Every crop you plant requires an ongoing investment of time and energy, so it pays to be choosy. You want to grow plenty of the crops your family especially likes, but consider your garden’s abilities as well. Crops that are easy to grow organically are usually a good fit to the site and soil. If a nearby organic farmer does well with a certain crop, you can probably grow it, too.
When the crop hits the kitchen, it gets judged under new rules. How difficult is it to store? A pie pumpkin that will sit patiently on your porch for a month suddenly sounds great, and it’s hard to beat the fulfillment brought by a nice basket of cured potatoes resting in the basement.
Storage crops should be the backbone of your homegrown pantry, but you will grow dozens of other plants for eating fresh and putting by. You will get to know 28 great vegetables in the following pages, which are sorted alphabetically by crop. Herbs are covered separately in chapter 5.
Deciding which food plants to include here was difficult, and I wish I had endless pages to cover great homestead crops that grow in limited climates and soils. One of the exciting things about food gardening is that you can spend a lifetime exploring the possibilities and deciding for yourself what your priority crops should be.
Dig in.
(Asparagus officinalis)
15 plants per person
‘Guelph Millennium’ for cold climates, ‘Apollo’ for warmer ones, and ‘Jersey Giant’ in Zones 4 to 6
Freeze, pickle, or dry
Cold hardy and long lived, asparagus is the first big vegetable of the year to come into the kitchen. It is perfectly fine to eat every last spear fresh, which only makes sense. By late spring your store of put-by foods will be running low, making your asparagus crop even more welcome. Should you have extra, asparagus can be frozen, pickled, or even dried. When used to make a warm and creamy soup, dried asparagus easily passes for the real thing.
A hardy perennial adapted in Zones 3 to 7, asparagus grows best in well-drained soil with a near-neutral pH, in climates that get cold enough in winter to kill back the fronds. Asparagus can be grown in warmer climates, albeit not happily. In hospitable climates, a well-maintained asparagus bed will start bearing 1 year after planting, reach maximum productivity within 5 years, and stay productive for 10 to 15 years, or more.
In hospitable climates, a well-maintained asparagus bed will start bearing 1 year after planting, reach maximum productivity within 5 years, and stay productive for 10 to 15 years.
Because asparagus stays productive for so long, it is important to plant the best variety available for your area, especially if you live in a very cold or hot climate.
Many hybrid asparagus varieties are able to produce seven or more spears per mature plant because they are mostly male plants that do not expend energy producing seeds. Seed-producing female plants produce fewer spears, and those spears are also thinner, which some gardeners like. If you keep a patch of mixed-gender plants, you will harvest spears in a range of sizes. Female plants develop red seed capsules in late summer, so they are easy to identify should you decide to dig them out to make room for more productive male plants.
Female asparagus plants produce berries that are eaten by birds, and they sometimes give rise to volunteer seedlings. They usually produce thin spears compared to male plants.
When: Plant asparagus crowns (dormant roots of 1-year-old plants) in spring, at about the same time you would plant potatoes, but don’t rush to plant them in cold soil.
Where: Choose a site with fertile soil that is clear of perennial weeds and grasses. A single row of plants set 18 inches apart will fill in to form a 24-inch-wide bed, or you can grow a double row in a 36-inch-wide bed. Wider plantings are difficult to manage. Locate asparagus along the back or side of your garden, because 5-foot-tall asparagus fronds will shade nearby plants.
Planting: A few improved varieties (including purple ones) can be grown from seed. Start seeds indoors in spring and set out the seedlings when they are 12 to 14 weeks old, just after your last spring frost has passed. Consider carefully, because starting with crowns eliminates a full year of tedious weeding.
Asparagus craves phosphorus, which is usually abundant in compost made from kitchen waste or in composted manure. Work a 2-inch layer of rich, weed-free compost into the soil before planting. Shape a planting trench 4 inches deep and 10 inches wide, and arrange the crowns in the bottom, about 15 inches apart. Refill the trench without stepping on the bed. Lightly mulch with grass clippings, weathered leaves, or another organic material to suppress weeds.
Maintenance: Regular hand weeding is required to control weeds during the first two seasons after asparagus is planted. Pull out weeds early and often, and mulch to suppress weeds and maintain moisture.
In early winter, after several hard freezes have damaged the fronds, cut them at the soil line and compost them to interrupt the life cycles of insects and diseases. Then fertilize the bed with a 1-inch layer of weed-free compost or composted manure, topped by 3 inches of straw, rotted sawdust, or another weed-free mulch. In spring, clean spears will push up through the mulch. Fertilize your asparagus again in early summer, when you stop cutting spears. You can top-dress with a balanced organic fertilizer or scatter another inch of rich, weed-free compost over the decomposing mulch.
For eating fresh and having extra to freeze, pickle, or dry, plant about 15 plants per person, which translates to 6 pounds per asparagus eater. A bed of 25 plants will produce about 10 pounds of asparagus per year.
Two species of asparagus beetles damage asparagus spears and fronds throughout North America: the common asparagus beetle (black, white, and red) and the twelve-spotted asparagus beetle (red-orange with black dots). Both are about 1∕3 inch long.
Prevention. Asparagus beetles overwinter in plant debris, so removing fronds in winter will reduce their numbers. Lady beetles and several small wasps are major asparagus beetle predators.
Treatment. Hand-pick adults early in the morning, when it’s too cool for them to fly. Asparagus beetle eggs look like stubby brown hairs on new spears; they can be wiped off with a damp cloth. Once they are feeding on fronds, asparagus beetle larvae (soft gray-black sluglike creatures) are unable to crawl back up the plants when swept off with a broom. Spinosad-based pesticides will stop feeding by asparagus beetles at all life stages.
When: The exact dates of your spring picking season can vary by 2 weeks or more due to variations in soil temperature from year to year. As a rule, asparagus spears will develop when soil temperatures reach 50°F (10°C). The first spears are often lost to hard freezes if left unharvested, but covering beds with row cover tunnels during the first weeks of the harvest season can help limit cold damage.
Long-lived asparagus plants need time to grow large root systems, so it is best to let them keep all of their stems for at least a year. As long as a new planting grew vigorously its first season (and your growing season is not extremely short), you can harvest spears for 2 weeks when your planting is 1 year old. The next season, harvest all spears that appear for the first 4 weeks of active growth. In the third season, you can harvest asparagus for 6 weeks; by year 4 the plants will be strong enough to tolerate a full 8-week harvest season.
How: Snap off spears that are longer than 4 inches at the soil line as soon as they appear in spring. In cool weather, you can let the spears grow longer. Promptly refrigerate harvested asparagus, and eat or preserve within a few days.
When you tire of eating fresh asparagus but the spears keep coming, you can freeze some, make a batch of pickled asparagus in a vinegar brine, or dry bite-size pieces into threads in your dehydrator.
