Gardening When It Counts

This chapter provides growing details, vegetable by vegetable. It is not organized A to Z. Instead, the vegetables are listed in an order based on their importance to a self-sufficient homestead economy and their difficulty to grow.That’s why kale and potatoes (both Irish and sweet) come at the beginning and celery comes at the end. I am only going to provide the essentials and leave it to experience to reveal the rest to you. I will assume you have understood what I said in previous chapters. If you find yourself puzzled by anything that follows, I suggest you do a bit of rereading.

Sowing depth. Tiny seeds like celery, basil, sorrel, and most of the herbs should fall into tiny cracks and crevasses of newly raked soil, to be barely covered (if at all) with a sprinkling of fine compost. Then press the earth down gently either with your hand or the back of a spade, much as you would roll a large area like a lawn. This essential step restores capillarity. Fine seeds can only be directly seeded outdoors in mild temperatures, or the rows must be shaded temporarily until they sprout. Ordinary small seeds the size of bras-sica, carrot, parsley, and fennel are sown about half an inch (1.25 centimeters) deep. Larger “small” seeds like spinach, beet, chard, radish, and okra are sown about three quarters of an inch (two centimeters) deep. Large seeds like the legumes, corn, and cucurbits are usually planted to a depth of about four times their largest dimension.

Fertility needs. I assume that you understood the three levels of soil fertility I set out in Chapter 2, where I described the idea of low-, medium-, and high-demand vegetables and showed you how to create minimum levels of soil fertility to grow them. Don’t forget that these are minimums; all vegetables grow much better when given soil more fertile than the bare minimum.

Plant spacing. I will not be repeating the information on spacing provided in Figure 6.1. I suggest you flag that page or make a photocopy of it for rapid access. In this chapter, I’ll refer to various spacing arrangements in shorthand.

The term “on stations” is British. It means that a few seeds are sown in a cluster, usually on raised beds or wide raised rows. The clusters are at fixed distances, such as 24 by 24 inches (60 by 60 centimeters), and each cluster is thinned progressively. Sowing seeds “in drills” means they are set in the bottom of a furrow. Sometimes seeds are to be sown in highly fertile hills. These hills can be made in a raised bed on stations, sometimes not.

Progressive thinning. I will frequently suggest that you thin to a single plant, progressively.Here’s how it works. Suppose you’re growing looseleaf lettuce and the mature heads will need to be 12 inches (30 centimeters) apart. First sprinkle seeds thinly in drills. Ideally, if you get excellent germination, you will have about one seedling emerging every inch (2.5 centimeters). However, distribution this uniform doesn’t happen unless you’re a farmer using precision planting equipment and sowing the highest-quality seed of predetermined sprouting ability. In the home garden, clumps of seedlings inevitably emerge in places, so immediately after emergence you should reduce severe competition: thin any seedling clusters so the survivors don’t quite touch. When this initial plant density starts to compete for light (the seedlings will lean away from each other) thin them again so they don’t quite touch. A week or ten days later, when they are again bumping, take out every other plant. Suppose at this point they are three inches (eight centimeters) apart. When these are touching, remove every other plant. Now they’re six inches (16 centimeters) apart.When these plants are touching, cut off every other one again. Thinnings of this size are definitely salad material. And now the survivors in that row are properly spaced to reach maturity.

Seedling clusters on stations can also be thinned progressively. Start with three to five seedlings and gradually reduce their number so that by the time the best plant has a few true leaves and is securely established, it stands alone on that station.

Root system drawings. Muriel Chen, my wife, copied the drawings of root systems in this chapter from Weaver’s classic study Root Development of Vegetable Crops (RDVC). They are included to help you realize that the plant growth you can’t see is as important as what you can see. Each drawing’s scale is one foot per square. Keep in mind that Weaver worked in a rather dry climate on deep open soil that posed little opposition to full root development.

In more humid climates, most soils divide into layers called topsoil and subsoil. The subsoil is typically clayey and won’t allow such full expression of root development — but you can be assured that the roots are trying to develop further, nonetheless.

Weaver’s drawings, combined with an understanding of how roots work, will help you garden better. Almost every plant tries to control the soil below it. To do that it secretes chemicals that repel the roots of other species. Some of these chemicals are so effective (and long-lasting) that a year after one crop is grown in a spot, another species may do poorly because these root exudates are still present.

Also, notice in Weaver’s pictures that roots never turn back and grow toward the center. The plant tries to penetrate new soil for untapped sources of moisture and nutrition; it would be a waste to make a denser root system than necessary.How do plants “know”? Again, it is root exudates — chemical signals stop its roots from growing near its own already-established roots.

Finally, and this fact may be the single most important thing you’ll ever grasp about growing plants, for a plant to acquire nutrition efficiently, it must have an ever-expanding root system. A root extends only from its tip, and it is capable of efficiently assimilating moisture and nutrients for only a fraction of an inch behind the tip.That’s because a few days after it is formed, what was the root tip becomes covered by a kind of bark that reduces penetration of moisture. It is only by creating new root tips in an ever-increasing and ever-expanding network that the plant can feed efficiently. But the plant can’t readily make new root tips in areas it has already filled with roots. And because of exudate warfare, it can’t make them effectively in areas that another plant has already filled with roots. My point is that when root systems begin to compete, the plants are not as able to acquire nutrients. This is a stress to them, and they may show it in various ways: their growth will slow, they will be more easily attacked by insects; they will stop producing as much new fruit; they will be more susceptible to diseases.They can be starving in the midst of plenty.

My previous gardening books were written for Cascadia. I probably know its every district, microclimate, and soil type. I am learning Tasmania’s nooks and crannies. But no person can intimately grasp all the regions of North America, much less the rest of the English-speaking world. So in this section I usually won’t be able to tell you three things: (1) precise planting dates for your location; (2) the most suitable varieties for your district; and (3) the handling of some pest or disease problem either unknown to me or unique to your area.These kinds of data are best obtained from a governmental agricultural advising service.You’re paying the taxes to support it; make use of it, and give those civil servants a reason to draw their salaries. I hope that the third point will be an infrequent event if you take my advice about making plants healthy by making soil fertile and by not asking a plant to handle seasons or soil conditions it is not bred for.

