Category Archives: seeds

Copra onion blossom:  this F1 original seed, purchased/planted in 2007, is five generations removed from its hybrid origin.  Does this make it a non-hybrid yet?  It is a great yellow storage onion nonetheless for me.

With all the green pressure of seeding, growing and harvesting one’s own edibles, I will tell you it makes sense to go a step further.  You should harvest your own seed.

Forellenschluss lettuce

My first true (read: overwhelming) harvests of 2012 happen concurrently with the first harvests of next year’s seeds.  I allow, intentionally most of the time, lots of my spring veg to go to seed.  Many are biennials and thus won’t seed until this, their second, spring, but most are simply live-and-die annuals hellbent on reproduction in this, their only, year of life.  So I keep a store of paper lunch sacks handy and I snip off dried seedheads, marking the bags with a permanent marker as to what the heck they are, then I fold these bags to store in the basement for next (or maybe later this) year.  Roots, lettuce, brassicas, spinach, alliums, herbs.  Who needs a seed store when you have your own store?

The above is an example of inadvertent seed saving and seed starting.  About a month ago I deadheaded some Russian kale (the red, toothy kind) and left the seedpod branches on the ground to pick up later.  Well, it looks like I have my fall kale started already!  whoops.

Also, the ridiculously hot temperatures have lifted (joy) but one of the casualties was the artichokes.  The very thought of steaming them steamed me, so I let them flower.  Beautiful relative of the thistle, huh?

My go-to guide for all seed saving adventures is Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth, et.al.  There are other guides out there I am sure but this one is handily grouped by plant families and has relevant information about a plant’s suitability for growth in your particular area of the US.  If you know of others, please leave them in the comments.  Happy harvests!

Other indications of spring are spring onions in every possible form.  Here’re regular scallions, chives, and walking onions in a greenhouse bed.  Since they coexist with Egg Season, we’ve been pairing a lot of them lately, because, really, who can resist cong you bing for breakfast?  Not me!

I watched a fingernail moon hurdle the treeline as I was milking this morning.  So strange, this weather…have we skipped a month?  Did I miss it somehow?  How else to explain the scent of hibiscus and daffodils and the sound of the nightjars’ calls. Surely it’s late April, not mid-March.

The kid about to unplant her first spuds last July

Traditionally, however, St. Patrick’s Day is pea- and potato-planting day ’round here.  Many years I haven’t even been able to trench the frozen earth to accept peas (much less potatoes) but this year I wonder if the soil is already too warm for them.  If “regular” weather returns the potatoes, though, can take more than a few frosts, if my consistent missed-spud harvesting every fall is an indication.  Those volunteers are always my first spud harvests.

Fava beans, parsnips, carrots and beets have also been planted outside, some already sprouting.  Baby lettuces transferred around.  Late root crops pulled and eaten.

I am thankful to the slow slide into winter that we had last year:  I was fully able to put the garden beds “to bed” for the winter (out with the old harvests and in with the thick mulch) so this spring’s planting is amazingly easy.

And I also realize that I am somehow always optimistic about the time I will have in the future to take on some project (either maintenance or new hairshirt I mean farm task).  Does this time ever materialize?  Nope, never.  It’s best to do whatever it is (fully dig out a weedy bed, fully repair that fence section) when it needs to be done…trust me here.  Its effects can be cumulative if you put it off.

Little Edie has adaptation skillz at the ready.  Any time there’s a pile of something warm-ish in a greenhouse, she’s sure to land and nest.

We are all born tinkerers.  Tinkering’s a prime adaptive skill, of course, honed over millenia to help us fulfill our needs.  In this age of relatively easy money, though, I think that within the ease at which we exchange money for goods, we’re also exchanging something else.  With every dollar goes a bit of inborn knowledge, some nascent adaptation, a skill…simply because it’s easier to pay for it than to do it yourself.  We’re not so quick to tinker!

I am surely not saying you all should get out a circuit board and some solder and make your own computers.  Hah.  No; rather, this is more a signal to myself that not all my troubles have an easy monetary fix.  Indeed.  Sometimes, life requires a little bit of pain.

