Planting Calendars

Last year, I asked several of my gardening friends to share their planting calendars with me so that I could write a column about planting dates for vegetables here on Lopez Island (hardiness zone 7B).  They responded enthusiastically with information enough to fill two columns, one focusing on January through March and a second focusing on April through September.  I’ve posted both columns in the Green Living Columns section of this blog: http://lopezislandkitchengardens.wordpress.com/the-new-planting-year-begins/ and http://lopezislandkitchengardens.wordpress.com/the-new-planting-year-continues/.

Like the planting calendars my friends shared with me, my planting calendar is a product of record keeping. As each new planting year begins, I look back at when I’ve planted in past years.  Each year is a little different, influenced by the weather pattern that year but also by travel plans.  There’s a pretty big window for planting many of the vegetables I like and looking back on planting records, I see that I’ve taken advantage of those windows.  A reassuring guide to planting times is this chart on West Coast Seeds website: http://www.westcoastseeds.com/admin/files/2011PlantingChart.pdf

Last year and the year before, I planted seeds of onions, shallots, sugar snap peas, lettuce, radicchio, fennel, broccoli, and cauliflower indoors in flats in mid-February.  This year I’m delaying any planting until the end of February because I’m traveling a lot this month.  Happily, I can look farther back in my planting records and see that there were years when I planted these crops as late as early March and still had a good growing season.

A week from today I’ll be home for a long stretch and can plant in flats indoors my list of cool weather crops as well as tomatoes.  And with the extra day of this leap year, I’ll be able to record February 29^th as the first planting date for 2012!

Finding Spring in Brussels Sprouts and Leeks

We’ve had several days lately that have felt like spring —sun, blue sky, milder temperatures—but the garden is still producing winter vegetables and the first new greens and asparagus are a ways off.  What to do to make winter vegetables match this early taste of spring?  The answer was right in front of me with a basket of Brussels sprouts and leeks, both in shades of green and soft creamy yellow and looking more like spring than winter.

A friend has just given me some Meyer lemons from a backyard tree in Berkeley, CA, a treat we look forward to when Mary comes back from visiting her mom there. Meyer lemon vinaigrette on lightly roasted Brussels sprouts sounded perfect.  I pulled the outer leaves from the sprouts, quartered them because they were quite large, tossed them in a little olive oil, spread them out on a sheet pan and put them in a 400-degree oven.  They were crisp/soft in five or six minutes.

While they were roasting, I removed the zest from a lemon, squeezed out the juice and added it to the zest, added about a tablespoon of diced shallot, a dash of salt and some grinds of pepper and whisked in enough olive oil to make a thick dressing.  While the sprouts were still warm, I poured the dressing over them.  They were delicious warm and I knew they would be just as good at room temperature.

And the leeks?  Since the oven was already hot, roasting the leeks made sense too.  I cut them in half, arranged them on a sheet pan, oiled them lightly and roasted them at about 375 until they were soft, about half an hour.  Even the darker green upper shafts softened and released delicious leek flavor.  Their mild onion sweetness was a perfect pairing for the lemony, earthy Brussels sprouts.  Together, they looked and tasted like spring.  What a gift from these hardy, long-season winter vegetables.

Leeks and Brussels sprouts begin their long growing season just as spring is ending in late May and early June.  As I wrote in an earlier post, I start leeks in late May and they are ready to harvest in October: http://lopezislandkitchengardens.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/growing-leeks/.

I start Brussels sprouts around the first week of June, planting the seed indoors in pots, hardening them off about a month later and setting them out in the garden two feet apart in two rows thirty inches apart. I cover them with Reemay for several weeks to prevent maggot flies from laying eggs at the base of the plants.  I also mulch them heavily once the plants are established and water them regularly. They grow steadily until fall when I begin harvesting them after the first frost.  They survive winter temperatures in the high teens, but when it’s that cold I often cover them with a tarp, probably more for my sense of security than the plant’s needs.  Varieties that have grown well in my garden are Vancouver, Diablo, Gustus and, a new addition for this year that I’ll repeat, Nautic, pictured in the photo below.

Aphids can attack Brussels sprouts plants, working their way into the sprouts, but they haven’t been a problem in my garden, perhaps because I plant Brussels sprouts relatively late, following a suggestion I read in a West Coast Seed catalog years ago.

One additional step I’ve tried this year is “topping” them, cutting out the growing tip of the plant at the end of the summer.  Many seed catalogs suggest doing this in order to direct all the plant energy to filling out the sprouts already formed along the stock but I had never gotten around to it.  This year, I topped some and left others for comparison.  The topped plants definitely formed bigger sprouts all the way up the stalk to the truncated top.  Those plants that weren’t topped have continued to produce tasty, slightly flattened sprouts up to the growing tip as in the photo above.  This coming year, I’ll probably top most but not all of the plants.