In this section I cover vegetables that are generally trouble-free and low- to medium-demand in terms of soil fertility needs.To keep the size (and cost) of this book lower, I discuss a few harder-to-grow relatives along with an easier one. New gardeners should not bet the ranch on more-demanding veggies than the ones in this section.

There are two kale species. One is a Brassica oleracea. I’m not going to be routinely tossing Latin names around in this chapter, but in the case of the brassica family the distinction is useful because the other kale species, Brassica napa (it includes rutabagas), grows in an entirely different manner.The B. napa kale is usually called Siberian. B. oleracea grows an unbranched tall central stalk. Siberian forms a rosette pattern, meaning that all the leaves come out of a central point close to the ground, similar to a lettuce or spinach plant. Some prefer Siberian’s flavor when kale is used raw in salads.

Kale of either sort is the most vigorous and most cold-hardy of all garden brassicas. It will produce when other coles fail. Collards are a non-heading cabbage only slightly less vigorous than kale and may be grown just like kale. Giant kohlrabi is basically a low-demand fodder crop whose tasty globe can grow to the size of a volleyball.

All coles need more calcium than most other vegetable species. If you’re not using COF and if you are gardening on rain-leached land (where there is enough rainfall to grow a lush native forest), then before sowing any brassica crop you should broadcast and work in five pounds (about a quart or 2.25 kilograms/ one liter) of finely ground agricultural lime per 100 square feet (ten square meters) of growing area. Do not spread more lime than that without a soil test.

I have seen kale resume growing after thawing out from an overnight low of 6°F (–14°C). As long as the soil has not frozen, kale will keep going. So will endive, spinach, and a few other minor salad veggies. Having fresh salad greens throughout the winter will certainly appeal to any gardener living where the snow lies thickly. I refer those living where the soil freezes in winter to Eliot Coleman’s book The Four-Season Harvest, listed in the Bibliography.

Growing details. Kale’s flavor gets sweeter after some frost in the same way the chicories do. Collards don’t need chilling to be good eating, which is probably why they are more popular in the American South. I enjoy seeing huge frilly plants by autumn, so I start kale about three months before the first frost on 24- by 30-inch (60- by 75-centimeter) stations. I once grew giant kale by direct-seeding it in spring on four-foot (120-centimeter) centers and initially making their soil as fertile as possible. Each one reached four feet in diameter and 4½ feet (140 centimeters) high by frost. Had I given them any water at all that summer they probably would have become as tall as I am.

Figure 9.1: This kohlrabi was sown in spring; the drawing is made after 120 days of growth. Clearly this is a vegetable capable of foraging. Kale’s root development is not very different. (Figure 40a in RDVC)

As a hasty fill-in crop started six weeks before the first frosts, kale will make a small plant and in this circumstance should be sown in drills about 12 inches (30 centimeters) apart and thinned progressively.Whether it’s huge or modest, it’ll be equally frost-hardy. No extra fertility should be needed for late sowings as the kale will make use of what is left from the previous crop.

I start giant kohlrabi just after the solstice for harvest as an autumn and winter crop. It is grown as if it were a medium-sized cabbage. Although it will produce at fertility levels suitable to a field crop, giant kohlrabi will definitely respond to better soil and abundant soil moisture by becoming larger, more mildly flavored, and more tender.

Pests and diseases. I always am pleased to see that cabbage worms do not have any interest in my kale. If they did I would spray Bt. Kohlrabi is only slightly more interesting to them. Perhaps this disinterest is because the moths are diverted to the more refined brassicas in my garden — which serve as a trap crop and certainly do require regular spraying with Bt.

Growing refined brassicas. If you can grow a large kale plant, then you have also mastered the art of growing the weaker,more inbred, large brassicas; all were bred from the same wild Brassica oleracea that kale came from. Imagine a head of cabbage as a non-curly kale whose stalk has become so shortened that it has next to no space between leaves and that overemphasizes kale’s tendency to wrap its leaves at the growing point.The Brussels sprout is but a kale that makes little cabbages at each leaf joint. For broccoli and cauliflower, imagine a slightly less aggressive (and less cold-hardy) wild oleracea strain that naturally made larger flowers; now it is bred to make enormous flowers. As you move up the scale of refinement from kale to cabbage to Brussels sprouts to broccoli to cauliflower, each requires more fertile and more open soil and even more moisture than the previous one.

One last comment on refinement: the cabbage is intrinsically a large vigorous plant that makes a hefty head.However, to create little heads currently popular with the supermarket trade, cabbage has to be highly inbred and weakened.These small-framed varieties are touchy little critters with delicate root systems intolerant of dry or compacted soils. They need to be coddled. New gardeners will do better to grow bigger ones.

All brassicas may be directly seeded exactly as I suggest for growing kale. It is best to make small hills in raised beds for the refined brassicas, concentrating an extra half cup (120 milliliters) of COF or an extra large double handful of strong compost immediately under their stations. Two points about cauliflower: it has a particularly weak root system that doesn’t thrive in clayey soils. It also does not like maturing in heat, making spring cauli sowings a bit chancy because of the unpredictable onset of hot weather.A few broccoli varieties may handle hot weather better; the catalog will proudly state this. The safest thing is to schedule cauliflower for autumn harvest. In the mild-winter climates, refined brassicas may be started after the heat of summer lessens for autumn and winter harvest and, by using the right varieties, for overwintering and spring harvest.

