It’s not quite time for the annual winter garden clean up (just typing that made me feel a little ill), but it’s a good idea to start to prepare for fall by planting your winter garden, and by pruning your tomato plants.
Why prune? Two reasons: to focus the plant’s energy on ripening its existing fruit, rather than on producing new flowers and starting new fruit, which won’t have time to grow and ripen before the first frost, and to allow light to reach and ripen still-green fruit. Now you know.
Prune off flower and leaf brachs, leaving just the fruit and the main stalk(s). And if that doesn’t work and frost is imminent, you can always harvest and ripen your green tomatoes indoors.
The word harvest takes on new significance at this time of year, as the garden really steps it up. Right now I’m harvesting tomatoes, fresh herbs and beans daily, with cucumbers, peppers, and zucchinis making a semi-regular appearance. Pulled up my crop of ‘Ambition’ shallots today, too, and was impressed with how they’d multiplied. If you’re looking for an onion-family member to plant, shallots make a great container option (and I love their mild flavour).
My husband, Ben, and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary on Friday. We don’t normally exchange gifts, but since the traditional gift for a four year anniversary is fruit or flowers, I told him he could at least buck up and get me some blooms.
Being the man that he is, Ben took it one step further, and made sure there was a side of fruit for my flowers. Thanks sweetie.
PS: If you live in the Vancouver area, I highly recommend The Flower Box (in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood). They rock.
PSS: Ben is the co-founder of an awesome blog for food-worshippers. It’s called Foodists. You should check it out.
A while back I wrote a post called Seven tips to make gardening “away” easier, which consists of—you guessed it—seven ideas for making it easier to garden at community garden plots, guerrilla gardens, or any garden that can’t be accessed simply by opening your back or balcony door.
The main challenge with these “away” gardens, in my experience, is all the schlepping to and fro of various tools, water, plants, seeds, and other garden accoutrements. And that’s not even taking the harvest into consideration! There can be, let’s say, transportation issues when it comes to getting the goods home.
The traditional container used for collecting produce from the garden is the harvest basket or trug. As lovely as some of these traditional designs can be, they’re just not my thing. (For one, they’re big! Where would I store it? We have a serious space shortage at our place!) So what I use is a reusable shopping bag—one of those lightweight polyester ones that rolls up into a little pouch. It’s perfect because it fits in a pocket, holds a ton of produce, and is easily machine washed.
Even though I like the bag I use, I’m really loving those produced by Bag The Habit.
Their Luxe Tote, which comes in nine different colours and patterns (I love “gray feather,” pictured above), has padded handles (perfect for hauling potatoes or heavier groceries), and a sewn-in carrying pouch that doubles as an interior pocket. And, it’s made out of recycled fabric. So are their mesh produce bags (shown below). Available in two sizes, these mesh drawstring bags would also be great for transporting garden goodies. Plus, the breathable material extends the life of fresh produce.
The lovely people at Bag the Habit are giving away three sets of bags, especially for Heavy Petal fans! For a chance to win, head on over to my Facebook page and leave a comment telling me which bags you’re coveting (a Luxe Tote Trio or a 2-pack of Mesh Produce bags) and how you plan to use them. Contest is open until Sunday, August 29 at midnight PST.You must be a fan of Heavy Petal on Facebook to win.
Lacinato kale, leeks, and cabbage: the makings of a great winter garden!
One of the best ways to reap the most from a small-space food garden is to have something growing in your garden all year round. Don’t let plots or containers sit vacant after you harvest your tomatoes and squash! Make ‘em work by planting a winter garden (or let them rest and recuperate by sowing a cover crop).
Planting hardy and fast-maturing crops in summer or early fall for fall-through-spring harvesting is often known as winter gardening. (It also has a close cousin, overwintering, which is defined as planting in summer for harvest the next spring.)
For both, you’ll want to start now. (Actually, you might want to have started a month or more ago, but if you’re anything like me, you’re just getting around to it. Good news: there’s still time to sow many winter crops.)
‘Sorrento’ broccoli raab
In general, you’ll want to plant quick-maturing, cool-season crops that are tolerant of frosts. The aim is to have your plants reach almost full-size by Halloween. That’s when, due to dwindling daylight hours, plants pretty much stop their growth. They’ll stay in hibernation mode until the days start to lengthen again in early spring (unless you eat them first!).