Case in point:  I abhor indoor seed starting.  Really.  And every year, I seem to be on a quest, a grand period of Deep Think, to solve this problem.   It’s not an insurmountable problem.  In fact, it’s really not even a problem.  It is just, of all that goes into gardening, seed-starting in trays interests me the least.  Maybe because it’s phony?  Maybe me warming 48-plug trays to start the tomatoes and okra in my basement is somehow cheating the process?  Ah.

Who knew I was such a purist, right?  Well, I have no problem at all planting seeds outside in the ground.  And I do start a fair number of spring/summer veg in rows in the greenhouse beds themselves.  But not all plants find these beds–and their wild temperature swings–to their liking.  Knowing how some seeds require a constant warm-ish soil temperature to germinate, is there a way I can get around this?

Nope.  Not if I expect a harvest.

Shrewd:  When moving them to get at what was under them, I threw the agricultural cloth in a pile over the top of the kale.  Edie took that as an invitation to lie UPON said kale.

Not all early veg are so picky, though.  For the last two years I have experimented with growing the seed-start trays in the greenhouses themselves.  Problem was, the voles (field mice, the scourge of the winter greenhouse) found a few of the seed trays and mowed them down of their particularly delectable victuals, so I needed them off the ground or somehow out of harm’s way.  A makeshift table seemed to work, but it cast shadows…and the warming late-winter greenhouse needs no shadows.

Now this year, on Leap Day, I actually splurged bought my way out of my problem by getting a new wire shelf for the old greenhouse’s back wall.  Wire shelves let the light through, I figure, so I can leave it on the wall all year…and darn it, the vermin can’t jump that high.

Probably the lamest tinker ever, new shelf on back wall.  Mylar blanket wraps about trays of herb, flower and cabbage-family seeds on wire shelf.  Those sticks coming out of the ground?  Attempts at fig propagation.

But damn.  The tomato, celery, okra, tomatillo, and pepper family plants are all testing my patience in the basement.

Here’s a bit more context.  Dang, I try not to show you what a slob I am…sorry.  But do you see Edie?

It’s always Dog Days around here

We’re getting our first sweet corn here (boiled exactly 2 minutes, enfolded in butter and eaten) and tomatoes, and we’re deep into blueberries and cherries, yet my thoughts are turning to the winter harvest crops.

It’s quite a disconnect if you haven’t done one before:  just when you see the vegetables visibly growing, practically leaping toward the sun, it’s now that you need to be planting your winter garden.  In my part of the world, I can harvest plenty of stuff out of the outdoor gardens all winter long.  My leg up of course are the greenhouses but really, I am talking about outdoor winter harvesting:  root crops, leeks and collards are easily grown with nothing on them but all that snow.  With the minimal protection provided by row covers of agricultural cloth, I can add winterbor kale, escarole and radicchio.

Even if you’re looking forward to a garden-free winter, an autumn harvest is well within your grasp.  Around the first week of July is when I am seeding fennel, kohlrabi, rapini and broccoli for the first crops of each for the year (Sept-Oct harvest).  I find the warm summer days and cooling evenings of summer to be more favorable for these vegetables:  they respond better, are more tender, and aren’t pithy or bitter…all their fates if they’re spring-sown.  Favas, peas, second plantings of cucumbers are all going in now, as well as a second batch of summer squash.  I am also seeding for a baby leek harvest in February.  Succession-planting of beets, carrots and lettuce continues.  In other words, it doesn’t end.

Territorial Seeds and Johnny’s Selected Seeds produce catalogs just for the winter-harvest market.  Check them out.

About two months ago I was surprised to find some seedlings sprouting in my greenhouse bed.  Surprise?  Sure.  It can be surprise if you planted the danged seeds LAST spring.  Well!  The germination brush-off in the instance of these onion sprouts holds a lesson for all of us seed-freaks at this time of year.  Here is what my seeds were telling me:

It’s not you, it’s me.

On second look, they appear to be leek seedlings.