Figure 9.2: The root system of a large-framed midseason cabbage after growing about 100 days from direct seeding. The leaves have not yet wrapped into a head. Harvest will be in another four to five weeks. At harvest the root system of this plant will thickly fill the soil to a depth of five feet (150 centimeters) but will not become more extensive. Kale makes a more extensive and deeper root system than this. (Figure 29 in RDVC)

Varieties.Winterbor (hybrid) is the most frequently offered oleracea type because it is more vigorous and perfectly uniform. Open-pollinated (OP) kale is vigorous too, so the old OPs will serve fine. At the time of writing, though, when it comes to refined brassicas there are no productive OP Brussels sprouts left except in Chase’s catalog (see Chapter 5).

Harvest, storage, and use. With kale, if you do not pluck the growing point at the top of the stalk, the production of new leaves will continue. If olracea-type plants overwinter, in early spring they will begin making numerous small (more tender and more delicious) leaves all along the thick woody stalk. (You’ll think of Brussels sprout when you see them.) Collards are often sown in drills with the intention of eating the progressive thinnings. Kale can be used this way, too. Kohlrabi will await harvest through rather severe frosts; where the ground freezes it will store well in the root cellar.

Kale and collards are mainly used as pot greens.To encourage those unfamiliar with eating them, may I recommend a simple and (naturally) frugal Scottish recipe called colcannon. Fill a large pot with finely chopped kale, add a quarter inch (six millimeters) of water, and set the heat at low. As soon as the leaves collapse, add an inch-thick (2.5-centimeter) layer of roughly cut up, unpeeled potatoes and allow the whole thing to steam until the potatoes are soft enough to mash. Then mash everything. Do not pour off any remaining water. Mash the lot and retain the minerals. Add your usual mashed-potato seasonings. Steamed kale by itself is a bit intense.And potatoes by themselves are usually a bit low in protein and minerals. Combined they make near-perfect nutrition with complementary flavors.

Finely shredded in moderate quantities, kale (especially Siberian) blends well into greens salads. Kohlrabi is tasty when coarsely grated and made into slaw-type salads as though it were cabbage. I like dipping raw kohlrabi chunks.

Saving seed. All Brassica olracea cross-pollinate; bees do this task. Crosses are unlikely to make desirable plants. Isolating different sorts by a half mile (800 meters) may do for low-quality seed. Siberian kale, also bee-pollinated, crosses only with rutabaga (swede) and has the same relationship to the rutabaga as Swiss chard (silverbeet) has to beet (beetroot) — it is a rutabaga bred for tasty leaves instead of a bulbous, flavorsome root. Otherwise, Siberian makes seed like any other brassica.

These brassicas are biennial, meaning they must pass through a season of cold weather and short daylength before flowering is triggered in spring. To overwinter large kale plants with thick woody stalks where the soil freezes, dig them up carefully in late autumn so as to preserve much of their root system, replant them in a bed of damp soil in a root cellar, and let them rest there until spring, when they are transplanted back outside. They might survive a not-too-severe winter if buried under enough soil and then exposed again in spring; cabbage seed is made this way in Denmark. In milder locations they survive winter unprotected.

The blooming plant makes huge floral sprays. Each of the thousands of small yellow flowers makes a thin pointed pod that holds a few round black seeds.The earliest time you should harvest is when some of the earliest ripening pods have shattered (released seed) and most of the rest contain ripe or nearly ripe seed (the seed is fully ripe when it has turned dark brown or black). Pull the plants, roots and all, shake off as much soil as possible from the roots, and spread them on top of a (big) tarp in the shade under cover, where there is good airflow, to dry slowly and finish ripening. Then on a bright warm day of late summer, drag the tarp into the sun and let the whole lot of straw dry to a crisp. Late that afternoon do some marching in place atop the straw, releasing most of the seed from most of the pods. Lift off the strawy bits and put them in the heap of dry vegetation awaiting your next compost pile. Left on the tarp will be seed, broken seed pods, and some smaller trash. Put it all in a large bucket and then, in a light breeze, slowly pour the contents of one bucket into another.Hold the top bucket a few feet above the bottom one so the breeze may blow away the light stuff while the seed falls into the lower bucket. This process is called winnowing. You may have to pour from bucket to bucket numerous times before you have relatively pure seed free of chaff. (It can help to screen out the larger bits of chaff before winnowing; use any sort of improvised sieve.) Do not be concerned if you lose up to a third of the seed due to wind blowing it beyond the bucket waiting to receive it. This is the lightweight unripe stuff that will have poor storage life and low germination — the seedroom floor sweepings.

Do not attempt to save either sort of kale seed unless you have at least six plants involved in sharing pollen. If you work from too small a plant population, you’ll experience a rapid onset of inbreeding vigor depression. Kale or collards are the only large brassicas the home gardener should ever attempt to grow seed for. I would not advise growing seed for the refined large brassicas unless you have at least 50 plants in the gene pool — 200 is better. But with kale, involving such a small number of plants is okay because kale still retains most of the vigor of wild cabbage; even if some of that vigor is lost, it’ll still grow okay.

Introduced to Europe after the Incan conquest, the potato languished for around two centuries. Because these initial varieties were adapted to tropical daylengths, the potato was considered a low-yielding curiosity. Eventually, better varieties were bred. Then the potato caused a European social revolution because it produces many times more actual nutrition per acre than any other staple crop except perhaps paddy rice. The potato allowed a cottager with less than an acre to feed a family. So Europe’s population increased rapidly. This is one reason there were so many European peasants coming to the United States after the War Between the States.

Potatoes need not be merely starch.They can contain up to about 11 percent protein, matching the protein content of human breast milk.The quality of nutrition you end up with has a lot to do with both variety and the pattern of soil fertility. If you’re growing a starchy variety, which is flaky and crumbly (and often called a “chipper” because it is the starch that browns nicely when making potato chips), and if you are growing your spuds with lots of moisture and fertilizing your soil so that it offers the plant excesses of potassium, then you’ll end up with a much bulkier harvest of low-protein spuds. If you grow a “boiling variety,” which is often yellow-fleshed with a waxy structure that doesn’t fall apart when boiled, if you reduce or avoid irrigating once tuber formation begins, and if you build your soil’s fertility so that it has considerable mineral nutrients but a rather low level of potassium, you’ll end up with a somewhat smaller bulk yield of somewhat smaller-sized spuds that have considerably more taste and nutrition.