It’s still several months before I’ll be planting the next year’s crops of leeks and Brussels sprouts.  In the meantime, I’ll enjoy these winter vegetables disguised as spring vegetables or back in their winter roles if winter returns.

Seed Exchanges

Seed catalogs are one place to find new seed varieties and to reorder favorites, but another great source for seeds is seed exchanges, organized events where people bring seeds to share and exchange with others.  A big plus of seed exchanges is that the seeds are open-pollinated and heirloom seeds, often saved by local gardeners happy to share seeds of varieties that grow well in their gardens and to give tips on how you too can save seeds.

Last Saturday my friend Carol and I went to the 3^rd Annual Heritage Seed Exchange on Orcas Island.  As the poster says, and as Ginger Moore, one of the volunteer organizers told me, everyone was welcome, with or without seeds to share or experience saving seeds.  I was bringing some bean seeds I’d saved and Carol had some unusual herbs and tubers she had potted up. We had high hopes for what we might find in exchange.  On the boat over, we met up with Jeanie and Nancy, two other Lopez seed lovers who shared our anticipation.

In the West Sound Community Hall, long tables were covered with seed packets organized by the degree of experience needed to save each seed variety. Each table also had a sign-in sheet so that people who brought seeds to share could leave the names of the seeds they brought and their name, phone or email so that people who took the seeds could reach them if they needed more information.

In her introductory remarks, Heritage Seed Exchange organizer and Orcas seed saver Ronda Jones emphasized the importance of saving seeds as a way to maintain local stocks of seeds and to counter the consolidation of seed companies and their frightening pattern of dropping old varieties and promoting genetically modified seeds.  She reminded us to plan to save seeds of those we take and plant and bring some to the exchange next year.

Going first to the bean table, Carol and I were delighted to find locally grown seeds of Bonds Orcas white runner bean, a bean we suspect is related to one of my favorite beans, a white runner my late neighbor Frances Kring gave me years ago, telling me that all old-timers grew it.  We also found seeds of a Sicilian Fava bean that Ronda Jones grew from seeds given to her by a friend in Italy.  These are a purple fava and Ronda told me I’d like them even better than the green Broad Windsor.  I can’t wait to try them.  At another table, I found parsnip seeds, described as a fifth generation Orcas seed.  I’m a big parsnip fan so this was another great find.

In addition to locally grown seeds, there were open-pollinated and heirloom seeds donated by the Heritage Seed Exchange sponsors Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, Seed Savers Exchange and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and seeds from Territorial Seeds and Greenheart Gardens, a Lopez Island Seed Company.  The Organic Seed Alliance (http://www.seedalliance.org/Home/), based in Port Townsend, also had a table displaying their literature.

This Orcas Island Heritage Seed Exchange is just one of several local opportunities to share seeds and seed saving experiences with other gardeners.  On Sunday, February 12 in Anacortes, the group Eat Your Yard is offering a seed exchange at the Senior Activities Center at 3:00: http://www.goanacortes.com/calendar/event/3474/.

On Lopez Island, the grand opening of the Lopez Community Land Trust Seed Library will take place February 25th as part of the 2012 Food Charette. “This seed library is committed to providing our community with island appropriate open source seeds, fostering community resilience, self-reliance and a culture of sharing.” (http://www.lopezclt.org/seed-library-2/)  As part of their work, the Seed Library has also offered a workshop on how to save seeds.

I’m not a very experienced seed saver, confident only with those seeds that are easy to save, like beans and peppers, but I’m inspired to gain more experience.  Suzanne Ashworth’s book Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners is where I’m going to start.

Seed Orders 2012

This year’s seed orders have arrived, compact cardboard boxes from Johnny’s and Fedco holding white paper seed packets printed with the company logo, vegetable variety, germination data and planting and harvesting advice. Neither company goes in for color photos or line drawings on their seed packets—their catalogs provide the visuals—so the names are what I rely on to conjure the potential of the seeds inside.

Some names are new to me, varieties I’m trying this year for the first time.  Others are familiar from last year, ordered again because they were great.  And finally there are old favorites I reorder every few years.  In the quiet of my study, as I organize seed packets by planting date, it’s lovely to imagine the garden time and the meals that lie ahead.

