Category: Gardening

Winter Planting Lead Time

by A.J. Coltrane

I’m attempting to at loosely nail down the timing for starting winter vegetables, with the thought that we could harvest all winter and into the spring, rather than just waiting for the spring growth.

The idea is to select winter hardy plants and have them mostly full-grown by whenever the cold and lack of sunlight stops their development. It then becomes an issue of figuring out when that “growth stops” date is. It’s gotta be sometime in the next four weeks, right?

The table below is intended to take at least some of the “figuring” out of the equation. The “Days” is days to maturity.  The dates in bold along the top are potential “growth stops” dates. Most of the plants that we’ve selected are 30-50 days to maturity, with a few outliers running as much as 75 days or longer, so I’ve centered the table on 50 days:

Days Sep-10 Sep-24 Oct-1 Oct-14 Oct-28 Nov-14
25 Aug-16 Aug-30 Sep-6 Sep-19 Oct-3 Oct-20
30 Aug-11 Aug-25 Sep-1 Sep-14 Sep-28 Oct-15
35 Aug-6 Aug-20 Aug-27 Sep-9 Sep-23 Oct-10
40 Aug-1 Aug-15 Aug-22 Sep-4 Sep-18 Oct-5
45 Jul-27 Aug-10 Aug-17 Aug-30 Sep-13 Sep-30
50 Jul-22 Aug-5 Aug-12 Aug-25 Sep-8 Sep-25
55 Jul-17 Jul-31 Aug-7 Aug-20 Sep-3 Sep-20
60 Jul-12 Jul-26 Aug-2 Aug-15 Aug-29 Sep-15
65 Jul-7 Jul-21 Jul-28 Aug-10 Aug-24 Sep-10
70 Jul-2 Jul-16 Jul-23 Aug-5 Aug-19 Sep-5
75 Jun-27 Jul-11 Jul-18 Jul-31 Aug-14 Aug-31

As an example, assuming a 50-day maturity, and targeting October 28 for “growth stop” gives September 8 as the date to sow the seed. Ideally the plant will be 90%+ developed whenever the brakes hit.

Of course, I could have just consulted this. (link)

winter-gardening-chart-2013

The thing with the Territorial Seed Co. table is that the harvest dates are all over the place. That’s likely because they’re actually doing it “right”, or it’s how the majority of their customers choose to do it, but I’m hoping that “the other way” works too. We’ll see.

Container Garden Update — October 4, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

October 7, 2013 post here.

141004 watering cans2

We still had summer vegetables growing at this time last year. They’re long gone by now this time around, replaced by winter vegetables:

Bunch Onions
Bunch Onions

I’m still figuring out when to start winter veg, and what varieties do best in cold/long storage conditions. As an example, small, fast, round radishes do best in the spring and are intended to be harvested promptly after they’re ready. Longer maturity “carrot-shaped” radishes tolerate being held in the ground much better. Actual carrots have 4 or 5 different broad types as well. This is all new to me — just like I assumed that *all* vegetables did well in the heat of summer, it never occurred to me that different varieties of certain vegetables prefer either fall/winter or spring.

It may be that the vegetables in the EarthBoxes have been direct-seeded too late in the year. In the future we may start them in pots a month or so earlier an then transplant when the summer veg has been cleared out of the way. As it is, the plants in the whisky-barrel containers are well ahead of the EarthBox plants. Pictured below are spinach and cilantro that were started about a month ago (I should have labeled the date next to the new sowing.) I left the dill in place that’s now around two months old.

141004 dill spinach

They’re covered with bird netting because something — I think squirrels — had been digging in the newly exposed dirt. The carrots below are protected from flies with tulle:

141004 carrot

That’s carrots in the foreground, bunch onions under plastic in the middle, and romaine/arugula in the whisky barrel. I’m guessing that the whisky barrels don’t drain well enough for the alliums, which led to the shallots rotting this spring.

Other recently planted boxes include mache/parsley (interplanted); mache/cilantro (interplanted); spinach; pak choi; more bunch onions; mache; dill; and leeks. This afternoon at least one of the tomato boxes is going to become shallots.

It seems everything is doing better in the cold frame, so the open boxes got plastic-covered hoop houses. More pictures next week. Hopefully there will be something to show.

Container Garden Update — September 29, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 30, 2014 post here.

The final harvest took place last year on October 7. This year it happened on September 28. Last year we got 226 pounds out of the EarthBoxes. Yesterday’s harvest brings us to 270 pounds of produce for 2014. Improvement!