Growing details. The “Irish” potato is grown much the same way in all variations of temperate climates. The vines are not frost-hardy, so it must be planted late enough in spring to emerge after the last frost. Frost is not a complete risk; if the young vines are burned by frost, more will emerge. But the loss of the first bit of leaf will reduce the ultimate yield, so it’s best to avoid it. In mild-winter (frost-free) regions it is possible to sow late in summer and grow spuds as a cool-season crop, but this practice results in low productivity. That’s because the tuber is a savings account of surplus sugar made by the leaves, and when intensity of sunlight drops off markedly after midsummer, so too does sugar formation decline. Despite the low yields, winter spuds are grown in frostless Florida because of the high prices obtained for new potatoes in the north during late winter and early spring.

Root cellaring

To maintain a body in robust health you must feed it a sizeable amount of fresh food, preferably raw. The nutritional quality of canned and frozen foods has been massively reduced. The same is almost as true of dried foods, especially if they were blanched during processing. Fortunately, in cold-winter regions it is possible to store fresh vegetables and fruit in living condition for many months without using any energy to do so. This is accomplished by cellaring. Imagine having the makings for a fresh leafy green salad in the cellar throughout the winter; eating bins of root vegetables, your own cabbages, and perhaps Brussels sprouts (still on the stalk) in midwinter; or sprouting your own Belgian endive and not considering it an expensive delicacy.

Few North American homes are still equipped for root cellaring because most of them have the furnace in the basement. However, it may be possible to wall off and highly insulate a part of the basement for use as a winter food-storage cellar. Otherwise you can dig a cellar outside, though this may be less accessible during the time of heavy snows. Making a root cellar is not generally regulated by building codes and requires no permits nor adherence to any prescribed construction techniques (other than the requirement that it not collapse while you are inside it). Cellars may be made of recycled materials. Even old chest freezers may be recycled into small root-storage compartments.

The basic technique behind cellaring is to rapidly lower the temperature to a few degrees above freezing and then hold it there, steadily, through the winter. During autumn you open air vents at night and close them during the day. During winter, less ventilation is needed because, above all, the cellar must not go below freezing. The more stable the temperature, the better the food in the cellar will keep.

Using the term “root cellar” shows the limited application most Americans made of this procedure. The Europeans have demonstrated far more ingenuity and wouldn’t dream of putting only root Il_9781550923858_0261_001

crops and apples in storage for wintertime. Basically, roots are put in slatted boxes on shelves or, if the vegetable has a tendency to dry out (like carrots or beets), are packed in damp coarse sand and housed in barrels (or large trash bins). Leafy crops like cabbages and heads of endive and escarole, which blanch during storage, becoming milder and more tender, may also be kept over winter. Immediately before it gets too cold for them outside, which is after some frosts but before hard freezing begins, dig them up, shake the earth from their roots (sometimes you need to break off the large outer leaves), and then transplant them into the cellar and put their roots into shallow beds of soft moist soil. There is no reason why such earth beds could not be constructed on a concrete slab, although traditionally the floors of such cellars were bare earth.

The only way people in snow country can make seed for most biennial crops is to cellar them over winter and then plant them back outside in spring. This was done extensively on a home-garden scale (and commercially to a lesser extent) in the United States before the West Coast seed industry developed.

Root Cellaring, by Mike and Nancy Bubel, is an excellent book about cellaring that is worthy of the most profound consideration.

I mention cellaring for those of my readers who may need to make use of it. However, since being an adult I have lived in climates where the technique is not applicable. In California, where I first learned to garden, veggies grew lushly 12 months a year. In Oregon, a well-insulated, unheated outbuilding was plenty good enough for spuds and apples, while carrots and other root crops would overwinter in their growing beds with only a bit of soil put atop them to protect their crowns from a chance shallow freeze. And greens! Green salads grew right through the frosts and even emerged from the occasional quick-melting snows to grow some more. Ah Cascadia! Closest thing to paradise there is in North America. Il_9781550923858_0019_001

“Seed” consists of chunks cut from large potatoes or whole small ones. Vines emerge from the eyes. The ideal seed is termed a “single drop,” a small uncut potato weighing about two ounces (60 grams) and having at least two eyes. Each chunk cut from larger potatoes must also have at least two eyes and weigh at least two ounces.

Farmers, using machinery,must plant unsprouted seed pieces because any sprouts would be knocked off by rough handling. So farmers usually treat the cut surfaces of their seed-potato chunks with fungicides because they’ll be in the earth and subject to rotting for some time before the eyes start growing. Home gardeners can do much better.We can chit our seed and then handle already sprouting seed gently enough that the shoots aren’t damaged. Chitted seed is already growing when it is planted.

About six weeks before planting, spread uncut seed potatoes on a tray in a brightly lit room that is not too well heated. I put mine on cookie sheets in front of a window that gets no direct sunlight in order to avoid drying out my seed. By planting time the potatoes will have turned light green, and shoots will be emerging from many of the eyes. On planting day I cut the larger potatoes in chunks; I try to make sure each chunk contain two eyes that are actually sprouting.