Freezing. Choose your prettiest spears for freezing, even if it means working in small batches. Follow the steps for blanching and freezing vegetables in Freezing Vegetables and Herbs. Try to keep as much length as you can when trimming spears, because if you later want to grill or sear your thawed asparagus, you will be happy to have large pieces. Always blanch asparagus before freezing it, because blanching actually increases the nutritional value of this veggie by altering enzymes.
Canning. A low-acid food, asparagus requires processing in a pressure canner for 30 minutes, which causes it to become overcooked. However, you can make pickled asparagus in a vinegar brine (see recipe) to showcase this vegetable’s beauty in cold salads and sandwiches.
Drying. One-inch-long pieces of asparagus that have been blanched and cooled will dry into tiny threads of asparagus, which do an amazing job of regaining their shape when cooked in simmering water or stock. If you plan to use your stored asparagus mostly in soups or casseroles, drying is a great method to try.
If you plan to use your stored asparagus mostly in soups or casseroles, drying is a great method to try.
You can increase the sugar in this recipe if you want the asparagus spears to taste more like bread-and-butter pickles.
Makes 4–5 half-pint jars
(Phaseolus species)
15 row feet per person for bush beans, plus 5 row feet per person for pole types
‘Provider’ bush snap beans, ‘Northeaster’ pole snap beans, and ‘Calypso’ dry beans
Freeze, pickle, pressure can, or dry
A bona fide native American vegetable, beans are easy to grow no matter where you live. All beans grow best in warm weather, whether you are growing them for crisp snap beans or for dry beans to cook in winter. Most gardeners use their limited time and space to grow snap beans for freezing, pickling, and canning and grow one or two strains of dry beans as treasured culinary crops.
Historically, snap beans were preserved by drying. Hung on strings near the fire, the beans dried into “leather breeches,” which were a practical and essential winter food before electricity became widely available. After being soaked in a pot of water overnight, the beans were simmered on the woodstove for several hours, resulting in a delicious dish to eat with cornbread or biscuits as the main midday meal.
Today we are more likely to freeze, pickle, or can green beans — and perhaps dry some for snacks, too. Base your gardening and preservation plans on how you like your beans. Frozen snap beans are convenient for casseroles or tossing into pasta salad, and pickled green beans (see the recipe) accented with fresh herbs do a marvelous job of capturing the taste of summer in a jar. You will need a pressure canner to can low-acid green beans, or you can go back to the old way and dry them.
Delicate little filet beans (also called “haricots verts”) are great for fresh eating, but varieties with larger, more substantial pods hold up better when frozen or canned. Among gardeners who preserve what they grow, the types and varieties named below have legions of dedicated fans. Most are available in retail store seed racks.
As a season-long goal, try to grow 15 row feet of bush beans per person for fresh eating and preserving, and another 5 row feet per person of pole beans. With good care and regular harvesting, you would get a pound per row foot from the bush beans, and slightly more from the pole varieties. As a hedge against pests and bad weather, the bush beans can be grown in two plantings made a few weeks apart.
Dry beans are not super-productive plants, but they are too beautiful and nutritious not to grow. Expect about 11⁄2 pounds of dry beans from a 12-foot double row of bush-type dry beans, or 2 to 3 pounds from a pole type.
Gardeners in warm climates can grow regular snap beans in spring and fall, but high temperatures in summer can cause blossoms to fail, resulting in few beans. Lima beans, tepary beans, and yard-long beans don’t have this problem and thrive in weather too hot for other beans.
Lima beans (Phaseolus lunatus) thrive in warm, humid weather and often resist pests that bother regular beans. At their best in warm, muggy weather, pole-type varieties including ‘Christmas’ (also known as ‘Large Speckled Calico’) and white-seeded ‘King of the Garden’ can produce huge yields when given a secure trellis. Bushy ‘Jackson Wonder’ can be grown for freezing or drying, though dried limas are much easier to shell compared to the tender green ones needed for freezing.
Tepary beans (P. acutifolius) are native to the Southwest and Mexico, where they have been part of the traditional diet for thousands of years. Planted during the summer rainy season, tepary beans have smaller leaves than regular beans and also adapt well to the alkaline soils found in many arid climates. Tolerant of heat and drought, tepary beans like ‘Blue Speckled’ or ‘Tohono O’odham White’ are excellent low-care beans for hot summer areas.
Yard-long or asparagus beans (Vigna unguiculata ssp. sesquipedalis) are grown for their long, slender pods, which are harvested when they are 12 to 18 inches long. Depending on variety, pods may be green, burgundy, or streaked. Yard-long beans need a trellis at least 8 feet high, but plantings of these super-productive peas can be kept small — only a dozen plants will keep the pods coming all summer. After they are cut into bite-size pieces, yard-long beans can be blanched and frozen just like other snap beans. Unlike regular purple-podded snap beans, which turn green when cooked, ‘Red Noodle’ and other dark-podded yard-long beans keep their color.
When: Start planting beans in late spring, after the last frost has passed. Seeds germinate best when soil temperatures range between 60 and 70°F (16 and 21°C).
Most people plant bush snap beans two or three times, with sowings 3 weeks apart. Where summers are hot, make a late-summer sowing about 10 weeks before your first fall frost is expected.
Choose planting dates for dry beans that will lead to the crop maturing during the driest part of summer, or in early fall.
Where: Beans need a sunny, well-drained site, but they adapt to most types of soil as long as conditions are warm. Beans are a good crop for beginners because the large seeds grow into big, fast-maturing plants. The plants have no tolerance for frost and will not grow under cold conditions.
Planting: Like other legumes, beans form partnerships with soil-dwelling bacteria that enable them to capture and utilize nitrogen from the air. If you grew beans in your garden the previous year, scatter a few spadefuls of soil from last year’s bean patch into the new planting site to inoculate it with beneficial rhizobia. Also provide a bit of a balanced organic fertilizer when preparing planting space for beans, because it takes a while for the nitrogen-fixing machine to get going.
Do not soak beans in water before planting them, as is done with many other seeds. With beans, only a few hours under oxygen-deprived conditions can injure the growing embryo. Plant beans dry. The most space-efficient spacing for beans is to plant them in double rows, with 12 to 14 inches between the rows. Thin seedlings to only about 6 inches apart, because beans like close company.
Provide a sturdy trellis for pole beans at planting time. A tripod design in which poles come together at the top becomes more stable when it is loaded with vines. Long bean trellises can be made from a series of tripods, attached at the top with a horizontal pole. Trellises should be 5 to 8 feet tall, depending on how long the vines will grow.
Short pole beans, known as half-runners, run to only 5 feet compared to the 8- to 12-foot vines common in other pole beans. Even for long-vined varieties, a 6- to 8-foot-tall trellis will do, because the vines will double back upon themselves when they reach the top of the trellis. Wire mesh fences also make great trellises for pole beans.