Here are yesterday’s twenty-three pounds of peppers:

140928 peppers

Overall we harvested 31 pounds of peppers in 2014. Next to the cat are ten pounds of King of the North. In the center sheet tray are two pounds of hot Pasilla peppers. Last year’s final pepper harvest is pictured below:

The October 7 harvest.
The October 7 harvest.

By weight it’s about 50% more peppers, though to be fair we also allocated more space this time. I think that 2014 shows more “red” as well.

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks breaking everything down. Last night we borrowed SeattleAuthor’s dehydrator for the Pasilla and Thai Hot peppers. He’s right — they’re so aggressively toxic that the dehydrator needs to go outside, otherwise stinging fumes fill the air.

Overall it was a pretty successful year. As a group everything that ripens, ripened better, especially the tomatoes. The yield was up somewhat when looking at 1-to-1 comparisons. Even though six of the 12 boxes fell over at some point the plants were still more productive. And we learned more things that we can apply to year three, such as the importance of support for the boxes…

“Recap” posts coming soon.

Container Garden Mini Update — September 2, 2014 — Gravity, Dangit!

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

Alternate titles:  “Dominoes!”   or …  “Total Carnage!”

We chose not to add any supplementary support to the tomato cages this year. Last year, everything was fine, why wouldn’t it be this year?

Because today it got windy. Then it got really windy. Windy enough that I went to the back window to check on the plants…

I watched the garden as the wind howled from a strange direction. The zucchini trellis toppled over. It struck the nearest tomato cage, which collapsed into the next cage…:

140902 carnage

Then 10,000 houses lost power.

With help, we lifted everything to vertical. I tied the cages to cinder blocks, then installed the pvc supports that I had thought were important last year, but not this year…

Another view:

140902 carnage2

We lucked out — everything landed on everything else. I doubt we lost more than a couple of pounds of produce, though it’s going to be “fried green tomatoes week”. We got a full sheet tray of not-ripe fruit. It seems that none of the vines snapped, though we’ll know for sure soon.

It’s raining freakishly hard tonight. The thunder just made the cats scatter. The peppers were looking bedraggled after the wind, we’ll see what we have left tomorrow. It could have been much worse.

 

Container Garden Update — September 1, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 1, 2013 post here.

Last year the yield was 64 pounds in the month of August. The year it was 95 pounds of produce for the month, including 20 pounds yesterday, though looking at last year’s pics – it may be that this year’s plants are closer to “done”. Yesterday’s harvest:

140831 harvest2

A closeup of the basil. It fills the box, but it’s only 3/4 of a pound — though that’s around $50 retail:

140831 harvest2 basil

One of the two midweek harvests:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — September 1, 2014” →

Container Garden Update — August 24, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

August 25, 2013 here for comparison.

Yesterday was a big “haircut day” for the tomatoes. As it turns out, at least one “haircut day” from last year was on August 25th. This year’s decision to give them a haircut was made without looking at last year’s notes. It’s interesting to me how closely the timing worked out.

It seems to me that the great majority of the mold on the tomato plants occurs on the “side shoots” — the leaf-only branches that are at a 90 degree angle to the main stem. The “sucker” branches (that come out of the side shoot/main stem intersection, and grow additional fruit), and the main stems are almost entirely mold free. This is true regardless of the location “side shoot”. The mold is both on exterior, well ventilated side shoots and on leaves that are buried in the interior of the leaf canopy. It’s like the plant figures that if it’s not a fruit producing node then it’s now time to shut down those natural defenses and spend that energy somewhere else.

Lots of pictures this week, mostly of denuded tomato plants.. starting with Wednesdays harvest:

140820

Saturday. That’s a big tomatillo in the bottom right corner:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — August 24, 2014” →

Container Garden Update — August 19, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

Silly August 18, 2013 post here. (Includes two cat pics and must have been written on very little sleep.)

The plants continue to look more and more haggard as the fruit production ramps up. There’s now mold on the zucchini leaves, some of the tomato plants, and the Brussels Sprouts (of all things). SeattleAuthor shared the hypothesis that the mold may be partly due to the humidity we’ve been seeing. That’s possible — there’s a small holly tree start across the yard that is covered in mold too.

But the production is going gangbusters:

Monday the 11th:

140811 harvest

Thursday the 14th:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — August 19, 2014” →