A day or two before planting, dig the rows.One row of potatoes can make luxurious and extraordinarily high-yielding use of an entire four-foot-wide (120-centimeter) raised bed when planted longways down the center, but if you’re growing more than one row, it’s best to plant spuds on flat ground, making their long rows about 36 inches apart on center (90 centimeters). Spread compost or well-rotted manure atop multiple rows in one-foot-wide (30-centimeter) bands, a quarter to a half inch (6 to 12 millimeters) thick, and then deeply dig the compost-covered rows (not the spaces between the rows).Try to loosen the earth well. If you want the highest possible production and aren’t growing a huge plot, excavate the rows first, before improving their fertility. Remove soil one shovel blade wide nearly to the depth of a shovel, set it beside the ditch you’re creating, put fertilizer and/or strong compost into the ditch, and then, standing in the ditch, dig it in as deeply as another full shovel’s length. That’ll put the fertility well below the seed piece, where the main root system will form.

I do it this way: I spread four to six quarts (four to six liters) of a lime-free complete organic fertilizer per 50 row feet (15 meters) into that shallow ditch and dig it in well.Then I spread a dusting of well-rotted manure or compost over the soil that was removed from the trench and push it all back into the ditch. I end up with a low mound above a zone of loose, humusy soil about a foot (30 centimeters) wide and a foot deep. Below that is another zone of highly fertile soil. If I am really shooting for the highest possible yield, and if I have the free time and energy, after the seed has been planted but before it starts putting roots out I will spade up the earth between the rows.

Figure 9.3: A potato plant that enjoyed good soil moisture in deep open loam, shown at the point of beginning to form tubers. The spacing that produced these roots was 14 inches (35 centimeters) apart in rows three feet (90 centimeters) apart, which ideally allows each plant to be nearly the sole occupant of its own root zone. (Figure 40 in RDVC)

To plant sprouting potatoes, pull back the soil from a spot in the center of the row with your hand, opening a small hole about four inches (10 centimeters) deep. Gently set the seed in. If there are long shoots, point them up. Then cover it up. Space the seed pieces 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30 centimeters) apart.Wider spacing will give you more lunkers (huge specimens), a slightly lower yield, and a better ability to handle dry soil. Closer spacing will give you moderately sized potatoes, the largest possible yield, and less ability to handle dry spells.

Farmers must plant their seeds deeply in loose soil and let them grow, accepting that a portion of the spuds forming at the surface will green up and be inedible. When potatoes are grown this way, the soil tends to settle and become compact, reducing tuber formation. Gardeners can do better; we can plant our seed shallowly and then hill up our plants as they grow, thus providing a looser medium for the potatoes to form in.We end up with a higher yield of smoother spuds, while at the same time thoroughly eliminating weeds. Keep in mind that all potatoes will form above the seed piece and that if you do as I am suggesting, the seed will have been placed only a few inches below the original soil line, so your crop will be easier to dig.

A few weeks after planting, the vines appear, emerging more quickly than they would if you had put the seed deeper because the soil near the surface is warmer in spring. After the vines have grown about four inches (10 centimeters), start hilling them up. Using an ordinary hoe, walk beside one row and, reaching over it with the hoe, scrape up a bit of soil from between it and the next row and pull that loose soil (and any weeds you cut off with your super-sharp hoe) up against the vines. Bury the bottom inch (2.5 centimeters) of the vine.Do that from both sides of the row. Five to seven days later the vines will have grown another few inches.Hill them up another inch or two.Never cover more than a quarter of the new growth. By the time the vines are blooming, you should have formed an 18-inch-wide (45-centimeter) mound of loose earth about ten inches (25 centimeters) tall with the vines emerging from the center. It is in this mound that almost all the potatoes will form. From this time, continue hilling up in small increments as weeds emerge between the rows. Do this until the vines start falling over, after which further hilling is not possible.

If you hilled enough, there will be no potatoes forming that are exposed to the light, so there will be no green potatoes to throw away. From this point on, hand-pull any weeds appearing among the vines. There should be next to none. If the crop has grown well it should be nearly impossible to walk between rows on three-foot (90 centimeter) centers without damaging the vines. From this point, it is best to keep your soil-compacting feet out of the plot anyway.

Pests and diseases. All this hilling gives you a good opportunity to check for and control potato beetles if you’re in the eastern United States.

Every expert says not to lime potatoes because it causes scab. I have not noticed any difference, lime or not, but I am providing the obligatory warning here. I usually remember to keep the lime out of the bucket of COF I use to fertilize my potatoes.

There are numerous soil diseases that affect potatoes. It is a good idea to grow spuds on a new piece of ground that hasn’t seen them nor any other solanums (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) for at least three years.

Varieties. I can’t predict the best varieties for your locality.However, I can tell you that there are early, midseason, and late-maturing ones.To understand how this is, you need to know how the vine works. First the plant grows leaves.

All surplus food made by these leaves is used to make more leaves. Then the plant begins to bloom; at this point, tubers appear as little below-ground nodules along the stems immediately above the seed piece. The nodules begin to fatten into potatoes. At this stage, growth of new leaves slows. A few weeks later, blooming stops.When flowering ceases, production of new tubers, new vines, and new leaves also ceases. The existing leaves pump out sugar and other nutrients that are translocated into the already formed tubers and stored there. This goes on until the vine dies off. As it shrivels, all the nutrients the vine contains are also translocated into the maturing tubers. At this time the potato skins toughen up as they prepare to endure winter.

Early varieties grow for less time before beginning to bloom. They make fewer leaves on shorter vines and thus are done sooner. They also yield less. Late varieties grow on longer before the bloom starts, and they bloom for a longer period. Lates yield more. In climates where there is a long growing season, it is often wise to use the latest of late varieties for the main storage crop, or even to delay planting the main crop for a month after the earlies are sown, because if the main crop vines die back just before the frosts come, their potatoes will have less tendency to resprout prematurely. When lates are finally dug, the weather will have become cool, leading to much longer storage. I always grow a small patch of early potatoes for summer use, but most of the crop will be late varieties.

Potatoes don’t like scorchingly hot weather, especially when it is also humid. For that reason, they are usually grown as a spring crop where summers are long, hot and humid, and are dug early.