Sometimes beans enjoy a carefree season with few problems, but in some years trouble seems to lurk around every corner.
Brick-colored Mexican bean beetles sporting black spots often lay clusters of yellow eggs on bean leaves, which hatch into yellow larvae that rasp tissues from leaves. Hand-pick this pest in all life stages, and try spraying neem to control light infestations. Late plantings of bush beans sometimes escape damage.
Brightly colored Japanese beetles and deer both love to munch bean foliage. Hand-pick the beetles, or use lightweight row covers to hide your beans from both pests.
Night-feeding cutworms often sabotage beans grown in sites that recently supported grasses, cutting down seedlings at the soil line. Save survivors by sticking toothpicks into the soil beside the main stems (cutworms cannot girdle wood, only tender stems). Diatomaceous earth sprinkled over the soil’s surface can help reduce losses.
Several fungal and bacterial diseases cause dark spots and patches to form on bean leaves; most are aggravated by wet conditions. To keep from spreading diseases among plants, avoid working in your bean patch when the foliage is wet.
When: Harvest snap beans when the pods reach full size but are still tender. Harvest at least twice a week. Most bush beans will produce a second or third flush of beans after the first one is picked, and pole beans will produce continuously for more than a month. Don’t worry if you miss a few. The mature beans of all snap bean varieties are edible and usually make good soup beans.
Gather some of your soup beans at the mature green stage, when the pods begin to feel loose and leathery, and use them in succotash and other summer dishes. Let the rest finish as dry beans. Allow dry beans to stay on the plants until the pods turn tan and the beans inside show good color and a hard, glossy surface.
How: Bean plants can be brittle, so use two hands when harvesting pods. Immediately rinse snap beans in cool water to clean them, then pat them dry between clean kitchen towels. Store in plastic bags in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook or preserve them, but not for more than a few days.
If damp weather sets in just when your soup beans should be drying, pull up the plants and hang them upside down in a dry place. Place picked pods in paper bags or open trays kept in a dry, well-ventilated place, preferably indoors. Most dry beans are easiest to shell after the pods have dried to a crisp, or are at least leathery. After shelling your beans, allow them to dry at room temperature for at least 2 more weeks before storing them in airtight containers. If you think insects might be present in your stored beans, keep them in the freezer.
Superior snap bean varieties like ‘Northeaster’ have crisp, fleshy pods that do not become stringy until the beans inside begin to gain size.
The pods of dry beans like ‘Black Turtle’ and ‘Calypso’ become tough at a young age, and waste no time producing mature edible seeds.
Beans are self-fertile and open-pollinated, so they are one of the easiest crops from which to save seeds for replanting. To save dry beans for replanting, simply select the largest, most perfect seeds from your stored beans. With snap beans, it is usually best to not pick beans from plants grown for seed production purposes. That way, the plants will channel all of their energy into big seeds that will grow into big seedlings. Be patient, because snap bean varieties that have been bred to stay tender for a long time are often very slow to develop mature seeds. It can take 6 weeks for pods to mature from green to tan. Under good conditions, bean seeds will store for at least 3 years.
You can preserve snap beans several ways, including freezing, pickling, pressure canning, and drying. As you choose preservation projects, think about how you will use your beans in the kitchen. Either canned or frozen beans can be used to make green bean casseroles, but the frozen version is better for pasta salads or stir-fries. Pickled green beans are wonderful to have on hand during the spring and fall salad seasons, and they add crunch to sandwiches, too. Canned and dried beans have very long shelf lives, with canned beans in particular worth the small trouble needed to make them.
To freeze beans, follow the procedures for blanching, chilling, and freezing given in Freezing Vegetables and Herbs. Freeze some of your blanched and chilled snap beans on cookie sheets and transfer them to a large freezer bag when frozen hard so you will have loose beans for adding in small amounts to various dishes. Also combine blanched snap beans with other veggies and herbs to make frozen mixtures that vary from week to week. As the summer progresses, many gardeners cook up savory pots of “shelly beans” made from young pods mixed with shelled beans from older ones, seasoned with plenty of fresh herbs. Because they are completely cooked and seasoned, I label these as “ready-to-eat” beans in the freezer.
Either canned or frozen beans can be used to make green bean casseroles, but the frozen version is better for pasta salads or stir-fries.
When time and dehydrator space permit, dry a few trays of your best snap beans after blanching them first. For dried snap beans destined for use in winter soups, cut the beans into uniform 1-inch pieces. You also can dry seasoned green beans for snacking. After beans are blanched and chilled, pat them dry before tossing with a seasoning oil mixture. Dry the seasoned green beans until leathery, and then store in the freezer.
Dry snap beans rehydrate slowly, so they are best used in slow-cooking soups.
Beans are a low-acid vegetable, so unless they are in an acidic pickling brine, a pressure canner is needed to can them safely. Processing time is short, only 20 to 25 minutes at 10 to 15 pounds pressure (depending on altitude); increase time when snap beans or cooked dry beans are combined with other vegetables in soup mixes.
Pickled green beans are new to some gardening cooks, but not for long! When preserved in a vinegar brine, green beans stay crisp for months while picking up flavors from herbs, garlic, or other seasoning spices. When basil is used as the seasoning herb, they are called basil beans.
Makes about 7 pints
(Beta vulgaris)
5 row feet per person for fresh eating, plus 20 row feet for storing and preserving
‘Ruby Queen’ or ‘Cylindra’ for canning; all beets store well in the refrigerator
Place in cold storage, pickle, ferment, or can
Few veggies you can grow in a garden offer as many storage options as do beets. The trimmed roots will store in the refrigerator for months, or they can be pickled or canned. In most climates you can grow a second crop of beets in the fall, which have the advantage of maturing when the soil is chilling down. Cool soil brings out the sweetness in beets and contributes to their ability to store under refrigeration well into winter.
If you like beets, you will want to go into winter with a nice store of pickled beets (which can be processed in a water-bath or steam canner) or pressure-canned beets, which require no added sugar. I like to get my beet canning done with a spring-to-summer crop, because beets grow fast as days become longer and warmer in spring. Fall-grown beets are slowpokes and need at least 10 weeks of growing time before cold weather stops their growth. The most challenging part of growing a good fall crop of beets is getting the planting up and growing in hot summer weather, a task for which shade covers are invaluable.
Little round beets are great for canning whole, but varieties with a cylindrical shape cook and peel quickly, and yield more uniform slices.
Beet varieties vary in shape, color, and uniformity. All types of beets can be used in pickles and relishes, but the varieties named below are often preferred for canning crops.
Most gardeners have fresh beets in the refrigerator and on the table from midsummer to late fall, so the canned beet supply needs to last only about 6 months. For your spring planting, plan on 5 row feet per person for eating fresh, and another 20 row feet to make 12 to 14 pints of pickled or canned beets.
