mulch can be used. Borage and nasturtium interplanted in cucurbit rows are said to repel insects. They look pretty either way.

Outdoors we use insect netting on hoops over the row, as soon as we have sown the seeds in the ground (or set the transplants). We leave the netting in place until we see female flowers. It may be a surprise to you that there are both female and male flowers. Male flowers have just a thin stem, but female flowers have a miniature fruit behind the flower. Often the first flush of flowers are just males, so you don’t need to worry about those needing visits from pollinating insects. Low temperatures and high light intensity promote female sex expression, meaning that early in a chilly season some varieties of squash produce a lot of female flowers, and no males. Both are needed!

Watch Out for Squash Diseases

See the Squash Variety Trial post for more. Common diseases include Powdery Mildew, Downy Mildew, Anthracnose, Angular leaf spot, Black Rot (Gummy Stem Blight), Bacterial Wilt and various mosaic viruses.

Workhorse Crops for June

Workhorse Crops for June

I’ve chosen 14 Workhorse Crops (including two pairs) to focus on at the beginning of every month, until April 2022: These are crops that we can rely on under a wide range of conditions. Some Workhorse Crops are easy to grow, some pump out lots of food, some are “insurance crops”, some are especially profitable (for those growing for market), and watermelons are the circus pony among the workhorses, I admit, but we all need fun!

I intend for this series to help growers who want to become more efficient, productive and profitable (if selling) as we emerge from sheltering at home and expand our lives again. Don’t give up growing your own food, just choose some less time-consuming ways to do it.

Our May 5 sowing of bush beans on June 30.
Photo Pam Dawling

Workhorse Crops to Plant in June

June is another busy planting month here in central Virginia. Next month the heat strikes hard, and the daylight starts to get shorter, but this month we are still climbing the hill of the year. Ten of our 14 Workhorse Crops can be planted in June.

Beans: We sow bush beans every few weeks to keep up supplies of tender beautiful beans. See the Special Topic section for info about Succession Planting, to help you determine when and how often to sow beans and other short-lived warm weather crops. Also see the Special Topic section to read how we control Mexican Bean Beetles that used to destroy our bean plantings. Click this link to read about soaking bean seed, using inoculant, sowing through biodegradable plastic mulch using a jig, sowing sunflowers in our bean rows as place-markers when harvesting.

Carrots: I wrote a lot about carrots in the past year, when the monthly series was on root crops. See this post on preparing beds for sowing carrots, and weeding and thinning. Check out this post on flame-weeding, if you plan lots of carrot-growing!

We sow carrots in late February, then twice in March, once a month in April and May and after that we’d like to not sow more until the beginning of August. Carrots grown in hot weather don’t taste that good: there’s little sweetness and too many terpenes (the compound that in small quantities gives carrots their distinctive carrotiness, but can be overpowering if too strong.) But home-grown hot weather carrots are still better than jet-lagged travel-weary carrots from afar. You could use shadecloth over the beds. If we have not grown enough carrots by the end of May to see us through to October, we sow in June, and even July if we must.

Carrots under shade cloth in summer.
Photo Pam Dawling

Chard: The perfect insurance crop! We use chard for fresh greens in summer, when spring kale, collards, broccoli and cabbage have long bolted and been turned under so we can plant something else. We transplant our chard into a hay mulch in late April. Organic mulches help keep the soil cool during hot weather, so are very helpful for leafy greens. This crop will be in the ground until mid-winter, and mulch will keep back most of the weeds.

Chard provides leafy greens all summer whenever you need them, and you can ignore it when you have plenty of other vegetables! As a biennial, chard will not bolt the first year (unless stressed by lack of water). I’ve noticed the red chards bolt more easily than the green ones. I suppose red crops are a bit stressed already, as they are short of chlorophyll, compared to the green ones, making photosynthesis harder work.

Potatoes: I wrote a special series on potatoes last year. Click the link to access the whole series, starting with planting in April. Here we plant in March and June. For our June-planted potatoes, we pre-sprout the seed potatoes for just two weeks (shoots grow quicker in warm weather than in early spring). To protect the planted potatoes from the summer heat, we hill immediately after planting, even though we can’t see the rows! Then we unroll big round hay bales down the field to cover all the soil. Potato shoots grow strongly, and can make it up through the extra height of the hills/ridges and through the 3” (7.5 cm) of hay. After about 16 days, we walk through the field, investigating spots where there is no sprout. We call this task “Liberating the Trapped Shoots”. Often the problem is just an overthick clump of mulch, and the shoot will be quite literally trapped (and completely white). We simply let he shoot see the light, and redistribute the over-thick mulch.