Now, life would be wonderful if my seed packet had said “days to emergence:  7 to 365” as I’d have had something to expect.  But it did not.  In other words, the seeds sprouted when their situation was ideal for them, not for me.  And that’s the lesson we all can take with us.

You see I think we’ve all internalized the notion that what is ideal for tomatoes (the fruity veg most likely to be started from seed) is what everything else expects too.  And that is true in a way (warm soil, enough water, enough light) but it’s not absolute, it’s relative.  Indeed, onion seeds sprout at much lower temperatures.  Lettuces, carrots, and a whole passel of other things do too.

I keep referring back to the sprouting table in Nancy Bubel’s Seed-Starters Handbook for a reason, I guess.  There’s a whole lot of truth in it that we need to understand.  Otherwise, the knowledge gets handed to you in the form of seedlings you expected to arrive a year ago, or, well, not at all!

IN the “you can’t be the only one who needs to know this” department, I give you the following links for successful home seed-starting.  (And an apology to my international readers as most of these sites are for the U.S.  It’s not my personal bias I swear!)

It all begins with the last frost, or first frost-free date.  Killing frost, slight freeze, or just plain cold, if you’re planning on planting out those tender, lovingly-raised seedlings, it’s best to know when it’s safest to do so.  Dave’s Garden has a link by zip code with wonderful backup information behind it.

So now you know the date.  (Remember, it’s an average!!)  Next up is a Seed Starting Chart put out by Organic Gardening by plant type.  This should help you figure out what seeds should be started first, and there are handy little asterisks showing you what seeds are typically direct-seeded outdoors.  They also have a quick list to help you succeed.

While we’re at it, Organic Gardening also has a great how-to article on starting seeds indoors.  They also have good growing guides if you search by plant.

Cornell University has probably the best on-line vegetable growing guide, set up by individual varieties.

There is also your handy county extension agent.  These stalwart souls are sources of great information way beyond the mere starting of vegetable seeds.  They can help you get soil tests and help you with pest management, or even just hook you up with an experienced gardening neighbor.  Hey:  we pay these people’s salaries, and cutbacks usually come because they’re not busy enough, so use them, they’re there for you!

Likewise, your public library is also stocked with grow guides and gardening books.

Seed-starting shouldn’t be expensive; I mostly start mine in recyclable items like take-out clamshells and old yogurt containers.  (Some of these containers I have had for years…yes, I save garbage, what of it?  It’s not like the plants really care.)  And yeah, lighting is necessary, but fancy grow lights are not.  One cool- and one warm-colored fluorescent light in a shop strip fixture should cost you, in total, under $20.  You might want to splurge on seed-starting mix if only because it’s been sterilized and should be free of weed seeds…the irony is that dirt isn’t cheap.  With time however you’ll learn lots of tricks, trust me, that will save you money later on.  What other hobby feeds you, though?  Hmm?

Because this is a (putative) gardening blog, most of my posts follow the seasons.  And it’s this time of year that I do my annual Seed-Starting Post, and if you’ve read me for a while, you’d know how much I dislike the process.

So.  This year I am giving you and myself a break by stopping the whining.  I will do a positive, hopeful post instead.

But the very idea of spring does make me happy, and germinating seeds hearken the season after all.  On Friday after work, I saw a flock of robins (about 200 or so) in the trees in our front yard.  We’re closer, the earth is tilting, even if the forecast is for (even) more snow.

Heck, *I* would sprout in soil this warm.  Remember the chart I showed you years back, and then mentally calculate how wonderful this is.

Yet it’s with mixed emotions that I consider the onions, artichokes, cardoon, and parsleys sitting on their steamy grow mat**.  My mother gave me a seed-starting heat mat last year when I put in her greenhouse for her.  This is something I normally wouldn’t buy for myself, as my default is to be as low-tech as possible.  And this is the first time I am using it;  it should shave a week off the process or more, so…no complaints thusfar.

No grow lights either this year for me.  Instead, the process is beginning on the front porch, with the heat mat. This porch has the advantage of being rodent-free (unlike the garage, or even the greenhouses) and it’s really handy.  It’s unheated, yet it’s insulated, draft-free and faces south and west, so it’s fairly bright and not frozen.  I have seed-started in here many times before, successfully, with neither heat mat nor greenhouses backing me up.