How many fall beets you grow is limited mostly by your available cold storage. Fall-grown beets can be big, so only 15 row feet would give you 5 pounds for fresh eating and 10 pounds for storage into early winter.
Yellow beets were a Burpee seed company novelty in the 1940s, but germination rates of yellow or “golden” beets have remained low until recently, with the introduction of more vigorous sprouters like ‘Touchstone Gold’. Mild, sweet, and never messy because they do not bleed, yellow beets make gorgeous pickles.
In addition to yellow beets, white and bicolored beets look pretty on the plate, but they are less productive and uniform compared to red beets. This is fine if you want a rainbow of beets for fresh eating and refrigerated storage, but not if you are trying to stock your pantry with pickled beets.
When: In spring, plant beets about 2 weeks before your average last frost date. Beets can be sown earlier if the planting is covered with a row cover tunnel. In fall, plant beets 10 weeks before your average first frost date.
Where: Full sun and rich, finely cultivated soil are needed to grow beautiful beets. When growing a canning crop, use every opportunity to enhance the uniformity of the planting. Some gardeners say beets can be started in containers and transplanted, but my experience with transplanted beets has been disappointing. Direct-seeded beets simply grow better.
Beets need a range of nutrients, so be sure to mix in a standard dose of a balanced organic fertilizer and a generous helping of compost as you prepare the bed. Beets need a soil pH between 6.0 and 7.0; a light application of wood ashes can be helpful in more acidic soils.
Planting: You can improve the germination of beet seeds by soaking the seeds in water for 4 to 6 hours before planting them. Plant the primed seeds 1⁄2 inch deep and 1 to 2 inches apart in rows spaced at least 10 inches apart. To provide perfect germination conditions, cover the seeded bed with a piece of cloth or other shade cover, which prevents soil crusting and compaction. A row cover tunnel provides similar benefits.
Maintenance: Beet seed capsules often contain two or more seeds, so thinning is essential to growing plump roots. Use your fingertips or a small pair of scissors to snip out extra seedlings to turn twins into singles. When beet seedlings are 2 inches tall, thin them to 3 inches apart. Fall beets being grown for winter storage need more space and can be thinned to 6 inches apart.
Beets are set back by drought, so provide water as needed to keep the soil lightly moist at all times. Hand-weed early and often, but stop weeding when the plants are within 3 weeks of maturity lest you disturb the beets’ roots, which can cause them to lose interest in plumping up. If your beets start pushing up during a period of very hot, sunny weather, use a light mulch of grass clippings or erect a shade cover over the bed to keep the shoulders from becoming green and tough.
Flea beetles and leaf miners. Beets have few insect enemies beyond flea beetles, which make tiny holes in leaves but would rather eat arugula. Leaf miners leave behind meandering tunnels in beet leaves. Neither pest is likely to cause significant damage, but row covers can be used preventively in areas where pest pressure is high — for example, near commercial sugar beet fields.
Boron deficiency. Dark corky spots in and on beets are a symptom of boron deficiency, easily prevented by amending the soil with compost or mixing in a dusting of household borax when preparing the bed for planting. Note that beets are inefficient users of boron, so deficiency symptoms in beets do not mean your soil is bereft of boron.
ungal diseases. Under very rainy conditions, beet leaves can become blighted with several fungal diseases. Frequently the plants will regain their health if the damaged leaves are cut away and composted.
Animal pests. Rabbits will eat beet greens, while voles may attack beets from below, often chewing off the taproot. Mature plants that suddenly wilt may have been fed upon by voles. Fine mesh hardware cloth fencing, buried vertically around the bed, is the only sure way to protect beets where vole populations are high. Unfortunately, deer love beet greens, too, so plan ahead to protect your crop.
When: Begin pulling round beets when they measure 2 inches across. In fall, harvest beets after the first frost but before the first hard freeze.
How: Gently swish the roots in cool water to remove excess soil, but do not scrub them. Cut off all but 1 inch of the beet tops, but leave the taproot intact to prevent bleeding. Set aside the youngest, most tender beet greens for fresh eating. Pat the roots dry with clean towels and place in plastic bags in the refrigerator until you are ready to use them.
If you live in a cold climate and have a root cellar or other place where near-freezing temperatures can be maintained, fall beets can be packed in buckets with damp sand or sawdust for winter storage. See Cold Storage of Homegrown Producefor more ways to cold-store beets. Be sure to check stored beets weekly for signs of trouble.
Beets push up out of the soil as they mature, which takes the guesswork out of when to harvest.
Cold storage in bins or boxes or an extra refrigerator is the easiest way to store a robust crop of fall beets, but summer beets are best pickled or pressure canned fresh from the garden. Beets are a low-acid food, but using a vinegar-based pickling brine makes it possible to process pickled beets in a water-bath or steam canner. Pressure canning beets is not difficult, assuming you are familiar with your canning equipment.
Tip: Simply scrubbing and simmering for half an hour makes beets easy to peel.
Vary your knife work when making pickled beets and beet relishes. One batch might be uniform slices and another matchsticks, with relishes made from finely diced or grated beets.
Naturally firm and colorful, pickled beets will create beginner’s luck for any new home canner. For the base brine, use 4 cups vinegar, 2 cups water, and 2 cups sugar (no salt is necessary). As long as you stick with this high-acid brine for low-acid beets, the flavorings you choose can go in several directions:
Follow the standard home canning directions, Home Canning: Ten Basic Steps, when making pickled beets. The general guideline for canning pickled beets is to process pints in either a water-bath or steam canner for 30 minutes. This is a long processing time for a pickled vegetable, but beets are so dense that they rarely suffer from prolonged heating.
A straightforward veggie to handle in the pressure canner, cooked beets cut into bite-size pieces are often lightly salted with 1⁄2 teaspoon salt per pint. The general guideline for canning beets is to process pints for 30 to 35 minutes at 10 to 15 pounds pressure, depending on altitude.
Like most other root crops, raw beets tend to stay woody when fermented on their own or used in mixed ferments. For this reason, beets are usually cooked before being added to the fermentation crock. Red beets will turn everything else in the crock red, too.
This recipe produces a tangy, salty-sweet fermented drink that continues to improve after it is moved to the refrigerator. Sweeten your kvass with a touch of honey just before drinking it.
Makes 2 cups
(Brassica oleracea)
3 plants per person for fresh eating, 9 plants per person for freezing
Large-headed ‘Diplomat’ and sprouting ‘DeCicco’
Freeze
Broccoli is a crop that needs to be attentively courted before it will become your sweetheart. Garden broccoli has more precise cultural requirements compared to other vegetables, and most gardeners spend several seasons learning how to grow it. On every level — timing, soil fertility, spacing, and pest management — broccoli’s rather exact needs must be met. But once you learn broccoli’s secrets for success in your garden, you can look forward to bountiful yields of this popular and nutritious vegetable.