Surprisingly, there are quite a few edibles you can start from seed now.
Great winter-garden edibles to start from seed:
Arugula. A fabulous, peppery cool-season green that adds zing to salads. (I especially love it stirred into pasta, though. Just cook up some orzo or capellini, and toss in a few handfuls of arugula after draining. Add olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and grated Parmesan. Toss until the arugula is wilted. Simple, and lovely.) Direct sow through to early September. Use crop protection, such as a cold frame or row covers, for a longer harvest.
Asian and mustard greens. Sow these hardy, versatile greens—including komatsuna, mibuna, mizuna, komatsuna, and the many mustards that fall under Brassica juncea—until the end of September.
Broad beans. Broad beans, also known as fava beans, are an oddity amongst their peers. While snap, pole, and soy beans are warm-season staples, broad beans are super hardy. Plant in September or October for spring harvest.
Broccoli raab. It’s a little late to start regular (full-head-size) broccoli from seed (though feel free to transplant starts into the garden now if you started them indoors last month, or are lucky enough to find some at your local nursery) but broccoli raab, or rapini, matures more quickly, so squeeze in a late sowing before the end of August.
Carrots. They’re often thought of as a summer crop, but carrots are actually one of the hardiest garden vegetables. It’s almost too late to sow now (ideally, a winter sowing should occur in the first two weeks of August) but go ahead, try your luck. Row covers or cold frames will sway success in your favour.
Cilantro. Super cold tolerant, cilantro can be direct sown until mid-September.
Green onions (scallions). Another very cold hardy crop, green onions will easily overwinter. Plant now through the end of August.
Corn salad (mache or lamb’s lettuce). Add this mild, nutty green to your repertoire for salad greens all year round. Corn salad is the hardiest salad green, and can be sown until mid-September.
Endive. Yet another hardy salad green, endive can be sown as late as mid-September.
Kohlrabi. Oddly beautiful kohlrabi gets sweeter after a frost. Ideally, it should have been sown by mid-August, so plant it today, and cross your fingers.
Lettuces. Many lettuces are tolerant of light frost and can be planted now for fall harvest, or use a row cover or cold frame for protection and harvest into winter and spring. Look for hardy varieties such as ‘Cimmaron,’ ‘Continuity,’ ‘Red Deer Tongue,’ ‘Rouge d’Hiver,’ ‘Valdor,’ ‘Winter Crop,’ or ‘Winter Density.’
Spinach. Spinach thrives in cool weather. Plant it now through November (though you might want to use a cold frame or row cover as we move into winter if you live in a cold climate).
Turnips. Sow until the end of August for harvests all winter long. You can also eat the greens!
‘Tyee’ spinach
If you planned ahead, you’ll have started hardy vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and leeks indoors ages ago. You didn’t? Me neither. Thankfully, more and more nurseries are carrying vegetable starts (transplants) for fall and winter gardening. Here are some great choices for winter-garden edibles to transplant now. With the exception of chard, which is only marginally hardy, the following edibles can be grown all winter long (though they may benefit from protection from winter rains and frosts in very cold climates). Look for overwintering and hardy varieties of:
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Chard
Collard greens
Leeks
Kale
Finally, there’s garlic. For those of you who can’t bear the thought of planting a winter garden now, garlic should be planted in October or November—just about the time you’ll start pining for a day in the garden.
When I got back from holidays, it was pretty clear that my potatoes were done. The leafy tops had been dying for a while, and I’d been sneaking the odd new potato here and there, but until last week, you could still pretend the tops were green. No longer.
Have you ever harvested potatoes? No? May I suggest you try growing them next year, simply for the pleasure of the treasure hunt that is a potato harvest? At first, I found spuds just by brushing aside the top inch or two of soil. Once the easy pickings were, well, picked, I dug down, uncovering plump tubers with every spadeful. In total, I harvested 20lbs of two types of potatoes (from about 12 sq.ft.!).
Exhibit A: Russian Banana fingerling.
Exhibit B: Sieglinde.