Harvest and storage. As soon as the earliest sowing of the earliest variety is in bloom, you can dig a plant for new potatoes. They’ll grow one size every few days as you dig your way down the row. Some people try to gently tickle out the odd new potato without damaging growing plants, but I find this usually causes more loss than it is worth. I just dig an entire plant whenever I need new potatoes.

Do the main harvest when the vines have browned off, indicating that the skins are tough and won’t rub off easily.Dig carefully so as not to cut potatoes. Cuts do not heal well enough for long storage; any cut potato must be eaten within weeks. Do not bruise the potatoes; handle them gently at all times. Using virus-certified seed, I harvest about 25 pounds (11 kilograms) of potatoes for every pound (0.5 kilogram) of seed sown.My yield would be half that with diseased seed.Maybe even less.

Ideal storage conditions are quite humid and a stable 40°F (4°C). Colder than that and the spuds become sweet as the starch converts to sugar. If the temperature goes below freezing, potatoes will be ruined.Warmer than 40°F increases their tendency to resprout. I recommend you study Mike and Nancy Bubels’ Root Cellaring for suggestions of less-formal ways to store things over the winter than in a cellar. I live in a maritime climate and put my spuds in large cardboard boxes that are stacked in a tightly built, unheated outbuilding. I cover the boxes with a few old woollen blankets to make sure no light gets in and also to stabilize the temperature. Given this small attention, they last about five months before sprouting starts, and even then they are quite useable for another five or six weeks if I rub off the sprouts, by which time the first new potatoes are on the horizon.

Saving seed. Don’t save seed unless you absolutely have no choice. The odd aphid passing through infects the vines with assorted virus diseases.These do not kill the plant, but they do reduce its vitality and lower yield — a lot. There are over 20 such diseases and they are transmitted from year to year in the seed itself.The more years gardeners plant from their own seeds, the more viruses the potatoes will contain and the lower their yield will become. It is possible to harvest more than double the yield by sowing seeds certified to be disease free. Such seed is not costly compared to the result it provides.

If you do save your own small spuds to plant the next year, do not do this for more than one or two years before starting anew with certified seed. And do not try to use supermarket potatoes for seed, both because they are not certified and also because, unless they are genuinely organically grown, they have been treated with anti-sprouting chemicals (which gives me yet another reason, beyond their lousy flavor, not to eat commercial spuds). Seed certified as disease-free begins with tissue-culture, laboratory-grown mini-tubers that is grown for a few generations in high-elevation or chilly, isolated places free of aphids. This has nothing to do with being certified as organically grown.

Growing details. Loamy to sandy soils are essential for really good results. It is nearly impossible to lighten up a clay soil enough to grow the finest sweet potatoes because too much manure or compost will cause the quality of the potatoes to suffer.

The root system sprawls to match the vines, so spread a quarter- to a half-inch-thick (6- to 12-millimeter) layer of well-rotted manure or finished compost over their entire growing area, then dig the entire area. Sweet potatoes also grow well if you dig in a thick stand of an overwintered legume green manure. Form wide raised rows four feet (120 centimeters) apart on center. Because good drainage after heavy rains is essential, raise their beds about six to eight inches (15 to 20 centimeters) above narrow footpaths between them. Once their beds are formed, set either vine cuttings or rooted shoots 15 inches (40 centimeters) apart atop these ridges.They may also be arranged with three seedlings planted in a moderately fertile hill, the hills on four-foot (120-centimeter) centers.

In the right soil type, given only moderate fertility, and grown where summers are long and nights are warm, each plant can produce 8 to 12 good-sized potatoes.When grown in the northern United States, the yield may drop to as low as about one pound (450 grams) per row foot (30 centimeters).You can save planting stock from the previous year’s crop or buy ready-to-plant shoots. If the seedling raiser is reputable, buying may be the best option because sweet potatoes accumulate virus diseases like Irish potatoes do. They also have a tendency to mutate. Commercially raised shoots or seedling are usually only a few generations away from pure, virus-free tissue-culture clones. Statistics show that virus-free starts increase yields by as much as a third.

To start only a few vines, in a warm place suspend a sweet potato on toothpicks in a container and cover half of it with water. You can grow larger quantities by placing several presprouted (or conditioned) sweet potatoes on a bed of sand, covering them with a two-inch (five-centimeter) layer of moist sandy soil, and keeping that soil between 70°F and 75°F (21°C to 24°C). Presprouting (what is called “conditioning” in the commercial trade) consists of holding the roots at about 85°F (29°C) and high humidity for a few weeks until shoots start to develop. You can easily accomplish this at home by putting a few roots into a germination box (for heat) that also holds a large open pan of water (for humidity). Don’t allow the presprouting chamber to become so humid that the roots are actually wet; this may cause mold or fungus to form on them.

In the deep south of the United States, outdoor nursery beds are used. The soil will naturally be at the right temperature to sprout the roots about a month to six weeks before the correct time to set the shoots out. The time to start the nursery is when the night temperature stops falling below 60°F (15.5°C). If you’re farther from the equator, you may have to bed the roots in a greenhouse or indoors, putting a soil- or sand-filled box in a bright sunny window in a warm room.The sprouts will be the optimum size for transplanting when they have grown 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 centimeters) long and have five or six leaves and a stout stem. Cut off the sprouts two inches (five centimeters) above the soil with a sharp knife. Because they’re unrooted, put them into soil almost horizontally, about two inches deep, making sure to allow two leaves to be above ground. Take care not to damage the shoot’s terminal bud. Immediately after you set them in their bed, water well.

The light soils that sweet potatoes prefer dry out rapidly, so as the plants grow, keep the soil moist, if possible, but never soaked. This encourages better root development. Keep the area well-weeded before the vines run too much. It’s best to do this by shallow scraping with a hoe, much as suggested for Irish potatoes. Gradually make a low hill around the stem of the vine by scraping up weeds and soil against it. Louisiana State University agricultural extension service says hilling reduces insect problems.