Garden-fresh broccoli is remarkably tender, so it is always in high demand at the table. In the garden, however, large-framed broccoli plants need lots of space, so try not to get carried away on a broccoli binge. A cool-weather crop best grown in spring or fall, broccoli tastes sweetest when it matures in autumn, after nights turn chilly. Freezing is the best way to preserve broccoli.
A broccoli head is made up of many tender green “beads,” which are immature flower buds. After the main head is cut, many varieties produce smaller secondary heads a few weeks later.
Fresh eating quality is all that counts when choosing broccoli varieties. The two best-tasting types are large-headed hybrids like those you see in grocery stores, and sprouting varieties that produce numerous small heads over several weeks.
When: For your spring crop, start seeds indoors 6 weeks before your last spring frost, and set out hardened-off seedlings when they are about 4 weeks old. Striving for very early crops can backfire, because seedlings exposed to cold often produce tiny heads (a syndrome called “buttoning”). In spring, wait until the weather warms to set out your broccoli. You can also seed broccoli directly into a nursery bed and transplant the seedlings to your garden. Experiment with planting dates, which are key to growing great broccoli. Be careful when purchasing seedlings. They are often overgrown, so they already have one strike against them. Broccoli does not like any type of stress.
For your fall crop, start seeds indoors 12 to 14 weeks before your first fall frost, and grow the seedlings in filtered shade until they are about 4 weeks old. This is usually the height of summer, so it helps to cover the little plants with a row cover or tulle tunnel to filter strong sun and protect them from grasshoppers and other insects. Have the tunnel ready the day you transplant your broccoli.
Where: Broccoli is a heavy feeder, and the plants take up nutrients most easily when the soil pH ranges between 6.0 and 7.0. Choose a sunny site with fertile, well-drained soil.
Planting: Loosen the planting bed and mix in 1 inch of mature compost. Unless your soil is already very fertile, also mix in a high-nitrogen organic fertilizer such as alfalfa meal or composted poultry manure, or you can use a balanced organic fertilizer. Water the fertilized bed thoroughly before setting out seedlings. Allow 18 to 20 inches between plants for most varieties. Dwarf varieties can be planted 12 inches apart.
Maintenance: In spring, protect young seedlings from cold winds with cloches, or you can grow them beneath a row cover tunnel. Wait until the soil warms to mulch broccoli. Just before heads form, drench plants with an organic mix-with-water fertilizer, or scratch a dusting of any high-nitrogen organic fertilizer into the soil around the plants.
The same pests that bother cabbage are often seen on broccoli, which make it a favorite host plant for velvety green cabbageworms, green cabbage loopers (which loop their bodies, inchworm-style), and blackish armyworms. All are easily controlled with a biological pesticide that has Bacillus thuringiensis as its active ingredient. In summer, brightly marked harlequin bugs and grasshoppers can devastate young plants. The best way to prevent summer pest problems is to grow plants beneath floating row covers.
Plants that suddenly collapse may have been hit by cabbage root maggots — rice-size fly larvae that feed on broccoli roots. Where this pest is common, plant seedlings deeply and press the soil firmly around the stems. A loose collar of cloth wrapped around the base of the stem will further discourage egg laying by adults.
When: As soon as you see tiny heads forming in summer broccoli, use clothespins or string to bind the topmost three leaves together into a sunshade (shown below), which will help the heads ripen more uniformly. Avoid overhead watering to keep the growing head as dry as possible. Check the plants daily for the size of the heads and the condition of the beads, which are actually immature flower buds. Harvest when the beads around the edges of the head show slight loosening, but most of the rest of the beads are still tight.
Light frosts improve the flavor of broccoli that matures in the fall, and the best broccoli of the year comes between the first frost and the first freeze.
How: Use a sharp knife to cut off the heads at an angle, which will limit how much water pools inside the cut stem. Chill harvested broccoli immediately by placing the heads in the refrigerator or in a cooler kept cold with frozen water bottles. Clean the heads under cool running water. If you see tiny cabbageworms in the heads, soak large pieces in warm salt water for 10 minutes to float them out. Enzymes in broccoli cause the tissues to toughen after the heads are cut, so blanch and freeze bumper crops right away to preserve broccoli’s tenderness.
If you continue to water and weed healthy broccoli plants, many varieties (or sometimes individual plants) will develop secondary branches that produce lovely little heads for fresh use or for mixing with other summer vegetables in frozen packages. Sprouting broccoli is a cut-and-come-again crop that will produce new buds each time it is cut.
Almost-ripe broccoli heads will continue to grow when shielded from strong sun. Tie or pin the top leaves together to create an instant sun shade.
For eating fresh, allow three plants per person, but triple that amount if you want to freeze a year’s supply comprising 4 to 5 pounds per person. In most climates, you can divide broccoli into spring and fall plantings.
For the best home-preserved broccoli, steam blanch bite-size pieces and freeze them in vacuum-sealed bags. Also include broccoli in bags of mixed summer vegetables and herbs you put by in your freezer.
Broccoli florets that have first been blanched to preserve their color — about 4 minutes in steam — can be made into refrigerator pickles using the same recipe used for cucumbers (see recipe). You also can dry blanched broccoli florets, but expect the green to become tinged with brown as the pieces dry to crisp.
(Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera)
4 plants per person for eating fresh, plus more for freezing
‘Diablo’, ‘Dimitri’, and ’Nautic’
Freeze
If asparagus and rhubarb are the season openers in the homegrown pantry, Brussels sprouts are the crop that brings the gardening year to a satisfying end. Growing Brussels sprouts is not without its challenges. In many parts of North America, the best planting dates are early to mid summer, when the weather is inhospitable to seedlings and most of your garden space is fully occupied. But if you nail down good planting dates and nurture the stately plants through hot weather, you will have garden-fresh organic Brussels sprouts for more than a month as fall turns to winter.
Do not expect an overload, because Brussels sprouts’ productivity is on the stingy side. This is a crop to grow for its late harvest period and culinary appeal, which is off the charts when dinner includes tender, freshly picked Brussels sprouts. Should you have extra, freezing is the best way to preserve them.
Varieties are few for this cool-season cabbage cousin, and I suggest choosing a hybrid that is recommended by a regional seed company or your state Cooperative Extension Service. Seeds of high-quality hybrids such as ‘Diablo’, ‘Dimitri’, and ‘Nautic’ are worth their high cost because they deliver vigorous growth under less-than-perfect conditions.
Seeds of high-quality hybrids are worth their high cost because they deliver vigorous growth under less-than-perfect conditions.
When: Unlike cabbage and broccoli, Brussels sprouts are seldom successful from plants set out in spring. Hot weather that arrives just as the plants start developing sprouts ruins the crop by causing the sprouts to become loose, leafy, and bitter. It is much better to wait until late spring or early summer to start Brussels sprouts seeds. Recommended seeding-starting dates from Cooperative Extension Service literature include March 30 in Zone 4, May 15 in Zone 5, June 5 in Zone 6, and July 1 in Zones 7 and 8.
