Chard and turnips... &c.

The chard and turnips that I sowed back in October are ready for harvest, so about sixty days from seed to harvest. That's considerably longer than the times listed, but of course those are days-to-harvest numbers for spring sowing. I pulled up some of the turnips two nights ago--the size of golf balls and sweet enough to eat like radishes. I browned them in butter, then tossed in their still-tender leafy greens and cooked them for a few more minutes. A dash of vinegar and plenty of salt, and that was supper.

Squirrels have played havoc with my radishes and carrots... I don't know how the know, or why they do it, but every time I sow those two seeds, the darn beasts spend the night digging in those rows. This has happened at least half a dozen times this fall, and as a result, I have hardly any carrots or radishes growing and I had to order more seeds...

On the plus side of the ledger, my lettuces are finally doing well, Jericho in particular. The warm weather has quickened the tomatoes and I harvested the first Jetsetter a few days ago. Very tasty and much better quality than I'm used to for winter tomatoes.

Latest seed order...

From Pinetree. Cheap seeds, good selection. These have all worked well for me.

Pinetree Garden Seeds
PO Box 300
New Gloucester, ME 04260

Product #: SP17-MUNCHING MIX 4 OZ
Product #: 431-TOKYO CROSS TURNIP (F1 hybrid 30 days)
Product #: 303-FRENCH BREAKFAST RADISH (25 days)
Product #: 7201-SUGAR SNAX CARROT (F1 hybrid 63 days)
Product #: 189-CRESS-UPLAND (25 days)
Product #: 19102-DINOSAUR KALE (53 days)

March in December...

Not feeling much like Christmas out there... but compared to what other parts of the country are suffering now, I'll take the warmth and sun. Funny that I was just complaining about the cold.

A quick update in pictures...

Some Apollo Arugula, window boxes with salad greens, blackberries, Dinosaur kale, Jetsettter tomatoes, and cassava canes for next year.

Florida in December

Yellow Oncidium orchid...

Cassava cuttings

Jetsetter in December...

It's been an exceptionally cold winter: No frosts yet, but still, very cold. It seems every week we get into the mid- or upper-thirties. My tomatoes, though, have been setting lots of fruit, which is slowly ripening. If we get through the winter with no frosts (doubtful), or I nurse these plants through them, I'll have a great harvest this spring.

Cassava harvest...

Harvest from my first try with cassava. I got some cuttings from a gardening friend (thanks, Felix!) back in, what, May? Made numerous cuttings from the original piece and shared with friends, then planted what was left in the garden: three small pieces.

From grazing in your garden

(You can see the cassava cutting in the lower left corner, beginning of June.)
If I'd gotten it planted in the garden earlier, I would have had a better harvest. Still, considering the space I gave it and the total lack of water, fertilizer, etc. -- not bad. Certainly no worse than sweet potatoes. And now I have fifteen linear feet of cassava stem to make cutting from.

Fall tomatoes...

Delta Charlie knows what he's talking about, and he recommended two cherry tomatoes for fall planting:

Hi all, the first of the fall tomatoes just started to ripen. The winner of the race for the earliest tomato looks to be the Sweet Quartz cherry and just behind it was the Golden Gem. Had some for lunch on Sunday and they sure were good!

My Jet Setter tomatoes are coming along nicely, but still green. Tonight's near-freezing temperatures may do them in... so be it.

Growing lettuce in FLA

From a post over on the Florida Forum of GardenWeb... my thoughts on salad greens in FLA:

i direct-sowed a bunch of lettuce in september but nothing came up (but the brassicas all came up--broc, collards, rocket). christine (happly_fl_gardener) probably correctly diagnosed the problem as soil fungus, and the small seeds couldn't germinate. (maybe dusting them with fungicide or soaking them in a bit of weak need might have helped.) in the past, i've always direct-sowed my lettuce, but typically i don't plant it until mid-november or later.

at the beginning of october i sowed a bunch of red sails lettuce (from tony--thanks!) in a large windowbox in a mostly-soiless mix, and they all germinated. i've also got a bunch of jericho lettuce going in windowboxes...

anyway, long story short, i learned some things: soil's just to microbiologically active when temps are above, say, 80 here in florida. little seeds (like carrots, parsley, lettuce) don't germinate because they rot or are rendered otherwise sterile. if you want to start lettuce early, i think a soil-less or nearly so mix is necessary. if you want to direct sow, then wait until things cool down--evening temps below 60.

Preserving...

I grew up in a household that canned: Every fall, my mom dragged out the pressure cooker and canning kettle, and went to work on the tomatoes, corn, and peppers from my father's large kitchen garden. (He was an excellent gardener, but never saw fit to include children in his past time.) Reading this article brought to mind those steamy August and September afternoons helping my mom in the kitchen, but it also dug up memories of my grandmother's root cellar, located in the basement of the wash house on her turn-of-the-century farmhouse where she lived the better part of five decades. When she died, the shelves were still full of large, half-gallon jars with produce from her small plot out the back door. The smell down there was always odd but not unpleasant: the mineral scent of the limestone that provided the foundation and floor, the sourish smell of pickles and sauerkraut, the scent of fabric softener and bluing from upstairs.

