December salads

We're enjoying winter salads again this year, thanks to a cold frame covered by a hoop house. We planted some cold-hardy greens in September and October in the cold frame, and covered the cold frame with a hoop house in November. The hoop house moderates the temperature inside the cold frame, so even if the temperature outside may be in the single digits, on a sunny day the inside of the cold frame can hit 50 degrees or higher.

This may be the last year for this style hoop house, though, because the winter winds and snow take their toll on the 6 mil polyethylene sheeting which comprises the hoop house. The sub-zero temperatures also tend to crack the joints that connect the PVC tubing of the hoop house, resulting in the ribs breaking loose and punching holes in the polyethylene. I'm using some galvanized steel fittings this winter on a couple of the joints, which seem to be working better, but still aren't ideal.

Next summer may require some brainstorming to come up with a different method, since it is nice having fresh greens all winter. They make the store-bought greens, even the organic variety, seem bland in comparison.

Looking back

At the end of every garden season I like to look back and figure out what went right and what went wrong. Here are some areas that stood out last season.

Pests. Or rather lack of them. There was considerably less damage to our crops than in previous years. Even with all the rain, the slugs were few and far between. Here are some of the things that may have helped keep down the insect damage:

• Using row covers on new seedlings. I used Agribon row covers on most of the transplanted seedlings. This protected the seedlings until they were big enough to withstand any insect attacks. It worked especially well protecting the cabbage seedlings as well as the arugula and spinach, which flea beetles used to feed on, filling the leaves with tiny pinholes.

• Using insect repellent plants. I raised marigolds from seed and planted them all around the garden. Marigolds are known as one of the best all-around insect repellents. Peppermint is another good repellent, and I used it in a couple of beds. Peppermint tends to spread prolifically, so you need to keep an eye on it. Garlic is another plant that insects dislike, so instead of having one bed of garlic, I split the planting into two separate beds. This fall I divided it even more, so I will have garlic in three different areas of the garden next spring.

We've also had problems in the past with voles eating the potatoes, but the last couple of years the damage has been almost nil. I used to mulch the potatoes with marsh hay, but the voles would nest in the hay and make it hard for our cat Kazel to find them. Now I don't use the hay and instead use a hoe to draw the soil up around the potato plants in hills. So this was the last sight several voles saw last summer:

Another strong area last season was the prolific yield of some of the vegetables. Our one cucumber plant produced over 60 fruit, and below was the yield from one winter squash plant.

My theory about this the fact that we planted borage flowers around the garden, which are known to attract honeybees. Along with the large amount of flowers in the front yard, the bees may have been drawn to the garden where they pollinated a large number of the blossoms on the vegetables. In any case, there will be plenty of borage in the garden again next year.

There weren't any big failures this year, the main problem was my delay in starting some seedlings, like bell pepper, kale and fall cabbage, which resulted in few red peppers, and scrawny kale and fall cabbage. I'm also trying to find a better system of supporting the tomatoes, so that the yield is high without having so many rot on the ground under the dense foliage.

Grand Marais

Katherine and I spent a few days last week in Grand Marais, where we took classes at the North House Folk School. I took a class called "Rustic Breads for the Brick Oven", taught by Derek Lucchese, in which we made several styles of bread and baked them in North House's brick oven. Most of the breads were made using only a sourdough starter and no yeast.

I learned quite a bit in the day and a half and it was very helpful to see a baker kneading, shaping and scoring loaves.  One of the most important things I took away from the class was the importance of maintaining a temperature range of 70-75 degrees when refreshing your starter and fermenting your dough. I believe that many of my sub-standard loaves at home have been caused by fermenting at too low a temperature or using a less than fully active starter.

 My loaves proofing in the classroom.

 Everyone brought their loaves out to the oven.

 Derek loading loaves into the oven.

 Derek testing loaves for doneness.

 The beautiful rustic loaves.

Fall harvest

Although we haven't had a killing frost yet, most of the root crops are ready to harvest. We've been pulling carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes in the last two weeks. Most of the carrots and sweet potatoes are still in the ground, but I harvested all of the potatoes last week.