June-planted potato emerged through hay mulch.
Photo Pam Dawling

Sweet corn: we make 6 sowings of sweet corn, to harvest from July 4 to mid-October. We are well into corn-planting time, which continues until mid-July, when there are not enough warm days left in the season to mature another sowing. Remember: don’t plant a mixture of different corn genotypes, and don’t plant Indian corn, popcorn or any kind of flint or dent corn within 600′ (180 m) of your sweet corn. This leads to very disappointing starchy corn. We grow only sweet corn in our garden, to avoid this problem.

Sweet potatoes: I wrote a lot about planting sweet potatoes in 2020. Wait for the soil to warm before planting out your sweet potato slips, they don’t grow well if too cold. We plant ours a couple of weeks after the last frost, around the time we transplant peppers and okra. In early June, we replace any casualties, if needed, to fill out the rows again. This year we have a beautiful looking patch, with rows of healthy plants on ridges, with biodegradable plastic mulch. We have a solar-powered electric fence to deter the deer. My latest worry is groundhogs, who can slip right under the electric fence. They haven’t yet, but I expect they will, if we don’t catch them first.

Sweet potatoes on biodegradable plastic mulch, with solar electric fence charger.
Photo Pam Dawling

Tomatoes: In mid-June we plant a bed of late tomatoes, to boost the yields when the maincrop beds start to pass their peak. We planted our main crop tomato beds at the very beginning of May, and they’re looking quite good.

Here’s a post about planting tomatoes in our hoophouse. We use the same techniques in the hoophouse and outdoors. We transplant one row of tomatoes down the centerline of a 4ft (1.2 m) bed, 2ft (60 cm) apart. Once the weather has settled so that we’re confident we won’t need rowcover any more, we stake and stringweave. We install a steel T-post every two plants (4ft /1.2 m) apart and start stringweaving when the plants are about 12ins (30 cm) tall. I’ll say more about stringweaving next month.

Watermelons: As I explained in May, I gave watermelon a “Circus Pony” place among the workhorses! They’re not easy, therefore not reliable, but they provide so much pleasure when they do grow well. We transplant our watermelons, to get ripe ones as early as possible.

Watermelons grow very well on black plastic mulch, which warms the soil as well as keeping weeds at bay. The first year we switched from using hay mulch to biodegradable plastic mulch, we were astounded to get ripe melons a full month earlier!

If you want to use organic mulches for warm weather crops, don’t do it immediately. Wait till the soil warms through. This year we made that mistake, then we had late cold weather and the transplants all died. We’re going to experiment with station-sowing seeds directly in the gaps. Station-sowing is a technique of putting several seeds in the ground at each spot (station) where you want one plant to grow. Rather than making a furrow and sowing a row that needs thinning later. It’s a good technique for remedial work (ahem!), or if growing very expensive seeds, or for crops you are not familiar with, such as parsnips. You see several seedlings all the same and can be pretty sure it’s the thing you planted.

Watermelons can be planted from seeds when the ground has warmed to at least 70°F (21°C). On average, it takes about 85 days for Crimson Sweet seedlings to mature and produce ripe fruit. This is late for us to sow watermelons, and we certainly won’t get early ones this year, but we could get them in September. Better than none.

I described transplanting watermelons last month, if you need that info.

Crimson Sweet watermelon.
Photo Nina Gentle

Winter squash are a true workhorse, and can still be sown here early in June, provided we don’t sow the slow-maturing ones like the gigantic Tahitian Butternut. Aim for harvesting in September and October and count back to see how many days you have until you want to harvest. Then choose the varieties that will have enough time. You can also transplant winter squash if you need to. We did this once when our fields flooded. It worked out fine.

We mostly grow Butternuts, Moschata types that store best. This is the type to focus on if you want squash with no damage from borers or cucumber beetles. The tougher stems are better able to repel invaders. They need warm growing temperatures above 60°F (16°C).

See last month’s post for more about sowing winter squash, and for other kinds of winter squash, such as some Maxima squashes that store quite well and have relatively high resistance to squash bugs compared to others in this group, and Pepo squashes, suitable for storing a few weeks only

A bee pollinating squash.
Photo Pam Dawling

Zucchini (courgettes) and summer squash: another crop type that we succession sow, to get a continuous supply. More about succession planting below in the Special Topic section. We make five or six plantings, each one half yellow squash (Zephyr, Gentry) and half zucchini (TenderGrey, Noche, Golden Glory). We grow our earliest squash in the hoophouse, setting out transplants at the beginning of April. Our first outdoor crop is also from transplants. After that, the soil is warm (60°F/15.5°C) and we direct sow. The time from sowing to harvest is only around 42-54 days.

