The brassicas—cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and so much more—are satisfying at seeding time because they usually come up quick. This tray of Early Dividend broccoli is popping only three days after seeding. I don’t take notes about days to germination, except occasionally here on the blog, but I’m surely watching, especially with older seed. So far this year, with the seedling room usually around 65-68°F (18-20°C), the trays covered with clear plastic, using new seed, it’s been brassicas in 3 days, onions starting around 5. Where brassicas usually come up all at once, over a couple of days, onions can take a week to emerge right across a tray… Details! They’re everywhere! Some seem useful, some seem not.
broccoli
Hitting the books
The first new seed catalog came in three weeks ago, but the first from the two seed companies I mostly use arrived on Friday. Today, I took a quick look, checking to see what’s new, but mainly making sure that reliable stand-bys are still around. Dusky eggplant, that manages to come through in the craziest conditions. Rich, earthy Bloomsdale spinach (open pollinated!). Earlivee sweet corn for its speed and it’s more-corn-less-sugar, not-overly-sweet taste (it’s…gone!). Early Dividend broccoli and First Crop beets, planted in spring for their reliably extreme earliness. The shortlist goes on. Most of ’em are still there! The ones that fall off tend to be open-pollinated varieties, as they make way for “better” hybrids… These catalogs are convenient, but I wonder when I’ll get around to seed-saving for real. Progress!
Veggies in snow
Every season there’ve been hardy veggies left to the cold and snow, and this season, it’s a record quantity, with nearly 2,000′ (610m) of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale that mostly started sizing up just as the farmers’ market finished at the end of October. It seems like a waste, but it’s only a typical garden gamble on the weather (I was trying for an extra, really late crop). The risk was clear back in August, and we didn’t get enough sun to push things along a tiny bit quicker. We did harvest a lot of the Red Russian flat-leaf kale (above), for a good four weeks, and one round of 1-2 lb (450-900g) cabbage (a nice size for a meal for one or two). And there’s been a lot of personal-use picking in November. The rest is a giant farm lab experiment, more exploration of the snow-on-veggies effect…
More than the snow, the many nights of extreme cold (-15°C/5°F) that came with it this year really blasted these guys, wilting them and burning leaves and buds. So, none of the crops are too firm or pretty, BUT, they’re still alive: for the most part, there’s good color and texture. The kale, always super-hardy, did the best from a let’s eat some perspective, with good texture and great taste. The broccoli, while a little wilty on the stems and burned on the buds, also tasted great, fresh and flavorful. The cauliflower did the worst, the heads really damaged by the freezing and thawing, too mushy for me to bother with a taste. (Eating raw was fine, but how would this all cook up? We may see…) We’d already reaped most of the filled-out cabbage, so the rest aren’t going to go anywhere from here…
What’s all this odd information worth? Not much, I guess, I’m not planning on deliberately planting for snow harvests. But checking things out is always fun, no experience goes to waste, and there is at least one advantage to knowing there’s still good eating out there: the laying hens will be feasting on a fabulous greens buffet for a while!
Farm share
It’s interesting to see what everyone here helping in the field choose to harvest. Smaller selections always surprise me, I’d be, “A little of EVERYTHING, thanks!” Lynn, who’s off till Friday, went for herbs—sage, parsley, rosemary—a couple of zucchini, a couple of peppers, and some broccoli shoots… Where are the carrots, beets (with beet greens!), onions, green onions, potatoes, parsnip, carrots, spinach, baby lettuce, beans, basil, tomatoes, garlic, kale, eggplant,…FLOWERS?! UPDATE: Lynn pointed out that there was OTHER STUFF hidden underneath the herbs…
Fall crop watch
After a good weeding and another round of rainy days, the fall brassicas are pretty well on their own. It’s amazing how quickly growth slows down in September—what a difference the sun pulling away makes! The kale and collards are doing fine—we’ll be harvesting some Red Russian kale tomorrow. Broccoli and cauliflower will come through. Whether cabbage, planted this late for harvesting at baby size, will make it by mid-October is up in the air. More gambling and waiting to see…!
Fall crops
Not much to look at, yet, but the last plantings of 50-day-plus fall crops are doing fine. Here, carrots and, protected from flea beetles by floating row cover, one of two sections of brassicas, including broccoli, cauliflower and kale. There’s a bit of timing risk here, depending on the weather, if growing goes slow, they might not make it to maturity in time for market. But the sun’s been shining for a couple of days now, and the long range forecast is for more of the same. If all goes well, these will be ready for harvest through October!
And the summer-seeded spinach couldn’t be doing better. There are two plantings, the first on July 22, and the second (left of the photo) a couple of weeks later. Here, Lynn hoes the first set: in this summer’s wet, cooler, cloudier conditions, germination was absolutely solid, as good as or better than regular spring seedings. Fall spinach has never been this good, by far. Excellent!
Rainy day market
Rain, rain, go away… Not something you’d actually hear me say, or even think, lightly. This morning’s market didn’t quite qualify, although it rained heavily and steadily for the first three hours. Rain at the market has never been too bad for our stand, people always come out. Today, the stand set-up was still in fully compact mode, across two sawhorses instead of four, but there was a fair bit of veg, including the first 60lbs (27kg) of snap peas (Sugar Ann), around 40 broccoli, and a (relatively!) vast supply of all-lettuce mesclun, spinach (Spargo), garlic scapes (Music) and beet greens from assorted varieties. Enough to just make the minimum return from market needed at this time of year to keep this tiny farm ticking. By the end of the morning, all of the CSA pick-ups had picked up, and most of the veggies were sold out. Which is…good!