In less than a month I’ll be planting Red Round turnip, a colorful new companion to white Oasis that I’ve planted for the past few years and loved.  And I’m adding new radishes—multi-colored Easter Egg, red and white French Breakfast and green-outside-red-inside Red Meat, aka Watermelon Radish—to my standard Cherry Bells.  Radishes tasted really good last year and I’m looking forward to eating more this year.

I’m planting kohlrabi for the first time in years, Kolibri and Early White Vienna, just a short row it see how it tastes.

Indoors over the next few months I’ll start some new varieties of tomato, eggplant, winter squash and pumpkin. In my ongoing search for the perfect cherry tomato, I’m trying Gardener’s Delight, parent of Sweet 100, an old favorite.  And in the search for a wonderful paste tomato, I’m trying Vilms, reputed to have excellent flavor and roasting potential.  For a new eggplant, I ordered Galine, an early, purple bell-shaped variety to join favorites Diamond and Rosa Bianca. Eastern Rise and Nutty Delica are two new winter squash varieties to plant with my favorites Buttercup, Sibley and Delicata.  And for something completely new, I’m trying Kakai pumpkin for its hull-less seeds and the promise of roasted pepitas.

Outdoors when real spring comes to stay, I’m planting a new corn variety, Spring Treat, to compare to my standard Seneca Horizon and, showing remarkable restraint, I ordered only one new bean this year: Silver Cloud Cannellini, advertised as an “absolutely superb shell bean.”

For the winter garden, I’m trying a Canadian rutabaga variety, Laurentian, and a wild arugula, Sylvetta.

Among last year’s new varieties that I’m repeating this year are Lancer and Javelin parsnips, winners for quick and even germination and rich sweetness.  Another new variety I tried last year and will plant again is Nautic Brussels Sprouts, cold hardy and delicious.  And Rattlesnake pole bean and Drabo dry bush bean were tasty additions to last year’s beans and two to plant again.

Finally, old favorites that I reordered this year are the original Sugarsnap snap pea for its perfect pea flavor; Mokum carrots, crisp and sweet at all sizes; Purplette onion for spring onion roasting and Copra and Redwing onions for winter storage; King Sieg and Bleu de Solaize leeks for their winter hardiness; Gourmet pepper for a sweet and spicy orange bell; Brandywine tomato for classic tomato flavor; and Indigo radicchio, pleasantly bitter grilled or sliced raw.

For all my other favorite vegetables, I have enough seeds left from past year’s orders or seeds I’ve saved, so I’m set for now.  Then again, it’s still early in the seed-buying season and there are more catalogs, websites, and friends’ recommendations to tempt me.

Gambling on a Winter Kitchen Garden

Growing a winter kitchen garden in our marine northwest climate is a gamble, but it’s one I’m willing to take because the odds are pretty good that the season’s days and nights will be temperate more often than they will be bitter cold. Still, I don’t want to risk losing when nature deals out temperatures in the low twenties or teens so I do what I can to beat the cold. I pile extra hay onto the already mulched beds of winter vegetables and cover it with lumber wrap*, weighting down the wrap at the edges with rocks.

I sound pretty confident, but actually each time I’m faced with serious cold I’m totally anxious, uncertain whether the extra hay mulch and the sheets of lumber wrap will work this time. Could I have added a little more mulch?  What if it gets really windy and the lumber wrap blows off despite all the rocks I’ve piled on the edges? Gambling is stressful.

But sometimes nature deals me snow along with cold. While lumber wrap and hay alone do work, a blanket of snow insulation on top of what I’ve already spread out really increases the odds in my favor.

For the past several days, I’ve looked out on the winter kitchen garden covered by this latest storm’s snow. The beds planted with winter vegetables reveal lumpy clues to what I’m betting is still alive.  Blanketed in snow, lumber wrap and hay, Brussels sprouts and kale still stand tall; turnips, rutabaga, beets, celery root and leeks rise unevenly; parsnips and carrots lie flat.  The cold frame and cloches are mostly snow covered, with just a bit of snow slipping from their peaks.

It’s tempting open the cold frame or to dig down through the snow, lift an edge of lumber wrap and get a reassuring glimpse of healthy green but until temperatures rise above the low twenties I’ll resist disturbing the snow blanket.  Instead, I’ll watch the thermometer and the forecast.  Temperatures edging up toward the high twenties will mean I can start harvesting again.  And temperatures above freezing mean this week’s snow could be gone in two or three more days.

This morning, the thermometer read 32 so I headed out to the garden.  The snow had gone from light and fluffy to heavy and wet. It took a while to remove enough of it that I could lift the wrap and free the plants.  They were a little beaten down from the weight of the snow but they were green and have already bounced back.  Once more, the gamble has been worth it.