Where: Most veggies like light, cushy soil, but Brussels sprouts need the opposite — heavy clay with a few rocks in it. Brussels sprouts grow into stiff, top-heavy plants with skinny bases that are easily damaged by rocking in the wind. Light, sandy soils cannot adequately anchor Brussels sprouts plants, even when they are propped up with stakes and have soil mounded up around the base. A slightly acidic to near-neutral pH is ideal.
Planting: Enrich the planting site with a generous helping of a balanced organic fertilizer because Brussels sprouts are heavy feeders. They also need more boron than other crops. A little household borax mixed into the watering can every few weeks is a good therapy in soils that may have little boron to offer.
Harden off the seedlings before setting them out in well-prepared soil, and cover them with lightweight row cover or tulle tunnels to exclude insect pests. When the plants are 12 inches tall, top-dress them with a high-nitrogen organic fertilizer such as composted manure.
It is normal for Brussels sprouts plants to shed their oldest leaves in late summer. Gather these up and compost them to reduce slug habitat and risk of diseases. About a month before your first fall frost, you also can pinch out the growing tips from each plant, which helps them channel energy into the sprouts. As the plants grow, stake them to keep them from falling over. Upright Brussels sprouts plants produce better than crooked ones.
The same pests that bother cabbage are often seen on Brussels sprouts in summer. If cabbage white butterflies get beneath the row covers in summer, treat plants with a Bacillus thuringiensis pesticide to bring them under control.
Colonies of cabbage aphids can appear on your Brussels sprouts well into autumn, when most insect pests have disappeared. A black sooty mold, which grows on aphid honeydew, is often present as well. Remove badly infested sprouts and leaves, and spray plants with a strong spray of water to dislodge some of the aphids. Then apply insecticidal soap, and repeat the treatment after 1 week.
Grow as many plants as you have room for, starting with four plants per person (about 2 pounds Brussels sprouts). Go up to five plants per person if you have space. Brussels sprouts production is slow but steady. Starting in late fall, Brussels sprouts will produce 4 to 5 sprouts per plant, per week, for about 6 weeks.
When: Frost improves the flavor and texture of Brussels sprouts, which are at their best after a light freeze or two.
How: Twist off the sprouts, a few at a time, as soon as they are at least 1⁄2 inch in diameter; the first sprouts are often much smaller than those produced later in the season. As you harvest sprouts from the bottom of the plants, break off the lowest leaves to give the next sprouts more room to grow. Refrigerate harvested sprouts immediately.
Food Preservation: Stored in plastic bags, Brussels sprouts will keep in the refrigerator for 2 weeks, though the outer leaves will turn yellow. Blanch and freeze any extras after trimming them and cutting them in half. If you have a cold basement, you can pull plants from the garden in late fall, clip off the leaves, and stick the roots in buckets of damp sand for short-term cool storage. At temperatures just above freezing, Brussels sprouts stored this way will keep for more than a month.
The best way to harvest Brussels sprouts is to pop them off by hand, using a pushing-twisting motion.
(Brassica oleracea var. capitata)
3 to 4 small heads per person for spring crop, 5 to 10 heads per person for fall
‘Gonzales’ spring cabbage and ‘Late Flat Dutch’ fall cabbage
Ferment, freeze, pickle, or dry
A vigorous crop by nature, cabbage is easy to grow once you find the right planting dates and learn to manage pests preventively. A cool-season crop, cabbage can be grown in both spring and fall, with much of the fall crop put by as kraut and frozen wrappers for cabbage rolls. In either season, growing cabbage is an excellent investment of time and space. Commercially grown cabbage is bombarded with pesticides from cradle to grave, and organically grown cabbage can get expensive since it is sold by the pound. The solution is to grow your own, which opens the door to trying distinctive varieties that vary in size, density, leaf type, and color.
Cabbage keeps surprisingly well in cold storage, especially hard heads that mature in the fall. Leafier savoy cabbage can be fermented, frozen, or dried for long-term storage, or you can make savory relishes put by in jars. Don’t forget to blanch and freeze perfect outer leaves so you will have them for making cabbage rolls in winter.
A hard red cabbage with roots buried in moist garden soil waits in the basement for its turn in the kitchen.
In most climates, you can grow two crops of cabbage: a spring crop that matures just before the weather turns hot in early summer, and a summer-planted crop that matures in fall, a couple of weeks after your first fall frost.
A cool-season crop, cabbage can be grown in both spring and fall, with much of the fall crop put by as kraut and frozen wrappers for cabbage rolls.
The red cabbage advantage. Rabbits and deer are fond of cabbage, though red-leafed varieties are of less interest than green cabbage. In addition, cabbageworms and other common pests are generally less numerous and easier to spot on red-leafed cabbage.
Estimating how much spring cabbage to grow is easy, because most of it will be eaten fresh. Simply grow three to four small heads for each person in your household.
For the larger fall crop, growing 5 to 10 plants per person should fill your needs, with the number of plants dependent on the size and weight of the mature heads. An average market cabbage weighs 3 pounds, but if you are growing a variety that produces very large heads, you will need fewer of them.
When: Start seeds for spring cabbage indoors, at normal room temperatures, 8 to 10 weeks before your last spring frost. Provide bright fluorescent light and begin hardening off seedlings when they have three true leaves. Transplant to the garden when your cabbage seedlings are about 6 weeks old, and use cloches to protect them from cold winds and critters. For your fall crop, count back 12 to 14 weeks from your first fall frost to find your best seeding date. For example, if your first fall frost date is October 15, fall cabbage seeds should be started by mid-July.
Where: Cabbage is as a heavy-feeding crop, in part because the roots do not stretch very far into the soil, and so they must find the nutrients they need in the square foot of soil beneath the plants. Cabbage takes up nutrients most efficiently in soil with a slightly acidic pH between 6.0 and 6.5. Full sun is required to grow good cabbage.
Planting: If you buy cabbage seedlings in six-packs, immediately transplant them to 4-inch-diameter pots if it is not yet time to set them out in the garden. Interruptions in growth due to cramped roots are never good for cabbage.
Space cabbage plants 24 inches apart, or 18 inches apart for mini cabbages. Very large varieties grown in cool climates need 36 inches between plants. Weed regularly for the first few weeks your cabbage is in the garden.
Maintenance: When watering is required, use soaker hoses or carefully hand-water the plants’ root zones, because sprinklers or overhead watering can cause excess moisture to accumulate in the growing cabbage heads, leading to musty mildews you can taste. Use your own judgment when deciding when and how to mulch your cabbage. Large cabbage leaves shade the soil between plants the same way a mulch would, so mulching is not necessary in moist climates and may encourage slugs, especially in the spring crop.