After transplanting or sowing, we hoop and cover the row with insect netting (rowcover works if it has no big holes). We have many bugs that like these plants, especially the striped cucumber beetles, so we keep the rows covered until female flowers appear. At that point we need the service of the pollinators, unless the squash is parthenocarpic (sets fruit without pollination). We pack away the covers, hoe and thin the squash to 24” (60 cm). It would be better to thin sooner, but we rarely find the time.

Workhorse Crops to Harvest in June

We have mnemonics for harvesting: Monday, Wednesday and Friday might be the crops beginning with the plosive Ps and Bs: peas, beans, beets, broccoli, blueberries etc. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays would be the crops beginning with the hard K and G sounds: kale, corn, carrots, collards, cabbage, garlic scapes etc.

Other crops like asparagus, lettuce, cucumbers, summer squash and zucchini we harvest 6 days a week. Some, like cabbage, we harvest twice a week.

Asparagus can be harvested here until early in June. Every day for the 8-week harvest period, snap off at ground level all the spears above a certain length. We chose 7” (18 cm). This task is best done first thing in the morning, when the spears are crisp. Daily harvest will also remove asparagus beetle eggs, controlling the pest level.

Cabbage is ready here from late May until mid-July. We store enough to feed us until we start harvesting fall cabbage. An early sowing of fast-maturing varieties (like Farao or Early Jersey Wakefield which can be ready in only 60 days) can be followed by harvests of slower varieties. When a cabbage is ready for harvest, the head is firm and the outer leaf on the head (not the more horizontal wrapper leaves) will be curling back. For cabbage to store to eat over the summer, cut with a strong knife and set it upside down on the nest of leaves to dry a little. Come back along the row with a net or plastic bag and gather up the storage quality cabbages to refrigerate. Gather any lower quality cabbages to eat soon. If you would like to get another harvest from the same plants, cut criss-cross into the stump. Small “cabbagettes” will grow and can be used raw or cooked. They won’t store.

Carrots can be ready about three months after sowing in spring, although you can get thinnings for salads sooner. Read here about harvesting carrots.

Chard is ready for harvest as soon as you decide the leaves are big enough. Simply snap or cut off some outer leaves and stand them in a bucket with a little water until you cook them. For a sustainable rate of harvesting with chard, always leave at least 6 of the inner leaves to grow.

Garlic harvest time will be soon if not already. I wrote about garlic last week.

Kale and collards can be harvested until they are bolting, as long as the flavor is acceptable. Our spring-planted ones are not bolting yet, but the fall-planted ones were tilled in a couple of weeks ago.

New potatoes could be dug here during June, if you don’t mind reducing the final yield. The flavor of new potatoes, with their delicate skins, is very special. As a child, I ate them boiled with mint, and topped with some butter.

Tomatoes start to ripen this month. Our hoophouse tomatoes have started to yield a small amount of Glacier, Stupice, Sungold and Amy’s Apricot.

Zucchini and summer squash are ready from the hoophouse early sowing since about May 20. We are now (June 2) harvesting our first planting of outdoors. We harvest every day to the fall frost (or beyond if we remember to cover that last planting with rowcover on chilly nights.).

From storage: carrots, potatoes,

Workhorse Crops Special Topic:

Succession planting, and Mexican bean beetles

Succession planting is a topic I have often presented at workshops, so rather than give you more words, I’m giving you the slideshow from 2019. Towards the end it includes information about dealing with Mexican bean beetles.

Succession planting 2019 pam dawling from Pam Dawling

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.

Crates of potatoes in our root cellar.
Photo Nina Gentle

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!

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.

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.

This is the pupa of the tobacco hornworm.
Photo Pam Dawling

Our Vegetable Gardens in May, Year Round Lettuce, Sprouts and Salads

Spring cabbage planted in hay mulch, a few weeks after transplanting.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Our broccoli and cabbage transplants enjoyed the cool rainy weather and got through the dry hot weather. Yes, it’s been very changeable. Last night the temperature dropped to 33F (0.5C). We’re harvesting rhubarb, kale, spinach, collards, senposai and garlic scallions outdoors, and are deep into our garlic scape harvest.