Figure 9.4: A sweet-potato plant at midsummer. With rows four feet (120 centimeters) on center, the vines from one row are reaching the plants in the next — as are the roots. No potatoes have formed yet. At harvest the vines and their roots will both have reached 14 feet (425 centimeters) at their greatest extent and be working to a depth of about 4½ feet (140 centimeters). Do not crowd sweet potatoes! (Figure 69 in RDVC)

Under good conditions, within two months of being set out the vines should entirely cover the spaces between rows. From then on do a bit of hand-weeding (and careful stepping) if you want the best results.

Pests and diseases. Commercial producers are distressed when any fraction of their crop fails to appear marketable, so pests and diseases are mainly a cosmetic worry to them. They are usually not a serious matter to the home gardener, except that there may be quarantines on the movement of potatoes and planting stock in states with major sweet-potato production. Be warned: at the time of writing, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina have restrictions. Check with your local agricultural extension branch for information on your area.

The gardener’s most effective weapon to prevent problems is crop rotation. Rotation also helps simplify weeding.After at least two years of growing some other cleanly cultivated crops, the area will be relatively free of weed seeds and ready for sweet potatoes. A weedy sweet-potato crop is a stressed crop, a nonproductive crop, and a crop attractive to pests.

Do not repeat sweet potatoes on the same beds without a rest into other crops lasting at least three or four years. During that break you should not allow any of its pernicious relatives — like bindweed or morning glory — to grow. Finally, carefully clean up all vines, dig out all accessible root materials, and promptly hot-compost (or burn) them to greatly reduce pests for the next year. Due to companionate effects, legumes following sweet potatoes won’t grow well. It’s best to follow sweet potatoes with a brassica cover crop.

Varieties. In addition to the usual orange- or red-fleshed soft, sweet types, there are dry-fleshed white ones. These are quite popular with people from the Caribbean. I know of but one variety requiring less than 120 to 150 warm days and warm nights — Georgia Jet needs only 90.

Harvest, curing, and storage. Harvesting and storing seem to be the most rigorous aspect of growing sweet potatoes, especially growing early-maturing varieties in short-season climates. Under warm conditions the first harvest can begin about 90 to 120 days after setting out the shoots, but the potatoes will continue to swell in size for some time after they are first large enough to eat.Most of the sizing up happens rapidly during the last few weeks of growth, so watch closely. You want them sizeable but not overly large because eating quality suffers when they’re too big. (This is one reason not to make their soil too fertile.) There will come a point when all the sweet potatoes should be dug promptly.

It is important to harvest gently to minimize “skinning,” the scraping off of skin. Skinned potatoes don’t keep well. If the soil is quite dry at digging time, a light irrigation is helpful to soften it and reduce damage. However, if the earth is soggy when digging, the potatoes may crack open after harvest; they may even rot in the ground.

Select the roots you will use to make the next year’s seedlings while digging. These should be 1½ to 2½ inches (four to six centimeters) in diameter with smooth skins, a pleasant appearance, and no sign of insect damage or disease. They should also be taken from hills that made an abundant “nest” of potatoes.

Do not allow just-harvested potatoes to sit in the sun for more than one hour or they may scald, reducing their storage potential. And do not, if at all possible, harvest after frost. If you should be caught by a surprise frost, then harvest within days or the roots may begin to rot. Sweet potatoes still in the earth are badly damaged if they experience soil temperatures below 50°F (10°C).

After harvesting, the potatoes should be cured to heal any scrapes or injuries to their skins. Ideal conditions for this are a stable 85°F to 90°F (29°C to 32°C), humidity around 90 percent, and reasonable ventilation.Commercial growers have special rooms designed to maintain these conditions. North Carolina State University agricultural extension service advises the home gardener to use this simpler method: Once the roots have been removed from the garden, spread them out to dry for several hours away from direct sunlight. Once dry, put them in newspaper-lined boxes and leave them in a dry, ventilated area for two weeks for curing.When they are cured, store them in a cool, dry place (50°F to 55°F/10°C to 13°C).Wait a month until they’ve sweetened up and you’ll be ready to start cooking them. Most varieties of newly harvested potatoes do not taste sweet.Their flavor develops over time. In storage, beware of cold; if the roots get colder than 50°F (10°C) for even a few days, the core gets hard and loses quality. On the other hand, if they’re kept too warm for extended periods, they may shrivel, become stringy and pithy, and/or sprout prematurely.

Curing and storing sweet potatoes so that they’ll last the entire winter is more difficult than growing this easy crop, especially where weather conditions are cool at harvest time. If you master the art of keeping them until the next planting season, you may wish to start more than a few dozen seedlings in the spring because then this crop could become your nutritious basic staple, every bit the equal of the Irish potato.

Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are close relatives. Many varieties can be perennial where there is no frost.All are aggressive growers in suitable weather conditions, responding to fertilization by expanding to the limit of their moisture supply and rooting room. Gardening magazines occasionally show a photo of one trellised tomato plant covering the entire sun-facing wall of a house, and I was once introduced to a five-year-old Fijian eggplant bush that was five feet (150 centimeters) tall and six feet (180 centimeters) in diameter. Once a year it was trimmed back by half and its bed was mulched with a few gallons of chicken manure. I suggest new gardeners learn to grow tomatoes first; once they are mastered, peppers and eggplants will seem easier.

Growing details. Tomatoes are not frost-hardy; most varieties need 100 to 120 growing days from emerging to first ripe fruit.Where there are fewer than 150 frost-free days, gardeners must get at least a 50-day head start by using transplants. Those in warm climates may direct-seed tomatoes; usually these folks still use transplants to obtain extra production time.My advice: If your frost-free growing seasons exceeds 150 days, grow or buy only two or three early-maturing transplants of a bush determinate variety, enough to supply the table early in the season. Then directly seed a few more spots at the same time the seedlings are set out, and make these indeterminate varieties. This makes life simple. It also frees you from any temptation to buy a lot of tomato plants.