Cabbage seedlings set out in summer face a different set of challenges, and they benefit from a mulch of grass clippings or chopped leaves — any biodegradable material that will keep the soil cool and moist through the hottest part of summer. Fall cabbage (which is set out in summer, while it’s still hot) also should be protected from pests with a row cover or tulle tent from the day the seedlings are set out in the garden.
When heads begin to form, drench the root zones with a high-nitrogen liquid fertilizer, or scratch a light application of a balanced organic fertilizer into the soil around the plants. Harvest cabbage early in the morning, while the heads are cool.
Most cabbage diseases are regional in nature and can be prevented by growing resistant varieties recommended by your state Cooperative Extension Service. Insects are another matter, because the lengthy list of cabbage pests requires preventive management. The good news is that cabbage loves life under row covers, which give you a very high level of protection from insect pests.
Note that as cabbage plants approach maturity, they naturally shed two or three of their oldest leaves. Removing the basal leaves as soon as they start to turn yellow or appear ragged may have the additional benefit of making conditions less favorable to slugs, snails, caterpillars, earwigs, and other creatures attracted to the cool, moist shelter provided by a stately cabbage plant.
In seasonal order, these are the pests to watch for on cabbage:
Cabbage can be harvested anytime after the heads become firm and well formed. When spring cabbage is cut early and high, with a generous stub of basal stem left in the ground, the plants often will produce a cluster of loose mini heads that make wonderful cooked greens. Spring cabbage heads are often leafy and lightweight compared to those that mature more slowly in cool fall weather.
The core of a cabbage head will continue to grow after the head has reached prime condition for harvesting. When plants holding slightly overripe heads are exposed to drenching rain, the core’s sudden growth spurt can cause the heads to split. Lesson: It is better to harvest perfect cabbage heads when they are ready, and store them in the refrigerator, than to let them stand too long in the garden.
Cool weather slows down the growth rate of cabbage, making the heads less likely to split, and cool temperatures also trigger the production of sugars in the leaves. Ideally, fall cabbage should reach mature size just after your first frost occurs and be perfect for harvesting for another month. Light to moderate frosts are good for cabbage, so don’t be in a rush to harvest fall cabbage until hard freezes become frequent. A brief overnight freeze will not injure a good head of cabbage, but cabbages that are allowed to freeze hard are never the same.
When spring cabbage is cut early and high, with a generous stub of basal stem left in the ground, the plants often will produce a cluster of loose mini heads that make wonderful cooked greens.
Whole, trimmed cabbage heads packed into plastic bags will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks. They also can be kept in a cold root cellar or in an insulated cooler kept outdoors. Some gardeners with cold, roomy basements (but little refrigerator space) pull up plants with roots attached, trim off most of the outer leaves, and “plant” them in buckets of slightly moist soil to extend their storage time. On or off the roots, it is better to process cabbage for long-term storage while it’s fresh and perfect than to hold heads in cold storage any longer than necessary.
Your long-term cabbage food preservation options include fermentation, freezing, pickling, and drying. You can choose your preservation projects based on how much cabbage you have that needs to be made pantry ready.
It’s easy to preserve cabbage as salt-fermented kraut, as spicy kimchi, or in mixed vegetable ferments as long as you have fresh, organically grown cabbage; have cool conditions for fermentation; and follow good sanitation procedures. Cabbage comes from the garden laden with the bacteria needed for fermentation to occur, so you do not need a starter culture when working with mixtures that are at least half cabbage. Once the fermentation process is complete, which takes only 7 days or so, fermented cabbage will store in the fridge for about 6 months, or until it is gone.
Step-by-step directions for fermenting cabbage and other vegetables are given in Fermenting Veggies Step-by-Step. The Savory Salt-Fermented Sauerkraut recipe is a good project for beginning fermenters. Because cool conditions are needed to ferment cabbage, the best time to do it is in the fall, but much depends on climate. I often make a small, one-head batch of fermented cabbage from my spring crop so we will have sauerkraut in the fridge as a summer condiment, but the rest of our summer cabbage is eaten fresh or added to relishes. Most of my larger fall crop goes into various fermentation projects that keep us in fermented foods until the New Year, and sometimes beyond.
If your favorite form of fermented cabbage is Korean-style kimchi, you will want to grow both Chinese cabbage (also called napa cabbage, Brassica rapa var. pekinensis) and pak choi or bok choy (spoon cabbage, B. rapa var. chinensis) in your fall garden. The fast-growing plants are ready to start eating in only 6 weeks, and unlike spring crops, Chinese cabbage and pak choi grown in the fall seldom bolt and are barely bothered by flea beetles. Both plants make excellent additions to fall fermentation projects that include radishes, carrots, and other crisp vegetables. In the garden, handle Chinese cabbage or pak choi the same way you would grow a fall crop of Swiss Chard.
Shredded cabbage is a primary ingredient in several popular relishes, including piccalilli, which is called chowchow in the South. An acidic brine made from vinegar and brown sugar preserves the cabbage and companion vegetables (onions, tomatoes, and peppers), so piccalilli can be canned in a water-bath or steam canner.
You can process cabbage in a pressure canner, but the results will be mushy compared to cabbage that is blanched and then frozen or dried.
Two of the most convenient ways to stretch your cabbage supply into the off-season is to freeze small batches or to dry larger ones. In either case, it is important to blanch the cabbage quite thoroughly, preferably in steam, before packing it away in freezer containers or arranging the blanched pieces on dehydrator trays.
You also can freeze whole, blanched outer leaves for making stuffed cabbage rolls in winter. Simply select perfect leaves slightly larger than an outstretched hand, wash well, and cut a 2-inch slit in the primary leaf vein to help the leaf lie flat. Blanch in steam for 4 minutes or so, until the color changes, and cool. You can freeze the blanched leaves flat, or roll two or three leaves into loose rolls and freeze them like giant cigars. Thaw completely before using to make your favorite cabbage roll recipe.
I first tried drying cabbage in hopes it would make a tasty snack, but it turned out that dried cabbage is better for cooking than as a popcorn substitute. When coarsely chopped and blanched before drying until leathery (for freezer storage) or crisp (for cool, dry storage in vacuum-sealed containers), dried cabbage does an amazing job of regaining its succulence when added to slow-cooked dishes. Especially in spring when the cupboard is looking bare, it’s great to have some humble dried cabbage to add flavor and fiber to a nourishing soup.
Coarsely shredded cabbage can be blanched and dried, then added to slow-cooked dishes.
Slitting the stems of blanched leaves makes them easy to freeze for later use making cabbage rolls.
Many gardening cooks make sauerkraut as their first fermentation project. To ensure a fast start, this recipe includes a small amount of diced apple, which provides the beneficial bacteria with a bit of natural sugar. Dill or fennel seeds enhance the flavor of this delicious kraut.