Pulling garlic scapes in May
Photo by Wren Vile

How to harvest garlic scapes.
Photo Wren Vile

The above photo shows our preferred garlic scape harvest method: grasp the scape firmly below the head and pull steadily directly upwards. There will be a popping sound when the stem breaks. This method gets us the largest amount of the scape, and more importantly, the lower part is the most tender, and we don’t want to leave it behind.

Flowering squash plants with a row of snap peas in our hoophouse.
Photo Wren Vile

In our hoophouse we are harvesting the last of the winter scallions, some snap peas and today, May 9, the first yellow squash (Gentry). You can see in this photo taken last week, that the squash are flowering and have tiny fruits developing.

Our first bed of outdoor lettuce (and weeds!) Photo Wren Vile

My Mother Earth News Organic Gardening blogpost about Growing Lettuce Year Round: Succession Planting for a Continuous Supply is up. This acts as a follow up to one of my workshops at the Asheville MEN Fair last weekend on Succession Planting for a Continuous Supply of Vegetables.

I had a good time at the Fair. My Saturday workshop on Sweet Potatoes was addressed to a full tent of extremely hardy sweet potato lovers. The weather was cold and windy, especially hard on speakers – at least the audience sat shoulder-to-shoulder for warmth. I was glad to get indoors for the book-signing afterwards. My Sunday workshop on Succession Planting was the last session of the Fair, but even so, there was good attendance.

My fellow Twin Oaker Winnie has written about using our seasonal vegetables in her blog

sustainexistence. Check out her Beet, Spinach, & Garlic Scape Salad

**Beet, Spinach and Garlic Scape Salad**

This post was hacked–we’re trying to restore it.

Cover crops slideshow, Hoophouse style and design article

Last week I went to the annual conference of the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, held at Hot Springs Resort, Virginia. There were about 430 attendees, a big increase from last year. I gave two presentations, Spring and Summer Hoophouses, and Cover Crops. Here’s the Cover Crops slideshow.

Cover crops for vegetable growers from Pam Dawling

In case you were there and missed the handouts, here they are:

Spring and Summer Hoophouses Handout

Cover Crops for Vegetable Growers 4pg Handout 2016

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

My next two events are

Jan 25-28, 2017 Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference Location: Hyatt Regency Hotel and Convention Center, 401 West High St, Lexington, KY 40507. 888 421 1442, 800 233 1234. Registration: http://www.ssawg.org/registration

I’m presenting two brand new 90 minute workshops: Diversify your Vegetable Crops (Friday 2-3.30pm) and Storage Vegetables for Off-Season Sales (Saturday 8.15-9.45 am). Workshops will be recorded. Book signing (Thursday 5pm) and sales.

Feb 1-4 2017 PASA Farming for the Future Conference 2000 people Location: Penn Stater Convention Center, State College, PA Registration: http://conference.pasafarming.org/

I’m presenting three 80 minute Workshops: Sweet Potatoes, (Friday Feb 2 12.50pm), Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops, (Saturday 8.30am), and Succession Planting, (Sat 3.40pm). Workshops will be recorded. Book-signings and sales.

Sweet potato harvest 2014
Photo Nina Gentle

The January 2017 issue of Growing for Market is out. It includes my article on Hoophouse style and design. As well as the Gothic/Quonset
decision and that on whether to choose roll-up, drop-down or no sidewalls, this article discusses roads, utilities, irrigation, in-ground insulation, end-wall design, inflation, airflow fans, and bed layout to match your chosen method of cultivation.

Other articles include Barbara Damrosch on flower production on a small vegetable farm (beautiful photos!), Emily Oakley on planning to grow only what you can sell (words of wisdom), Eric and Joanna Reuter with part two of their series online weather tools for farmers, Jed Beach on how to avoid and fix common financial mistakes we farmers make, and Jane Tanner on local food hubs. Plenty of good reading!

The first issue of Growing for Market that I ever picked up (years ago) had an article about flame-weeding carrots. I realized that that one article was going to save us more than the price of a subscription. Just one good idea, clearly explained, can save so much wasted time!

We won’t starve or get scurvy! Plenty of food in the winter hoophouse!
Photo Twin Oaks Community

Hoophouse tomatoes and squash, garden tour, class.