Aside from the obvious difference in shape, these two potatoes actually taste quite similar. And thankfully, that means both are delicious, tender, and buttery, with thin skins and yellow flesh. But not all the spuds I harvested were quite as perfect as these two samples. No. Check out these suckers:
I don’t have hours a week to spend in the garden. I wish I could say that I do daily rounds of all my garden spaces, carrying a big wicker basket and leisurely harvesting things that need picking, casually plucking the occasional weed, and generally doing a lot of flower smelling.
But I don’t. More often than not, I’m running to the salad garden to quickly harvest a side for that night’s dinner, or stopping at the community garden on my way home from work to provide a cursory watering. Too often I am surprised by big changes in my garden — beans that needed staking three days ago, or tomatoes that would have been perfect yesterday.
Something tells me I’m not the only time-crunched gardener out there. But what can we downtime-deprived green thumbs do? Well, we can start by planting low-maintenance edibles.
“Low-maintenance” is a term often bandied about in gardening magazines and in the landscaping biz. Whether or not a garden can be low maintenance is a debate for another day, but right now, let’s look at makes a low(er) maintenance edible.
In my mind, there are two different ways you can look at plants to assess their maintenance factor.
1. There are plants – often perennials – that involve an initial time investment (preparing the site, staking, pruning) and then, aside from a bit of annual preventative maintenance, require little in the way of care.
2. There are edibles that are just generally pretty care free. That resist pests and diseases, don’t need staking or spraying or coddling, hold well in the garden (i.e. don’t need frequent picking to avoid over-maturity), or self-seed, reducing the need for yearly replanting.
Here are my picks for the best of both:
Arugula and other cool-season leafy greens. Like lettuce, arugula and other cool-season salad greens often bolt (set seed) when the weather changes. Take advantage of this natural tendency by allowing them to self-sow. They’ll reappear next year with no help from you. Others include corn salad (mache), kale, radicchio, purple orach, and parcel. (Note: this “technique” works better in an unstructured or natural garden. Those seeds aren’t gonna fall into neat little rows.)
Let arugula and other self-seeders flower and sow seeds—so you don’t have to.
Asparagus. Definitely in the “initial time investment” category, asparagus takes three years before it gets to a point where you can harvest it. Like other perennials, it requires some up-front attention in the form of proper soil preparation, yearly mulching, and fall frond-removal, but is otherwise pretty easy going.
Beets and chard. If you seed these closely-related edibles in the appropriate (cool) season, you won’t have to contend with bolting—pretty much the main challenge with these guys. Provide the rich, moist, well-drained soil they like and they’ll produce plump roots and glossy greens until you get around to harvesting.
Blueberries. Blueberries are easy, requiring minimal annual maintenance. All they really ask is that you provide very acidic soil. If you live on the West Coast like me, acidic soil is the norm. In other locales, you might have to work a bit harder to maintain acidity, but that kind of makes them not so low maintenance, doesn’t it?
Fruit trees. Yes, fruit trees. (With one big caveat: fruit trees that are appropriate to your climate. So if you live in zone three, no fig trees for you, unless you want to haul them indoors for the winter, and gardeners in Southern California and the Deep South will want to avoid trees – such as apples – that require a winter chill period.) Of course, fruit trees do require some up-front prep: dig a good hole and provide staking, if necessary. Most also do better with some light annual pruning, thinning of fruit, and preventative spraying with a horticultural oil – though that’s all optional.
Herbs. There’s a reason herbs make every “easiest edible” list (mine included). Starting some herbs from seed can be challenging, but if you buy transplants, herbs such as rosemary, sage, thyme, mint, oregano, parsley, dill, and chives are the most carefree of edibles. In general, they prefer average soil, and many are drought tolerant once established. And because of the pungent quality of their leaves, most pests avoid them. Awesome!
Garlic. Plant bulbs in late fall, harvest the next summer. And in between? Nothing. Though you could could harvest the scapes if you felt up to it.
Potatoes. Aside from some initial prep (potatoes like loose, fertile soil with lots of organic matter, which you’ll want to provide), potatoes are just about the easiest annual edible. Plant the seed potatoes, mound up soil as the plants emerge (once a week or less) and … wait. Steal the odd baby potato here and there after the plants begin to flower, or just wait until the foliage begins to die back and harvest the lot.