And it’s to the sunny greenhouse the seedlings will eventually go:  I use one bed as a nursery, a hotbed, as it were…I remove the top 4″ of soil, put a load of goat and chicken poo down, wet it, replace the soil and voila, a hot bed, the process of decomposition doing what my electric heat mat is currently doing on the front porch.  But I am getting ahead of myself:  the greenhouse bed won’t be used for weeks yet.  I will document it too.

Think spring…

(**But unless you’re starting onions, most of you have some time yet!  Look at the calendar and count backward from the last week of frost.  If you count back 8 weeks, you’re safe for your tomatoes and peppers.)

NOTE:  DISCUSSION OF USING UNCOMPOSTED, HOT MANURE IN THE COMMENTS!  I will go over it more in about a month when I set up the hotbeds in the greenhouse.

It’s a rushed late Tuesday afternoon of work deadlines, I am tired and not looking forward to making dinner, there’s a foot of lake-effect snow predicted to fall on the two feet already out there but I am (thankfully) not out of ideas or –more importantly–ingredients for quick dinners.  Tonight?  Tomato soup and (homemade cheddar) cheese toasts, plus a greenhouse salad.

You see, all I need to do is run to the basement to pick up a jar of my tomato sauce, an onion and a head of garlic from their various spots in storage.  Salad requires a greenhouse trip.  For me, the nightly ritual of harvesting greens, chopping onions and garlic and washing and spinning salad is as soothing and as spiritually uplifting as religious services are to others.  Thockthock says the knife, SssSss say the onions in their fat bath, Wabbadywabbady goes the spinner.  Not quite frankincense and myrrh, sermons and communal incantations yet I become stilled, even if I am rushed.

And it’s last year’s spring planning that got me here on this January night.  It’s that time again:  have you paid close attention to all those seed catalogs clogging your mailbox?  (Please note:  there are worthy non-catalog alternatives, too.) It is TIME, people, to consider what you’re planting this year.  And as you will see, the seed prices have risen in the exact uptick that the popularity of gardening has, or so it would seem to me.  Granted, $3. for a packet of seeds is still a comparative bargain.  Consider it an investment:  think about it as an advance on your future.

Better yet:  plan for more garden space destined not just for food harvest.  Grow your own seeds and you might spend the grand total of $40 that I sent to the seed companies last year.

Yes.  Forty dollars.  Forty dollars, twenty-five of which were spent, crazily, on the sweet potato slips; fifteen seed-lousy dollars, plus seed-saving from years’ past, and I fed not just my family but–on average–four others this fall and winter.  Greenhouses, seed-saving, succession planting all equal food security.  They equal food security, even food abundance, and easy January dinners.

Get your highlighters out!

Oseille, you bitter thing:  pucker up!  Here it grows with perennial leeks and some salad things.

I recently received a request to use a photo of buckwheat that I had posted here, and, re-reading the buckwheat post, I thought how strange the world does turn.  You see, I had been thinking about sorrel, and sorrel, rhubarb, and buckwheat are all of the same family (Polygonaceae).  This concurrence seems to happen with surprising frequency for me around the December solstice.  I wonder if I am simply paying more attention to things now that the garden is winding down?  And:  anyone out there know the name of the term for this happy coincidence?  [Bingbing!  Astute commenters Sharon and Diana listed synchronicity and the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, respectively.  It was the latter that I was grasping for.  Thanks, I seem to have dropped my Jung somewhere along the way to the garden….]

While I am at it, does anyone know the term for the way leaves can be easily stripped one way but not another off of a plant’s stem, like most herbs (thyme, rosemary)?  Anyone?  It would be surprisingly useful cocktail hour conversation with a particular set of people.