Tomato plants in our hoophouse, planted among the winter greens Photo Kathryn Simmons — Tomato plants in our hoophouse, planted among the winter greens
Photo Kathryn Simmons

We have planted our two beds of tomatoes in our hoophouse – 92 plants – can’t wait! It will be the very end of May before we get any to eat. We have one bed of fast-maturing kinds, mostly Glacier and Stupice, but also a couple each of Five Star Grape, Sun Gold, Atkinson (trying this for the first time), Garden Peach, Mountain Magic, and Ozark Pink (first year for this too.). Except for Atkinson and Ozark pink these are all tried and tested here. They all mature in 56-71 days from transplanting.

Our second bed is of slower ones – 75-85 days from transplanting. A quarter of them are our reliable standard red slicer Tropic. About another quarter are our favorite orange slicer Jubilee. The other half of the bed are special ones, such as Yellow Oxheart, Amy’s Apricot, Black Cherry, Vinson Watts (new to us this year, disease resistant), Green Zebra, Amy’s Sugar Gem, Rebelski (new to us), Mortgage Lifter, TC Jones and Striped German.

For the tender crops going into the hoophouse at this time of year, we don’t clear the whole bed, but dig holes at 2ft spacing down the middle, removing winter crops as needed.

Holes dug for our hoophouse tomatoes. Photo Wren Vile — Holes dug for our hoophouse tomatoes.
Photo Wren Vile

After planting, we prioritize harvesting the old crops directly to the south of the new plants, then gradually harvest the other “old” crops around , to make more space for the growing new crop. This way, we get maximum food from the space. When the surrounding “old” crops are big, we also get some protection on chilly nights. As you can see in the top picture, we also put wire hoops over the plants and use row cover if a frosty night is forecast.

Summer squash in the hoophouse, planted among Bulls Blood beets. Photo Kathryn Simmons — Summer squash in the hoophouse, planted among Bulls Blood beets.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Next to be planted is a row of squash. Today the plants are still in a flat in the greenhouse. Next weekend is forecast to be cold – below freezing. Do we plant soon and add row cover, or try to wait until after the weekend? By then the plants could be too big for the flat.

Today I gave a garden tour to 15 horticulture students from J Sargeant Reynolds Community College, one of Betsy Trice’s three classes there.

On Saturday I taught a class at New Country Organics in Waynesboro, on Succession Planting. I have many slideshows, and each time I prepare for a presentation I usually revise or at least tweak the one I’m about to give. And often after the event, I upload the slides to SlideShare.net so people can see them again (or the many people who missed the event can see them for the first time. I haven’t yet uploaded the slightly revised Succession Planting to Slide Share. I see I posted the previous version here as recently as 11/10/15.

Instead of reposting I went through my archives and made a new category “slide shows” and labelled all the ones I could find. So, if you are in a slide show watching mood, you can click on the Slide shows category in the side panel on the left and pick from the choices there. Also, Jillian Lowery filmed the class at New Country Organics, and I hope to be able to post the video.

Rhubarb in early spring, not yet ready to harvest. Photo Kathryn Simmons — Rhubarb in early spring, not yet ready to harvest.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Outdoors, we are weeding, composting and mulching our rhubarb. This is a borderline climate for rhubarb, but we manage to get a crop from it. Best if we provide summer shade.

Events List 2016

I’ve been busy planning my workshops for the next several months and beyond. Here’s a list of what I have confirmed and some that are just possibilities at this point. Remember, conference registrations can make nice gifts! (as can books – click my Book Reviews category in the side bar.)

Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group

Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms conference, KY.

Dates: January 29-30, 2016 (pre-conference Jan 27-28)

Location: Lexington Convention Center, 430 West Vine Street, Lexington, KY 40507

Registration: $199 including Taste of Kentucky banquet

http://www.ssawg.org/2016-conference-program

Pam’s Workshop: Friday, 9:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Intensive Vegetable Production on a Small Scale — Learn techniques for raising large amounts of food on small acreages. Pam Dawling, who raises vegetables for a 100-person community on 3.5 acres, will discuss direct sowing and growing of transplants, close spacing, raised beds, irrigation, disease and pest management, and season extension techniques. This session will be valuable for small market farmers and urban farmers who want to maximize production with limited space.

Book Signing: Thursday, January 28 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Culpeper County Library, VA

Date: Sun, Feb 28, 2016 2-4 pm

Location: Culpeper County Library, 271 Southgate Shopping Center, Culpeper, VA 22701

Workshop topic: talk about my book, research, importance, etc. for 30 – 45 minutes, then 15 – 30 minutes Q&A. CSA Farmers at an info table. (National CSA sign up day)

Signing and selling books.