Raspberries and blackberries. These cane fruits need a bit of planning at the outset; you’ll need to invest time in setting up wires or other support system. And when the fruit ripens, it’s best to pick at least every three days for maximum tastiness (I have a hard time thinking of picking ripe berries as a chore, but if you can’t spare the time, I’m sure you won’t have trouble finding a friend willing to help out). Finally, in fall, you’ll have to cut down canes that produced fruit that year, a task that, depending on the size of your berry patch, can take anywhere from minutes to less than an hour.
Rhubarb. It’s hard to think of a more undemanding edible than rhubarb. Once established, this very cold-hardy, long-lived perennial happily withstands neglect. Truly, this is one tough plant.
If rhubarb can take salt and sea spray, it can handle whatever you’ve got to throw at it.
Scallions, shallots, and onions. Like garlic, another member of the allium family, these onions are in the set-and-forget category. They don’t need amazing soil, nor do they have to be hovered over in order to thrive. They do, however, repel many pest insects, making them great additions to any veggie garden.
I struggled to stop the list here. There are many edibles that are fairly low maintenance once transplanted outside (peppers, for example) but I didn’t include those because starting seeds indoors is definitely not for the time-crunched. Also bear in mind that ALL edibles need regular watering. Make that easy on yourself by using drip irrigation (set it on a timer for the ultimate in low-maintenance watering). What do you think? Is my list complete? What have I missed?
I’ve been back from vacation for a few days now; long enough to be pining for days spent by the water and evenings with a bottle of wine and a few dozen mosquitos.
I’ve got what feels like a few million posts to write, but I’m not quite ready to leave holiday mode just yet. So instead of diving back into talking about gardening, I’m posting a few vacation pics. These are of our week in the Okanagan, where we stayed in a little bungelow on an apple orchard beloning to my parents’ friends.
BC’s Okanagan is semi-arid, with cool blue lakes and dusty hills, scorching days and thunderstormy nights. It used to be BC’s fruit basket, and still is, for a large part, but orchards are slowly giving way to vineyards. The number of wineries now rivals the number of roadside fruit stands. We went for both.
Probably the highlight of our trip was an alfresco orchard dinner hosted by Joy Road Catering. Picture a long, white-linen draped table set under mature trees strung with twinkling lights. It’s perched on a cliff overlooking a lake with a mountain backdrop. The sun is slowly sinking behind the hills. The food is divine (and local, and seasonal). The wine is perfectly paired. The people are friendly, beautiful. It’s warm. Everyone’s happy. It could be a spread in Martha Stewart Wedding…except you’re there. This was that. The only word for it was enchanting.
I love coming home from holiday. Sleeping in my own bed. Unpacking. Airing out the house. Watering.
This homecoming was even sweeter because the garden had treats waiting for me. The first tomatoes – ripe n’ ready. Cucumbers – perfect. Potatoes – SO ready (so ready, in fact, that they warrant a whole ‘nother post).
The winners in the tomato race were the ‘Sweet Baby Girl’ cherries, followed closely by ‘Odessa.’ The cucumbers are ‘Sweet Slice.’
Thanks to my square-foot salad garden, which is in part shade, I’m still harvesting an abundance of lettuce.
The last few years I’ve grown tomatoes, they’ve come down with the blight (kind of the tomato equivalent of bubonic plague). What to do?
I had dinner with some Italian friends, and we had a rousing discussion of how to prevent/cure tomato blight, which dissolved into conflicting “true stories” involving home remedies and nylon stockings.
So I checked out the BC Ministry of Agriculture website, which provides some answers to your questions about tomato blight and offers some good advice:
- Grow tomatoes in a warm, dry, sunny area. If you have had blight previously, move to a different area if possible, or replace the upper soil layer since “oospores” will carry over in soil.
- Water only underneath the plants, not the leaves or fruit. Drip irrigation is preferable to watering with a hose, to reduce water splash. Don’t overfertilize or overwater.
- Grow on a light sandy soil if possible or cover soil with a white plastic mulch to increase soil and air temperatures around the plants and reduce humidity.
- Growing plants under an overhang* or a clear plastic shelter will help prevent spores from being deposited on plants by wind and rain. But plants must be covered before infection has occured. Covering the plants after they are infected may raise humidity and make the disease worse.