Okay, back to sorrel.  If you have not heard of (much less eaten) this perennial before, don’t be too alarmed.  It is grown for its arrow-shaped, spinach-like leaves, and, much like most spinach, does not travel well.  (And before you disabuse me of the idea that spinach travels well because you have two week old bags of the stuff in your fridge, I will remind you that you should not own such a bag of fakery.  Home-grown spinach does not travel.)  In point of fact, sorrel practically screams when you pick it, and will soon be a floppy mess unless used quickly.  This point alone recommends it:  it means it’s darned close to what it originally was, unlike, say, your plastic bag of plastic spinach.

So:  this is a spinach substitute?  Um, not exactly.  I would say it is its own thing, and, if it is used as anything in my house, it’s used as a lemon substitute.  A good handful of the leaves, de-stemmed, melt down in a buttered pan in less than a minute and form an unctuous sauce appropriate for fish or eggs.   We eat a lot of fish and eggs here so this sauce gets a bit of a workout.  Its lemony-ness is due to the oxalic acid in its leaves:  the bigger the leaves, the sharper the taste.  One hears the small leaves are reminiscent of kiwi fruit.  I don’t disagree, but that’s a stretch.  The leaves are astringent, surely.

Frequently, though, I harvest the leaves (big and small) for our nightly salad.  I have had patches of sorrel growing around my gardens for years:  it actually liked my Minnesota winters, and I even uprooted it and dragged it here when we moved to Michigan.  It loves the greenhouse too, and does not winter-kill.  Reliably, it goes to seed each spring, sending up a bunch of stalks that stand six, seven feet in height.  The stalks get cut when the seeds turn brown, then it resumes its tireless production of leaves.  And:  despite the innumerable quantity of seeds, I have not had a problem with wild self-sowing of the stuff.

My chickens love sorrel.  Considering that two nonadjacent generations of the birds have figured this out, I think this is a universal and not a learned chicken trait.

Do you see the sorrel in this bed?  Me either.  Damned birds.  The snow I suppose can be partially to blame, but still…!

Ahem.  If you are not one who appreciates the bitter or the sour, you can give sorrel a pass.  Although it’s grown throughout the Mediterranean, it’s particularly popular in soups in Eastern Europe and western Russia.  This is fitting, considering these people’s preference for sour pickles, krauts, yogurts and the like.  I have made sorrel soup:  it’s especially yummy if it’s a cream soup (onion/leek, melted sorrel, then heavy cream dumped in just before serving).  The cream tames some if its zest.  I love it with mashed potatoes and chopped scallions, though, too.

Oh look:  it grows by runners too:  or at least this little bit has rooted from a stem.

Frankly, the only way I have grown it is to receive plants from others.  A quick check to the nearest seed catalog at hand (Pinetree, quickest to the mailbox this year) shows that, indeed, purveyors do sell bunches of seeds (though you might have to look hard:  in this catalog, it’s listed as a French vegetable), so this plant is eminently grow-able.  Personally, I will never garden without it.  Its attributes are many (you can ignore it, it grows heartily, it accepts a wide range of conditions, and, most importantly, is singular in its taste) and its problems are few.  Once you have it, you can impress others with your knowledge of it.  And, unlike many plants that I have grown for their “why isn’t it grown more” cachet (I’m looking at YOU, Good King Henry), this plant actually is worthwhile.

I think all gardeners have masochistic tendencies.  These tendencies may not be recognized by the gardeners in question:  in point of fact, they may assume they have more of a will to dominate than a will to be subjected by said gardens.  Illusions, I tell you.  If you’re a gardener, you’re wearing a hairshirt.  It just might not be terribly obvious to you.

Case in point:  Cauliflower.  Have you ever grown this one rather ubiquitous member of the brassica family?  Have you ever grown it successfully, I mean?  You know:  having a more than a 75% harvest of your lovingly planted seedlings?  I didn’t think so.

Snowball cauliflower, 31 Oct 2010.