They are curing on the basement floor to harden the skins before I put them in the root cellar. With the extremely warm October we've been having (80+ degrees for several days in a row), the temperature in the root cellar is still in the 60's, which is too warm for storage. We need some extended sub-freezing nights and cool days to lower the temperature in the cellar.

Now harvesting: Carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, Jalapeno peppers, tomatoes, winter squash, spinach, Swiss chard, collards, beets, celery, green beans.

The Key

The key to growing healthy vegetables is healthy soil, and the best way to improve the health of your soil is with compost. There are probably as many theories on how to make compost as there are people who are making it.

In our backyard, we currently have three compost bins in various stages of decomposition. All of our kitchen vegetable scraps (no meat or dairy) go into the piles, along with weeds we've pulled around the garden. The green material is layered with brown material, usually dried leaves or grasses. I also add a bit of soil on top of the kitchen scraps, to get some micro-organisms to work on them right away.


Every few months I'll sift the finished compost out into a wheelbarrow, returning the larger pieces that haven't yet broken down to the pile. If it's early in the summer, let the compost dry on a tarp before storing it. If it is still wet, it will continue to break down in storage, reducing the amount of compost you have available.

I have a good supply of compost on hand, so the finished compost from this summer will be spread on the beds next spring. I'll also add compost in mid-summer or fall, before late-season planting.

Lush

The last month has been dry, with little rain, but the abundant rain earlier in the summer put a lot of moisture in the soil and has resulted in some very lush growth. Both the sweet potatoes and winter squash have spread their vines far and wide, almost swallowing up adjacent garden beds.

On the insect front, the Japanese beetles seem to have finally died off after their mid-summer rampage. It seems everyone was seeing many more of these beetles this summer. We can only hope that they are at the peak of their growth curve. We did notice that when the beetles were in the grape vines on a large wooden fence on the east side of our yard, that house sparrows were spending a lot of time on the fence hunting and eating the beetles. 

Perfect weather

After a hot, wet July in which we saw over 10" of rain, August has started out warm and dry, with a couple days of nice soaking rain. We harvested our onions last weekend and they've been curing outside all week. We canned our first batch of tomatoes last week as well. Everything is looking very lush, and it's getting hard to keep up with eating everything that is turning ripe. Our single cucumber plant has produced over 20 cucumbers so far and is still going strong.

Currently harvesting: blueberries, carrots, tomatoes, basil, new potatoes, radishes, onions, bok choy, green beans, beets, swiss chard, broccoli, collards.

Morning harvest

This is the time of year that all the gardeners look forward to, when all the planning and preparation pays off. We've had a stretch of hot weather which seems to ripen tomatoes and cucumbers almost overnight. The sweet potatoes and winter squash vines are spreading quickly and may threaten to take over our patio by fall.

We also harvested our garlic last weekend. We hang them downstairs to cure, where it is relatively cool and dry, though there isn't much ventilation. We grew ten different varieties this year, and harvested around 70 heads. We planted the garlic in two different patches, since it is a natural pest repellent. It seemed to work very well next to our cabbage, which in the past had their seedlings ravaged by insects and later on were home to slugs. This year they were almost pest-free.

More berries

Three years after planting our blueberry plants, we are finally harvesting some fruit. The first year we pinched off the fruit blossoms as they formed so that the plants would devote their energy to developing and strengthening their root systems. The last two winters, rabbits have also nibbled on many of the bare branches when they were covered with snow.

But this year we've seen nice large clusters of blossoms which are now ripening. Blueberry plants take several years to reach their peak yield, but can produce for thirty years, so we hope to see a lot more berries in the future. Part of this first pint went into our favorite vehicle for blueberries, a plate of pancakes.

Deluge

We were soaked with 5 inches of rain on Friday and Saturday, bringing our monthly total to 7+ inches. The soil is saturated right now and the hot, humid weather is keeping it that way. There is also a deluge of raspberries, which is nice to see. We made some raspberry jam last weekend and have been freezing whatever we can't eat.

On the pest front, there has been an increasing number of Japanese beetles inhabiting the raspberry canes as well as the sugar snap peas and some of the perennials in the front yard. We had a hunting party this morning with a jar of soapy water and captured a couple dozen.