Makes about 1 quart
(Daucus carota var. sativus)
20 row feet per person
‘Early Nantes’, Chantenay, Danvers, and ‘Purple Haze’
Refrigerate, place in cold storage, freeze, or pickle
Carrots that are freshly pulled from moist ground have a vibrant flavor that is unique and habit forming, but carrot flavor is a combination of nature and nurture. You will always grow your sweetest carrots in the fall, when the soil is getting cooler, but sweetness isn’t everything. To eat carrots year-round, grow fast-maturing varieties in spring, and make summer sowings for a season-stretching fall crop.
Several preservation methods befit carrots, but except for carrots grated into relishes for color and texture, or carrot slices added to packets of mixed frozen vegetables, you should regard carrots as an almost year-round fresh-from-the-fridge crop. Summer carrots will store in the refrigerator until they are gone, and fall carrots can be dug as needed until the ground freezes. After that, they can be refrigerated or kept in cool storage for 3 months or more.
Grow colorful red and yellow carrots in spring for fresh eating, then switch to heavier orange Chantenay types for harvesting in fall and storing into winter.
Most open-pollinated carrot varieties are identified as belonging to one of the four variety groups below, but with hybrids there is substantial crossover between types. You need not worry about the distinction — just keep trying varieties until you find a few that like your garden as much as you like them.
When considering color, red carrots provide novel nutrients and beautiful color, but red carrots taste best when cooked. Orange carrots are generally the sweetest. It can be great fun to grow mixtures of carrot varieties in different colors, which make cooking more interesting.
Chantenay (shown here) and Danvers are best for cold storage.
In the kitchen, raw carrots are invaluable for providing crunchy texture in salads, slaws, and legions of other dishes, so your first concern should be growing plenty of fresh carrots. For me, this means making two plantings in spring and two more in late summer for fall harvest. I could grow more, but other orange vegetables including pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash are easier to grow and store compared to carrots, and you can only eat so many cooked orange vegetables. I concentrate on growing lots of fresh and refrigerated carrots for eating raw, plus extra for adding color and texture to pickles, frozen vegetable mixtures, and fall fermentation projects.
For all of these needs, about 20 total row feet per person per year is a good estimate, which should yield 15 to 20 pounds of carrots. Carrot size is a big variable, because a fully mature Chantenay carrot will be three times bigger and heavier than a Nantes type. Flavor matters, too. Sometimes a sowing of carrots will turn out so pretty and delicious that you wonder why you didn’t plant more.
When: Begin sowing spring carrots about 2 weeks before your last frost date, and make a second sowing 2 weeks later. In cool climates, you can continue planting every 3 weeks until midsummer — keep records to find your best planting dates. Sow fall and winter carrots 10 to 12 weeks before your first fall frost. Carrots are a good choice to plant after spring peas, or following a summer crop of buckwheat.
Where: The best carrots are grown in sandy loam soil or in raised beds enriched with plenty of organic matter. My soil is enriched clay, and I am prone to spend a ridiculous amount of time digging through the bed to mix in compost and pick out rocks. I also mix in a balanced organic fertilizer, because carrots need an array of nutrients, but using composted manures can cause them to become forked and misshapen. It’s important to do everything you can to support fast growth, because carrots grow slowly by nature.
Planting: Carrots need constant weeding for 6 weeks or so, or until they claim their space. You can reduce weed competition from day 1 by sowing carrot seeds in shallow furrows and then covering the seeds with weed-free potting soil. Or try seed tapes, which eliminate tedious thinning and give you straight rows that are easy to weed. In spring, you can grow radishes between rows of carrots to suppress weeds and make good use of space. When planting carrots in summer, lay boards between seeded rows to retain moisture and smother weeds.
Keep the soil constantly moist for a week after planting carrot seeds, which are slower to germinate compared to other vegetables. To reduce surface evaporation during the germination period, cover newly seeded soil with a double thickness of row cover or an old sheet, loosely arranged over the seeded bed. With summer-sown carrots, I get the best germination by planting them along a soaker hose.
Maintenance: Carrots must be thinned to at least 2 inches apart, or 4 inches for big Chantenay varieties. You can do this during routine weeding, which is also mandatory with carrots. Feathery, upright carrot leaves allow room for all kinds of weedy invaders, but a patch that is kept weeded will eventually close its canopy to shade out weeds.
Carrots do sometimes suffer from insect pests, including carrot rust flies and carrot weevils, but the worst problems come from animal pests, including rabbits and deer. Damage from insects and animals can be prevented with row covers held aloft with hoops. Or use fine-mesh wire cages to exclude hungry critters from your carrot planting.
Misshapen carrots can be caused by roots running into obstacles or being bitten off by creatures, by excessive fertilization, or by disfiguring diseases. In warm climates, root knot nematodes cause galls to form on roots. Where nematodes are common, grow carrots after a cover crop of French marigolds, which starves them out. In cooler climates, a naturally occurring soil bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefasciens, can cause carrots to be hairy and misshapen. To avoid this problem, grow carrots in compost-enriched soil far from grapes and nut or fruit trees, which often host this parasitic bacterium.
For best flavor, wait until carrots push up out of the ground to harvest them.
When: Do not be in a rush to harvest carrots, which always taste best when fully mature. As carrots mature, the foliage often turns a darker shade of green, and the roots begin to push up out of the soil. Hill up soil or mulch over the shoulders of maturing carrots to keep them from turning green.
Pull or dig your summer crop when roots reach mature size, start pushing up out of the soil, and show rich color and full flavor. Taste improves as carrots mature, but do not leave mature carrots in warm soil any longer than necessary lest they be damaged by critters. Before pulling carrots, use a digging fork to loosen the soil just outside the row.
Summer-sown carrots that mature in cool fall soil can be left in the ground longer, but they should be dug before the ground freezes to preserve their quality. You can experiment with overwintering young carrots sown in late summer, but harsh winter weather or hungry animals may do them in.
How: Rinse harvested carrots with cool water, or swish them in a bucket of cold water to remove clods of soil. Use a sharp knife to cut off the carrot tops, which will prevent moisture loss. Pat the carrots dry with clean towels and store in plastic bags in the refrigerator or a cold root cellar. Wait until just before using your carrots to give them a good scrub.
Food preservation: Carrots will store for months in the refrigerator or in very cold storage in a root cellar or unheated basement. As long as temperatures are kept constantly cool, ideally around 40°F (4°C), carrots packed in damp sand or sawdust will keep for 3 months or more.
Use your refrigerated or cold-stored carrots as needed to add color to pickles and frozen vegetable mixtures, but mostly enjoy eating them raw. Should a planting have issues from root-tunneling insects that render the roots unworthy of long-term refrigeration, cut the good parts into sticks or slices, blanch until barely done, and either freeze or dry the pieces.
Trimmed carrots packed in damp, weathered sawdust will store for weeks at cool temperatures around 40°F (4°C).