* Lumber wrap is the woven plastic material that lumber companies use to wrap lumber for shipping and storage.  Over the years, I’ve saved lengths of it from various building projects.

Celery Root/Celeriac

Seeing celery root for the first time in a winter vegetable garden, it’s easy to imagine that the leafy green, stalk-like tops are the edible parts.  They do look a lot like celery, but in fact they are tough and bitter.  The part to eat is the gnarly-looking, softball-sized bulb that sits beneath the stalks and above the soil line.

Loosen and pull it from the ground and there’s another surprise.  Celery root is not a single root like carrots, parsnips or turnips.  Instead, a wild tangle of inedible roots covers the bottom of the bulb.  To get to the tasty bulb, you need to cut away both the celery-like top (no more celery) and root-covered bottom (no more roots).  Its other name, celeriac, is much less misleading.

I discovered celery root/celeraic in books on winter gardening when I moved to the northwest thirty years ago. Once I became aware of it, I started noticing intriguing recipes for it in cookbooks and magazines, inspiration for putting some effort into figuring out how to grow this odd-looking but delicious winter vegetable.

Over the years, I’ve learned that celery root is not difficult to grow here in the marine northwest but it does take a long time to mature.  I start seeds indoors around the end of March and set seedlings out in the garden in mid-May.  By late September the bulbs are mature, weighing one to two pounds trimmed, but I usually wait until we’ve had a frost or two to harvest it because celery root is one of the many winter vegetables that is sweeter after a frost.

The seeds are a bit smaller than carrot seeds and germinate slowly and unevenly over several weeks.  I start them in 2” pots filled with fine potting soil, planting two or three seeds per pot, covering them lightly, setting the pots on a heat mat and keeping the soil moist.  My goal is to have forty plants to set out so I plant that many pots and thin to the strongest plant in each pot.  When they are about three inches tall, I harden them off and set them out in the garden eight inches apart in rows one foot apart.  I’ve learned that the plants won’t thrive if nighttime temperatures stay cool so I usually cover the new transplants with Reemay for the first month or so.

The transplants grow slowly but steadily over the summer.  I mulch them once they are established and then the only thing I need to do until fall harvest is to keep them well watered.  Some sources I’ve read suggest that if they dry out or are watered unevenly, they can become bitter.  Aside from this watering requirement, they are like so many winter vegetables: trouble and pest-free.

I prefer to leave them in the ground rather than pick and store them all so in late fall I mulch them very heavily, piling old hay up over the bulbs and around the stems.  If temperatures in the low twenties are forecast, I’ll cover them with lumber wrap and if temperatures in the teens are forecast I’ll pile more hay over the lumber wrap.  This cold protection is a bit of a fuss but it’s worth it to have this tasty vegetable in the kitchen garden all winter long.

For the last several years, my favorite way to fix celery root has been to turn it into raw salads.  After cutting the bulb in half and slicing off the thick outer skin, I cut the creamy white inner flesh into matchstick-sized strips, toss them in cider or white wine vinegar to which I’ve added diced shallots, salt and perhaps some Dijon mustard and let them sit for an hour or so.  For a pound and a half of celery root, I use a quarter cup of vinegar, half a teaspoon of sea salt, one to two tablespoons of minced shallot and a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.  Some recipes suggest blanching the celery root pieces for a minute in boiling water first, but I’ve found that simply marinating works better to slightly soften the strips but keep their crispness.  Celery root does discolor unless it’s put in a vinegar marinade or a lemon juice and water mixture soon after cutting so I make the marinade first.

Add some olive oil and you have a simple salad that features the nutty, subtly sweet celery and parsley flavors of celery root.  For a richer experience, add some mayonnaise and heavy cream to create the classic French remoulade.  For more flavors and visual interest, however, I often add diced apples, skins still on for color, maybe some toasted hazelnuts or pecans, some crumbled Gorgonzola or blue cheese if I have it, some chopped parsley or some mache.  The mix of crisp and crunchy textures and nutty, sweet and sharp flavors makes a perfect winter salad.

But celery root is wonderful cooked too.  One classic recipe I return to at least once a winter is Alice Waters’ Delicata Squash, Potato and Celery Root Puree from Chez Panisse Vegetables (1996).  It’s sweet and softly orange from the squash, earthy from the potatoes and mysteriously nutty from the celery root.  This Christmas I served it with a pork roast and apples sautéed with onions.