Extremes

June is behind us and the garden is in full swing. We ended up with 5 1/2 inches of rain for the month, which was less than last June's 8+ inches, but it still kept things wet for much of the time. The temperatures went from one extreme to the other, with a windy 100 degree day early in the month frying some of the tender seedlings. This year we have 32 different vegetables growing in the back yard, as well as five varieties of fruit and several herbs.

One of the challenges of having a garden in a small backyard is finding enough space to grow everything one would like. One of my favorite methods is planting vegetables together which mature at different times. Here is an example of that, where I've got cabbage interplanted with sweet potatoes. By the time the cabbage are mature and picked in July, the sweet potatoes, which aren't harvested until after the first frost, can spread their vines over the entire bed.

Currently harvesting: arugula, spinach, lettuce, strawberries, kohlrabi, radishes, beet greens, rhubarb, sugar snap peas, garlic scapes.

Strawberries

We harvested our first strawberries today, which because of the cool spring is a bit later than previous years. Two years ago we were picking them the first week of June and last year they were ripe in late May. The plants are loaded with blossoms, so it should be a plentiful harvest.

We decided to add more strawberries, so I dug up most of the creeping phlox which bordered two sides of our patio, but had become overrun with grass. We transplanted another 12 plants, which hopefully will start bearing next spring. I've been pinching off the flowers to allow the plants to concentrate their energy on developing the root system. Eventually this new plot will take over from the original plants as their productivity declines.

Cutworm

One of the more disheartening things a gardener can see when visiting the garden in the morning is the sight of a newly transplanted seedling laying prone on ground, as if it had been felled by some tiny lumberjack. This is the work of the cutworm, a small worm which chews through the stem of young seedlings at night. I've had cutworms eat both tomato and pepper plants in the past. When you find cutworm damage like this, you can often find the offender itself, curled up just under the soil level near the stem.

One of the recommended defenses against cutworms is to fashion some sort of collar around the stem, extending and inch above and below the soil level. Another is to wrap aluminum foil around the stem, which I've done to the rest of my tomato and pepper seedlings. If you start your own seedlings, it's a good idea to plant more than you need so that you'll have some in reserve to replace those that meet a fate like the one above.

End of season

We bottled our fifth and final batch of the "beer season" this past weekend. Most beers ferment best at temperatures below 72 degrees, so it works good for us to stop brewing when the weather is getting warmer and the garden season is kicking into gear. The picture above shows me siphoning the beer from the carboy, where it had been fermenting the last four weeks, into the bottling bucket.

This was our first winter of beer brewing, and we ended up with 237 bottles of beer. The styles we bottled were a porter, brown ale, Oktoberfest, Scottish ale, and extra pale ale. We've learned a lot about brewing and beer styles of the last six months and plan to continue this fall. Until then, we have a good supply to enjoy and give away to others.

Wet spring

Our spring has taken up where winter left off, with over 4" of rain having fallen so far in May, 3.25" of that coming in the last 48 hours. The previous week was relatively dry, so I was able to do some direct seeding of carrots, parsnips, beets, chard, fennel and collards. However, with the heavy rains, it remains to be seen whether some of those seeds, especially the smaller ones planted at a shallow depth, were washed away.

One bright spot this spring has been the emergence of an abundance of blueberry blossoms, shown below. We planted 6 blueberry plants three years ago. One didn't survive the transplanting, so we've nursed  the other five along without seeing any berries the first two years. They've also come under pressure from rabbits in the winter, who seem to relish the bare branches. So it was a pleasant surprise to see fruit starting to develop this spring.

When growing blueberries, one important thing to remember is that they require acidic soil, more than most other fruits or vegetables can tolerate. We planted ours in front of our back deck in a bed apart from the rest of the garden, putting a lot of peat moss, which is acidic, around the transplants. We also add sulfur to the soil, making it more acidic. Blueberries like to be kept moist, so a layer of mulch several inches deep will help retain moisture during dry periods. I use wood chips for my mulch, which I can usually find for free.