No real need for a root cellar here in Florida, except for making beer. Actually, I think if we had one we'd use it more in the doldrums (August and September) than the winter, when there's plenty groing fresh in the garden.

Food Storage as Grandma Knew It
The Worleys, like a number of other Americans, have made the seemingly anachronistic choice to turn their basement into a root cellar. While Ms. Worley’s brownstone basement stash won’t feed the couple through the winter, she said, “Ithink it’s a healthy way to go and an economical way.”

According to a September survey on consumer anxieties over higher fuel and food prices from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames, 34 percent of respondents said that they were likely to raise more of their own vegetables. Another 37 percent said they were likely to can or freeze more of their food. The cousin to canning and freezing is the root cellar.

Bustling about the garden...

Let's see... What to say about my gardens. First, my flower gardens are in disarray. My Prosperity rose suddenly up and died. This rose was about five years, and has (had!) a trunk the size of a wine bottle. I noticed a problem at the beginning of September, and within a few weeks, it was dead. I have no idea what's wrong with it, but in the same bed I have other roses on Fortuniana that are also looking much worse than they did a few months ago. I have no clue what's going on--no evidence of insect damage, and I tested the pH--just a bit under seven, so ideal for roses. It's heavily mulched, rich soil. I can only guess that the stress of a very dry spring followed by Fay's twenty-two inches weakened the plant and left it susceptible to disease. Whatever. It's dead now, and I am going to radically rethink that bed. Primarily, I've decided to move away from roses as structure and towards other shrubs that require less maintenance. Nothing is more beautiful than a rose in its prime, but the fact is that roses are temperate (and temperamental) plants, and we live in tough climes here in FLA. That bed is essentially a blank template, and I'm going to rework it to have a lot more blooms, a lot denser foliage, and lower water and chemical needs.

Sigh. Very depressing about my Prosperity. It was a favorite of mine.

The veg garden is flourishing with the moderate temperatures and cool nights. We had a doozy of a rainstorm a couple of weeks ago, and no rain since. That's been ideal, since it's let me water modestly every day and kept the seeds I sowed from being washed away by the torrents of rain we get here. No fungal problems, surprisingly little insect damage aside from the inevitable snail damage on the lower leaves of seedlings. But they're growing fast enough to outgrow what problems there are.

A note to myself: August first is not too early to start Brassicaceae. I started them on August 15, and had great germination and fine growth, so a couple weeks earlier shouldn't make much difference. On the other hand, the lettuce and carrot seeds I sowed still haven't germinated after six weeks, so I'll likely have to resow them. Perhaps with the cool nights we've been having, the seeds will still germinate. I simply don't know how long small seeds like that persist in soil before decaying or getting eaten. We'll see. Fortunately, the salad seeds are all saved from last year, so, nothing ventured, nothing gained will be my attitude.

Best things in the garden right now: Kales, collards, broccoli, and arugula. Herbs are starting to come back from their summer simpering.

Spent half an hour this morning doing a heavy fall pruning on my Old Garden Roses. Oh, I also tested the pH around my blueberries. Despite lots of pine bark mulch, careful preparation of the bed, etc., the pH has risen from around five to seven--far too sweet for the blueberries to thrive. So, I threw a lot of garden sulfur around them and watered it in thoroughly. I expect that by early spring the pH will have lowered substantially and they'll put on some decent growth.

Garden clean-up, more seeds... it's HOT

I did some horticultural penance for all the fishing I've been doing lately. Spent a HOT October morning and afternoon (it had to have been close to ninety out there, and precious little breeze) doing more garden clean-up and organizing today. I dug up another patch of sweet potatoes. In this bed, I'd spaded a bit and thrown a heavy layer of trash mulch on top, and the results were much better than my earlier patch--lots of nice batatas (probably six or seven pounds) for roasting this fall. They're out curing in the gazebo. I still have one more patch of sweets left out there, but I'll let them go another few weeks and eat them for Thanksgiving.

I pulled up the kids' garden and reconfigured the area to plant more vegetables (radishes, carrots, peas) in a few weeks. I spaded in a wheelbarrow-full of mushroom compost and a bunch of shredded green trimmings, and covered the ten-by-fifteen foot area with a heavy layer of grass clippings I snagged by the side of the road. I'll give it a week to cool down and then sow some seeds. That area gets a lot of morning and then late-afternoon sun. Should be perfect for winter growing.

I sowed turnips (Seven Tops), a mix of salad and herb seeds (Summer Glory saved seed, Red Sails, mache, chervil) , and some Pak Choi (saved from last year's crop) in my main vegetable bed. It's about two-thirds planted, so I'm glad to have the extra space in the bed I created today.