Cauliflower, you see, is the vegetable garden’s diva.  Like all brassica seedlings, they are quite willing (eager, even) to pop out of their seed.  But if something happens along the way (the 70-180 days of its growing season) then, pfft, you surely won’t be harvesting your whole crop, or any of your crop at all, come to think of it.  Too hot?  Sayonara.  Too dry?  Likewise.  Is there a cabbage butterfly within a mile radius of your garden?  That’s a guarantee she’ll find and lay eggs on your plants which will soon enough hatch into little green caterpillars doing their happy poopy dance, even if you’ve grown them under cover.  And considering what space hogs these particular plants are, you might just want to give them a pass.

Crybabies they are.  I think I harvested 5 out of something like 30 plants this year:  these are not great odds.  I tend to plant reliable (to me) open-pollinated varieties (Snowball above, Purple of Sicily, and romanesco).  And I do pay attention to their particular needs (lots of water if it’s dry, lots of space, lots of compost) and I am still only rewarded with a few plants.  Timing is pretty crucial too, did I mention that?  Plant them too early and they come to flower in summer?  THAT is one stink flower you shouldn’t even attempt to eat.  They need the cool weather of fall to tame their wild tendencies (broccoli too) and in point of fact are a great fall crop…should you feel you wish to attempt it.  Just realize fully and well that you’re in for a little…pain.

Here’s a fine treatment:  caramelized in the burning-down preheat of Loven.  These smoky florets became the basis for a creamy potato/cauliflower soup.

Ah, weeds.  They can ruin a fine day in the garden.

Fortuitous weed product.  One misplaced ear sprouted and one quart of popcorn was the result.  You should plant popcorn annually because it pops more readily when fresh.  Somehow, though, I forgot to plant it this year…and the weed gods smiled on my oversight.

For as little time as I have, weeding still remains a task of high importance.  It’s funny to me, though, this one idea:  my concept of “weed” is ever-changing.  Sure, I always remove a dandelion when I see one, and dock , thistle and crabgrass never get a pass.  But everything else?  I have a sliding scale!

The one thing that holds true with me is the my very definition of weed:  it’s something growing where you do not want it to grow.  But this mashup of little time and littler patience with the task of weeding has been a bit of a boon for a certain kind of weed in my garden.

Volunteers, you see, have been granted stays of execution.  The seedlings of plants from the year (or more) before that sprout, crazily, sometimes happily, near where their parent plant had grown.

Chervil is a tiny herb, loving cool temperatures and disappearing in the hot months.  Though many, these seedlings won’t outcompete their mixed pac choy/lettuce neighbors in the winter greenhouse bed.

Likewise, mache is another tiny plant that can cohabit with the greenhouse lettuces.  It’s firmly in the never-need-to-plant-it-again category.

Things are getting out of hand when I let the greenhouse paths get taken over, though.  These are a cross-bred chioggia/three root Grex beet, quite sweet, so quite welcome.  The jar on the right are pickled.  I treat this as a perennial greenhouse crop, and pick them all summer and winter.

I have noticed, though, that certain families of plants are more prone to this willy-nilly self-seeding.  Umbelliferae includes the chervil above as well as…

regular old celery, and…Par-Cel cutting celery.

And also of the umbrella-flowered family, notice the cilantro in the front of this path.  In the back?  Carrots, another crazed umbrelled self-seeder.  I had wondered years back if the presence of the path’s cilantro illustrated a case of the broken-windows theory.  I think the answer is a definitive “yes.”

I guess the answer to all this is, you want more time?  Well, hold off on weeding and eat the products of your weeds.  Some of them, at least.

German Hardy garlic from bulbs purchased (ostensibly as food) from NYC’s Union Square Farmer’s Market about 3 years ago.  Yes, my suitcase was fairly stinky.  This is what I look for when it’s nearing harvest:  bottom 3-5 leaves browned and an overall “weary” look to the plant.  I should note, though, that not all my plants have reached this stage, even if I planted them at the same time last November.  The New Year’s Day cloves for example won’t be ready for another month or more.  I dry them for a week or two on screens spanning the beds in the greenhouses.

What is it about this home-grown crop that makes a gardener foolishly go on a quest of The Perfect Bulb?  It turns us otherwise carefree folk into obsessive Mother Hens, clucking and agonizing amongst the fronds as to is it big yet?  is it as big as it will get?  what if I pick it too early?