Spring treat

Here's a way to get some early vegetables from your garden: plant parsnips. Traditionally, parsnips are grown throughout the summer and left in the ground over the winter. At a time when the root vegetables stored in the root cellar from the previous fall are running out, and before the new crop of spring vegetables can be harvested, parsnips can be dug out and enjoyed as soon as the soil thaws. Parsnips are always better tasting after they have been subject to a frost, which turns their starches to sugar. They make a great base for a pureed soup, or can even be sliced thinly and baked in the oven with a little oil and salt for a crunchy snack.

Spring?

We finally had a sunny dry day today with the temperature around 60. I double-dug one of the beds and transplanted the cabbage seedlings. In an attempt to reduce the insect damage to the seedlings, I've covered them with Agribon insect barrier, which is a very light fabric that allows sunlight in but keeps insects out.

I also transplanted the lettuce and planted both the new potatoes and storage potatoes. This is the second year we've planted Sangre new potatoes and the fifth year for the Kennebec storage potatoes. We still have several Kennebecs in the root cellar from last fall, which keep very well over the winter.

It looks like we may have some sunny dry weather next week, so hopefully we can get a lot more planting done.

Winter survivor

The weather has been very cool and wet the last week with a couple inches of snow last Wednesday. We planted kohlrabi last weekend, but other than that, nothing has been seeded or transplanted. This next week looks more promising, with temperatures in the 60's and mostly dry.

The greens in our cold frame have been thriving in the cool weather, though, and we've been enjoying big salads with most meals. Even without a cold frame, anyone can have early green salads by planting spinach in the fall and then covering it with a layer of straw, hay or some other insulating material before the really cold weather sets in. The spinach below was planted last fall in our garden and not given any protection other than a blanket of snow on top of it all winter. The spinach goes dormant during the winter and reawakens once the snow melts and the weather warms. A row of arugula that was planted next to the spinach last fall did not survive. Quite a testament to the hardiness of the spinach plant.

Oktoberfest

Last night we bottled our Oktoberfest beer, which was our third batch since we started brewing last fall, but our first lager. A lager is different than most beers made by home brewers, which are ales. An ale can be fermented at room temperature, whereas a lager needs colder temperatures to ferment properly, in the 34-40 degree range.
Since we have a root cellar that we keep at between 32 and 40 degrees all winter, we figured that would be a perfect place to ferment our Oktoberfest lager.

Traditionally, Oktoberfest beers are brewed in March and left to lager for a few months until they are ready for the celebrations in October. Since we don't have the ability to maintain cold enough temperatures in our root cellar much past March, we started it in February.

The bottling process consists of siphoning the wort from a carboy (fermenting vessel) into a bottling bucket, and then filling and capping each sanitized bottle. You can see Katherine in the picture capping the Oktoberfest bottles with our spiffy new orange caps.

Early salads

The snow has finally melted in the back yard and the soil is still a little to wet to work, but we are already enjoying lots of green salads, courtesy of our cold frame. We use a method in which we plant seedlings in a 4' x 8' wooden cold frame in the fall, and then put a hoop house over the cold frame. This extra layer of insulation allows the plants to survive the winter and thrive once the days get longer and the sun rises higher in the sky. You can read about this method of winter gardening in Eliot Coleman's "Four Season Harvest".

The plants you see in the left side were seeded on Sept. 29 last fall and the ones on the right side were seeded in mid-February of this year. Not any plant can be overwintered like this in a cold frame. The plants we're currently using for our winter greens are spinach, arugula, cress, mizuna and mache, which are all cold-hardy and can withstand temperatures as low as 10 degrees.

A cold frame like this can supply two people with small salads throughout the winter and big salads once the weather warms up in March and April and the plants take off. It may seem like a lot of work to go through to get salad greens that you could buy in the store in the winter, but even the organic greens available are tasteless compared to what you'll harvest out of your own back yard cold frame.

Signs of spring

The snow in the back yard is finally starting to recede and one of the first sure signs of spring has appeared: the first emerging garlic shoots. Garlic is one of our favorite crops to grow, and we grow several varieties. It is planted in mid-October here in St. Paul just after the first frost. We cover it with marsh hay to protect it from the sub-zero winter temperatures. We'll leave the hay in place as the garlic grows in order to reduce the competition from weeds. This year we have two separate garlic plantings in different areas of the garden, and hope it will serve to repel some insect pests.