That's the Apollo Rocket and Sea Foam chard above. One month after sowing, the arugula is almost ready to start harvesting. What a great plant--it'll produce until May at least.

Quickly...

Over the past couple of weeks, I've direct seeded chard ("French" Swiss Chard (!!) and my old standby, "Sea Foam"), beets, carrots ("Sweet Treat"), "Champion" collards, and arugula (T&M's excellent "Apollo"). I've also got some "Pimiento de Padron" and Cachucha peppers seedlings in buried pots. My tomatoes ("Solar Set," "Jetsetter" and "Sungold") are all flowering and doing well. Last night I planted this new-to-me salad varietal:

Jericho Lettuce
Lactuca sativa
14-16 in. head height.
Hardy Annual

Bred for the hot desert of Israel, this robust, bolt-resistant variety stays sweet and crisp in hot weather. Holds up the best in summer heat of all varieties trialed in New Mexico research farm. Very large, medium green, dense 14-16" heads are great for packing. (avg. 26,000 seeds/oz.)

My flower garden suffers...

Stinkbugs...

Finally, I've identified the stinkbugs on my tomatoes... The leaffooted bug Leptoglossus phyllopus (L.). On this useful IFAS site.

Capitalism.

Tragic. And not just for the destruction of the wholeness of community and health. As the world gets flatter and smaller, it also gets more monotonous and uglier.

Mediterranean Diet Declines, and Weights Rise - NYTimes.com: "Small towns like this one in western Crete, considered the birthplace of the famously healthful Mediterranean diet — emphasizing olive oil, fresh produce and fish — are now overflowing with chocolate shops, pizza places, ice cream parlors, soda machines and fast-food joints.

The fact is that the Mediterranean diet, which has been associated with longer life spans and lower rates of heart disease and cancer, is in retreat in its home region. Today it is more likely to be found in the upscale restaurants of London and New York than among the young generation in places like Greece, where two-thirds of children are now overweight and the health effects are mounting, health officials say."

Potatoes and peanuts...

I planted some sweet potato slips and raw peanuts (from Publix) along the edges of my main bed, in some sunny spots where the last bit of weedy grass lived in my back yard. Not a big space, a narrow slice about ten feet long and five feet wide. I used the mower or weed whacker to keep them in line all summer. They made a nice enough ground cover--aside from the mowing, no maintenance (no fertilizer, no water). The peanuts were very well behaved and dense enough to keep most weeds out. The sweet potatoes had good days and bad.

Anyway, I dug them up today. I expected more sweet potatoes, but suspect my harvest was reduced because I never tilled or spaded the area. The sand was surprisingly compacted when I dug the bed. What's more, I didn't improve the soil at all. When I've grown sweet potatoes in the past, they were in fairly rich beds.

The total yield for peanuts was only a couple cups, but that's the fruit of four or five plants, from a handful of peanuts that I seeded back in May or June. So, return on investment is pretty high.

I have a couple more beds of sweet potatoes scattered about them corners and edges of the yard. I'll leave them another month or so, seeing as how many of the potatoes I dug were meager.

Seeds are up...

So, I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that the dry season is upon us... but, for the first time in months, this evening was quite pleasant. Hot and not exactly dry... but not muggy. We had a nice shower around four that cooled things off, and the sun was so low that it could no longer warm things back up. When I did my after-work walk through the garden, it was wholly pleasant.

I noticed that most of my seeds were up--broccoli, collards, arugula, and chard.

Fall planting begins...

A pretty pleasant day, all things considered. It was around ninety, but the relative humidity was lower and there was a nice breeze out of the north-east. I did a lot of maintenance work around the garden (weeding, whacking, mowing), but found time to plant the following:

• Seafoam Chard
• Champion Collards (from Southern Exposure)
• Broccoli de Cicco (S.E.)
• Chervil
• Parsley
• Apollo Arugula (T&M)
  

It might be too early, but the forecast for the next week is the upper 80s and dry, so we'll see. The real hazard is still bugs this time of the year... Usually I start my vegetable seeds in cups or pots, but I direct-sowed these, since all the seeds are large and the soil is well tilled and covered in pine needles. Next up, beets and carrots. Then, a bit later, lettuce crops.

Getting ready for the fall garden...

Spent the afternoon yesterday ripping out all my tired, old summer crops, excepting some Cuban oregano, fennel, and scallions. I hoed the bed, and was surprised by how compacted the sandy soil had become. I spread about 3/4 of a cubic yard of mushroom compost in the fifty by thirty area (the soil has been amended frequently over the past few years), then a heavy cover of pine straw. I'll let the compost cool down a bit, then start my fall planting sometime mid-September. I haven't decided what, exactly, I'll plant, but probably first things will include Seafoam chard, beets, and broccoli. My tomatoes (Jetsetter) are in and doing nicely. I have a couple other smaller beds that I'll plant a bit later--right now, I've got cassava, sweet potatoes and peanuts in them. Since those crops won't be ready until October or November, I'll do lettuce and radishes in those beds, during the coolest part of the year.