That portion of the garden is somehow sacrosanct, stored-food-wise.  Such flavor packed into these husk-wrapped clumps, such promise of future meals changed from “meh” to “heeeyyy!”  And most gardeners, once they try growing garlic, do realize that The Perfect(ly Large) Bulb is really just a goal, not a year-to-year reality.  Or if they do grow plenty of large ones, they realize there’s no way they’ll use them up before they go sprouty and sulfurous and gross.  In other words, most gardeners who grow garlic are pursuing an idea.

They also probably have long memories.  Many are the February days when I am stuck peeling the tiniest of cloves for our meals from the tiniest of heads, those heads that I *saved* for this purpose.  Yes, it’s then I get wistful for the “idea” of Perfect Bulb garlic.

But back to this quest.  There is nothing at all wrong with wanting large, beautiful heads of garlic grown on your own patch of earth.  And those in the know do know it often takes years to procure, cultivate, and harvest those varieties that will perform the best for their portion of the planet.  It’s a fun quest, actually; where would we be without garlic?

She’s going on a snipe scape hunt.  She’s 4′-2″ so this gives you an indication about how tall the plants can get in the greenhouses.  They’re planted in rows of 6, 6″ apart, in rows 6″ apart so…72 bulbs per bed

My problem with this pursuit is that like all noble journeys (think Odysseus, think Jason, think Captain Ahab) sometimes the pilgrim brooks no detours, and more’s the pity.   There is something rather…unattractive about single-mindedness in pursuit of a goal, after all.  Life is a journey; so, too, should your garlic-growing be.  Don’t reserve them ALL for a final harvest.  Green garlic is a gorgeous, fleeting thing:  before forming a bulb, the stem and end can be eaten like a gigantic scallion, only better.  It’s not bitter, it slices easily, and you can use most of the neck right up to the leaves.  Scapes of course are the fun pre-harvest benefit of growing hard-neck garlic:  these topset stalks are a great addition to any item in a wok or a saute pan, and I often use the smaller ones coined into the bottom of a bowl of salad, topping a soup, or boiled in with some of the last potatoes for a final mash.  Terribly versatile, said scapes.  It’s a gardener’s reparation for the fact that hardneck garlic does not store well.

Scapes are pretty, too.

But don’t get all snooty and think you can’t plant the smaller cloves of garlic.  I often plant the end of a bed with them in very early spring.  Using them green or even all bulbed up:  this is the bed I raid when making my own version of green goddess or ranch/buttermilk dressing.  Who cares how big they are when it’s their flavor you are after.

Outside, I have a bed of those small annoyingly sprouted cloves.  I planted these in late February.  The center clump, however, has been in this bed for years.

All I am saying is that garlic should be a fun crop, not an anxiety-prone one.  Granted, I sometimes grow close to The Perfect Bulb but I also grow a whole bunch of little ones.  I also have these greenhouses, which certainly help on my quest.  But honestly, I like to see myself more as a wandering pilgrim than one suffering from monomania:  all garlic is good.

Yes I realize that ancillary farm concerns like goats, bunnies, and winemaking have hijacked this erstwhile gardening blog of late.  And I do apologize to all who check in to, you know, talk plants!  It’s been fairly boring blogging lately on that score.

Not much to see out here

And, walking around the gardens today over lunch, I realize the outdoor gardens are going to be pretty boring this year too.  Unlike in past years, I am all caught up with my plantings for the end of April, and so everything planted is “up”.  It’s fun saying “it’s all up,” at least to myself…it’s gratifying to see the favas and peas break the soil, and the hopeful, strong spurts of greenery from the potatoes.  But boring!  Easily a third of the beds are dedicated JUST to peas, favas, onions, and potatoes…I would say 20% of all the beds out there are potatoes alone.  Potatoes, at least after their early shoots, are decidedly unsexy garden plants.

Am I expressing a bias?  “SUBSISTENCE FARMING IS NOT SEX-AY.”  The high calorie foods like potatoes, corn and carrots really aren’t traffic-stopping beauties when found in your garden beds.  Sorry.  It’s true.