Organic Growers School, Asheville, NC

Dates: March Fri 11-Sun 13 2016.

Location: University of North Carolina Asheville, UNCA

Workshop topics: Growing Great Garlic – Planting, harvest, curing, storing and the selection of planting stock are comprehensively covered in this workshop. As well as both hardneck and softneck bulb garlic, this workshop covers “byproduct crops” such as garlic scallions and scapes, which are ready early in the year when new crops are at a premium.

Intensive Vegetable Production on a Small Scale — Raise large amounts of food on small acreages. Learn about crop planning and record-keeping, growing and maintaining healthy soils, using crop rotations, cover crops, organic mulches and the basics of compost making (and growing). Compare methods for direct sowing and growing transplants. Learn about plant spacing, raised beds, irrigation, disease, pest and weed management, and season extension techniques. For both small market farmers and urban farmers who want to maximize production with limited space.

Handouts

Workshops are 1.5 hours each

Signing and selling books.

New Country Organics, Waynesboro, VA

Small class, about 15 people

Date: Saturday March 26, 10am-noon.

Location: New Country Organics 801 2nd Street Waynesboro, VA 22980 To be confirmed

My contact: Jillian Lowery jillian.lowery@newcountryorganics.com

www.newcountryorganics.com 540-184-1956 844-933-3337

Workshop topic: Succession Planting

Handouts

Selling and signing books

Mother Earth News Fair, Asheville, NC (to be confirmed)

Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 15,000

Dates: Saturday April 9 – Sunday April 10, 2016 (to be confirmed)

Location: Western North Carolina Agricultural Center, 1301 Fanning Bridge Road,
Fletcher, NC 28732

Registration: $25 weekend pass.

Workshops: (to be decided)

Book-signing

Louisa Master Gardener class tour of TO gardens

Date: Thursday, April 21

Location: Twin Oaks Community

Heritage Harvest Festival

Dates: September 9-10 2016

Location: Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia

Tickets: TBD

Workshops: To be decided

Book-signing

Mother Earth News Fair, Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. (to be confirmed)

Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 18,000

Dates: Friday-Sunday September 23-25, 2016

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

Registration: $20 weekend pass

Workshop topics to be decided

Book-signing

New Country Organics, Waynesboro, VA (to be confirmed)

Date: Saturday October??, 10am-noon. About 15 people

Location: To be confirmed: New Country Organics 801 2nd Street Waynesboro, VA 22980

My contact: Jillian Lowery jillian.lowery@newcountryorganics.com

www.newcountryorganics.com 540-184-1956 844-933-3337

Workshop topic: Cold Hardy Winter Vegetables

Handouts

Selling and signing books

Mother Earth News Fair, Topeka, KS (to be confirmed)

Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 12,000

Dates: October 22-23, 2016

Location: One Expocentre Dr., Topeka, KS 66612

Registration: $20 weekend pass

Workshop topics to be decided

Book-signing

Winter salad crops: Ruby Streaks. Photo McCune Porter — Winter salad crops: Ruby Streaks.
Photo McCune Porter

Meanwhile, here and now, on the ground, a photo of our much-beloved Ruby Streaks, in our Eat-All Greens patch, being used as salad greens.

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 2^nd 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 6^th 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)

Upcoming Events I’m presenting workshops at.

Here’s my list of upcoming events:

On June 27 2013, I’ll be giving a presentation on Planning for Fall Vegetable Production at VSU’s Randolph Farm, as part of the Annual Summer Vegetable and Berry Field Day, which runs from 9am to 3pm and includes a field tour, a chef competition and then a choice of educational sessions.

I’ll be presenting two workshops at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, Friday September 6 and Saturday September 7. It was a lovely event last year, with perfect weather. let’s hope for similar again. I’ll be presenting my workshop on Producing Asian Greens on Friday Sept 6 and one on Succession Planting on Saturday Sept 7.

I’ll be at the Mother Earth News Fair at Seven Springs, PA September 20-22, 2013. I’m presenting a workshop on Winter Hardy Vegetables. If you haven’t been to a MEN Fair before, consider going. They’re a lot of fun and a lot of useful information, all at a very reasonable price. Weekend tickets are $20 if you pre-order by March 31, 2013: (Price at the gate: $35). There are workshops on renewable energy, small-scale agriculture, gardening, green building and more. There are vendors of books, tools and organic foods. You can book a room at the Seven Springs resort, or camp nearby. Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/fair/SevenSprings.aspx#ixzz2F3JVesVm