As this recipe shows, celery root blends well with other winter vegetables—squash, potatoes, turnips, carrots, leeks—in purees and also in soups. Mixed with winter roots and roasted its flavor adds another earthy note.  It’s also delicious by itself roughly mashed, pureed or roasted in chunks or slices. Google recipes for celery root and you’ll find pages of inspiration.

And if you’re inspired to try growing celery root this year, the most available variety is Brilliant.  I get my seeds from Fedco whose catalog description will convince you to try it if this post hasn’t already.

Happy 2012 Gardening Year!

For several years, as each new year began, I asked gardening friends to share advice about planting vegetable gardens, selecting seed varieties, and, simply, why they garden. Their email responses always came quickly, reminding me of how generously gardeners share their enthusiasm for what they do.  Posted below is the column I wrote in 2010 summarizing the many reasons we grow kitchen gardens.  And here are links to columns on Lopez gardeners’ advice on selecting seed varieties and planting: http://lopezislandkitchengardens.wordpress.com/vegetables/vegetable-varieties-for-2009/ and http://lopezislandkitchengardens.wordpress.com/vegetables/advice-for-the-new-years-garden/.  Happy 2012 New Gardening Year!

Why We Grow Vegetable Gardens

For all of us who grow vegetable gardens, the New Year is a good time to pause and consider why we choose to spend our time planting and harvesting food.  There’s the food, of course, but as a sampling of Lopez gardeners reveals, there’s also a sense of self-reliance and most of all there’s the garden itself.

But first to the food: “The obvious reason to grow a vegetable garden is to have fresh and delicious organic produce, especially the types that are either highly perishable (raspberries, lettuce) or mysteriously expensive (leeks, artichokes, kale). Be careful, though—our children now have expensive tastes and turn up their noses at pesto from the market.”

Others agree: “there’s the intense flavor.”  “Homegrown food just tastes better.  I’ll always remember the first time I ate a sweet pepper from my garden (it was a sweet banana).  It was so crisp, juicy, so flavorful.  The tastes can spoil you.”

And, others add, there are the health benefits of eating homegrown food.  “As more information continues to surface on chemical contamination and GMOs (“Frankenstein Foods”), I feel so blessed to be relatively free of those threats to my body.”

Freedom, security, and independence: these are more reasons people grow their own food.  “I love the security of not being dependent on other sources for my food. Truthfully, I have always possessed a ‘doomsday’ mentality. Not in a morbid, fearful way but simply in a non-dependence on the ‘system’ way.”

Another considers herself “more of a subsistence gardener, growing as much of my family’s food as I can, including grains, dry beans, edible seeds, etc., and seeds to plant in future years; my intention is also to provide as many material needs as possible from the garden (e.g. fuel, fiber, medicines, etc.). Mother Earth provides abundance for free, and I celebrate how that gives me some small measure of independence from a cash economy that enslaves people and brings about terrible harm.”

“When I first became interested in gardening (as a teen),” another writes, “it was mainly for the idea of growing my own food, to be self-reliant.  Having my garden produce food is a given at this point.”

And for another family, there’s “the satisfaction of eating a meal made up largely of our own produce. We sit at the table sometimes and list off all the foods that came from our own patch of dirt!”

Food we grow ourselves is important, but all the effort isn’t only for the food.

“I garden because I love spending my days in nature, amazed by plants, insects, birds, sky and I feel blessed to participate in the wondrous and the miraculous.”

“There is the eternal miracle of a tiny brown seed becoming a huge green plant. The transition from nearly bare brown spring soil to late summer, when there is barely room for a weed, astonishes every year.”  “I’m still in awe that seeds will sprout, that cuttings will form roots.”

“There is also an adventurous piece to gardening—you never know what will flourish and what will succumb in a given year. Gardens are for optimists!”  “Gardening teaches acceptance: there will always be some plants that just don’t thrive. OK, I lied about that—I still feel a little sad when a plant doesn’t make it.”

“I love the peace and solitude of my garden.  It is the pure joy of being on the land raising my own vital foods that keeps me hunkered down with my hands in the soil.”

“The garden surrounds us with enlivening energy, provides a place to see into nature, gently humbles, and welcomes us no matter what.  What a privilege!”

“I don’t think I would garden only to be growing food.  There are so many excellent farms in the area that can provide.  I garden because I love the process, the satisfaction of producing from seed to soup.  When I eat from my garden I have a personal history with that food—it goes beyond sustenance, politics or economy.”

Happy New Gardening Year!  And thanks to Ona Blue, Jeanna Carter, Beckie Heinlein, Carol Noyes, Irene Skyriver, and Suzanne Strom for joining their voices in celebration of vegetable gardening.

First published in the Islands’ Weekly January, 2010