Lots to see in here

Maybe you just need flowers to be sexy.  There aren’t many flowers from edible plants at this time of year, but at our place plenty of horticultural eyecandy can be found going to seed in the greenhouses.  The low-calorie foods (lettuces, kales, onions) are putting on quite a show!  And, considering that so few of them will be allowed to complete the seed cycle yet still have high value as goat and rabbit food, they’re allowed to go ahead and look their blushing best.

Mike’s Wild Red lettuce (what a hit:  a romaine/looseleaf cross, quite striking really (thanks, Mike!))

Perennial bunching onions doing their seed thing

Nothing like the enthusiasm of 5′ tall sorrel and kale plants

Ruby Red Chard says “don’t hate me because I am beautiful”

But the red sails lettuce says “harvest me already”

Not to be forgotten is the “old” greenhouse, which, while not exactly riotous with flowers, is plenty green

Wednesday, March 10th:  The last of the storage onions gets eaten!

I knew last year that our onions would run out.  It was a bummer year for them for a variety of reasons.  I have been terribly stingy with them as a result…and no, our food hasn’t been overly bland, it’s simply been very varied.

And no, I didn’t run to the store to buy any replacements.  A girl needs her principles.

At the ready on the butcher block:  the weeny bulbil garlic (never expected it to grow big, and I was right) and the small yellow shallots.  They’re pictured with butter and drying thyme, which likewise are need-at-hand staples.

Instead, indeed, I’ve changed up.  It was after the very first year of trying to produce everything we eat that I realized the gaps in my planning of the allium family.   And storage onions can be tough to grow from seed, harder than any of their cousins in my experience; it was a lesson learned.  I couldn’t, and shouldn’t, try to grow and store 100 pounds of storage onions, it’s both a waste of garden space and we’ll never eat them all before they sprout.  I’ve learned, then, not to rely on them:  shallots, scallions, garlic and leeks have instead been featured.  Egyptian walking onions with their weird topsets and potato onions with their tiny why-bother bottomsets (I just made that up:  basically, they grow off the mother onion) and leek pearls and chives and on and on…not, maybe, as handy as walking to the basement and grabbing a storage onion, but not so difficult to eat, either.

I take solace, too, in the fact that not every food culture relies on storage onions.  Can you imagine big chunks of raw onion in your miso soup, for example?  Yes, luckily, the greens of onions are readily edible.

Where would we be without the whole family?  But, well, they do have a downside.  I quote Swift:

This is every cook’s opinion
No savory dish without an onion,
But lest your kissing should be spoiled
Your onions must be fully boiled.

A pretty summer cabbage, from seed started in February

February!  Hark, I hear the swoosh of the swing of the season!

Admittedly, this is wishful thinking on my part.  We’re a long way off from spring, but we’re not far at all from spring planning.  And most gardening folk are thinking about the upcoming growing season, myself included.  I am about two weeks from stringing up the basement lights for early onions, for example; exciting, but also…the worst part of my own garden calendar.  I abhor indoor gardening.

No, I am thinking about how much less work I can do this year.  Every year, it’s my goal to bite off less, to realize the value of my most precious resource:  my time.  I will say that the longer one gardens, the more shortcuts one finds.  One needs to pay attention, though.  If I don’t want to weed, I must mulch; if I want to maximize the harvest out of one bed, I must be merciless about pulling plants and reseeding/replanting.  It becomes a bit of a game.  And games can be mastered.

So I am trying to master the game that is the onion family.  I seeded three greenhouse beds with those little hard black seeds yesterday:  leeks, red and white and yellow onions.  I placed them between the green sprouts of the rows of garlic.  If all goes well, this one step will save me days of anxiety pampering those damned indoor seed trays.   They’ll take longer to grow, but the conditions in the greenhouses are both out of my control and perfect for seed-sprouting, if you happen to be an onion seed.

I will of course plant them indoors, too, but, if it’s a successful experiment, then next year the basement lights will only come out for the tomatoes and peppers, and maybe celery/parsley.  And THAT will save me lots of time.  And swearing.