To direct-seed tomatoes immediately after there is no further frost danger, use hills spaced on at least four-foot (120-centimeter) centers. Gently press the soil back down to restore capillarity, make a thumbprint in the center of that mound about half an inch (1.25 centimeters) deep, put five or six seeds in that depression, cover with loose soil, and, if it is hot and sunny, water that spot every day for about a week. Progressively thin the seedlings to a single plant per hill.

You should lift tomato vines off the earth, freeing the fruit from damage by insects or rotting.You can stake up indeterminates, trellis them, guide their vines up hanging strings and wires, grow them in tall wire cages, etc.The best way I know to prune or train indeterminates (and there seem to be as many ways to do this as there are gardeners) is to follow their own growth pattern. Leaves, and the new vines emerging from their notches, form on the stem in threes. First, two weak side branches appear; the third one is a stronger side branch, and this pattern then repeats. During the first few months of the plant’s growth, remove all the weak side branches as soon as they appear and allow the third strong ones to grow. This is easily accomplished by pinching off the unwanted side shoots with your thumbnail. Thin both the main branch and also all the side branches that you allow to remain. Continue pruning this way until the plant has formed enough branches to suit whatever mechanics you have constructed to hold them up. After that, remove all side branches as soon as they appear.

The terms “indeterminate” and “determinate” refer to different growth patterns. All tomato vines grow by having one side branch emerge from each leaf notch. This side shoot will grow as freely as the main vine unless pinched off. Determinate vines grow only a few leaves (usually three) and then stop. The side branches continue the growth for three leaves and then stop, and so forth. Determinates tend to be tidy, compact plants.

Indeterminate varieties make a vine that keeps growing indefinitely from its end; its side branches also grow indefinitely. The result is that the vines on indeterminates are much longer, and usually the length of stem between each leaf is also longer, so they are lanky and spread aggressively.

Both sorts will keep producing new fruit and covering new ground until frost — as long as the plant can find unoccupied soil in which to make roots. If the root zone gets crowded, they become stressed, their production slows a lot, and often the vine becomes diseased or will be attacked by insects.The longer your frost-free growing season is, the more growing space you should give tomatoes.

The root systems of determinate varieties closely match their compact above-ground growth. Determinates set more fruit sooner, ripen it sooner, and yield more heavily for a shorter time. Because of their growth habit, determinates are not staked up or trained and are bred so as to hold much of their fruit slightly above the soil. Short-season gardeners should probably only grow these types because they’re inevitably earliest. Generally the flavor of determinates is second-rate because the vine carries more weight of fruit in proportion to the amount of leaf area it makes to fill those fruit with taste and nutrition. Il_9781550923858_0019_001

An old-fashioned way to lift determinate vines enough to prevent most damage is to spread a few inches of dry brush to cover where they are to grow and let the vines grow over it.

Pests and diseases. There are many diseases; most are a problem only in commercial fields. If the roots have room to expand, the weather is favorable, and the soil is reasonably fertile, the vine usually won’t become sick.

Fruit worms are the same larvae as the ones that eat corn and may be controlled by spraying Bt (see the section on the corn earworm in Chapter 8).

Figure 9.5: An indeterminate tomato plant, spaced four feet by four feet (120 by 120 centimeters), shown two months after transplanting. The tops aren’t bumping yet, but the root systems are. At the time of the first frost, this plant had roots extending five feet (150 centimeters) from the center, and the entire system had thickly penetrated an eight-foot-diameter (245-centimeter) circle to a depth of 42 inches (105 centimeters). Clearly, tomatoes need a lot of growing room to do their best. (Figure 73 in RDVC)

Hornworms eat leaves; they also die after eating a bit of Bt. Blossom-end rot will stop being a problem on most varieties once your subsoil offers sufficient calcium; it can take a few years of light applications of lime for enough calcium to build up in the subsoil.Have faith: end rot will fade away.

Varieties. There are a great many varieties of tomatoes. Hybrid varieties are only slightly more vigorous.Their big advantage is that they can be resistant to more diseases at once, which is important to commercial growers who run down their soil’s organic matter content, overcrowd the plants, and don’t rotate out of tomatoes often enough. Some heirlooms have superior flavor but may not be well-adapted to cool or dry climates, and they rarely carry any disease resistance at all. I suggest that you only experiment with heirlooms. Try a new one every year, but mainly grow the tomato varieties proven to work in your area.The best flavor is found in slicing (firm-fleshed, not watery) varieties that require warm humid nights. These are often called “beefsteak.”However, in maritime climates these classics usually fail to ripen, which is another reason to check with the local experts about locally adapted varieties. Some varieties may deal better with diseases present in your area, too.

Indeterminate cherry tomatoes are the most aggressively growing of all types and are best suited to dry gardening. If you’re making sauce or paste, use varieties bred to contain less moisture. They cook down in half the time, saving a great deal of energy. These sorts are also superior for drying. Finally, a relatively new sort has come out called Longkeeper. It and its competitors ripen extremely slowly; after you pick it when it’s green, the fruit develops a waxy tough skin that holds in moisture, lasting a lot longer while ripening slowly in the pantry.They taste pretty good, especially when the only comparison comes from the supermarket. I suspect that Longkeeper was bred from an old Burpee classic called Golden Jubilee, a late-maturing yellow beefsteak type that has, in my opinion, the best flavor of any tomato. I always grow one Golden Jubilee plant even though it is too late for my climate and even though I only get a few fully ripe fruit toward the end of summer unless the year has proved unusually warm. Still, the full-sized green ones are among our best inthe-house ripeners.

Peppers and eggplant are less-vigorous close relatives of the tomato. They too are self-pollinating, but have a slight tendency to outcross. If you are saving seed, give varieties about 20 feet (six meters) of isolation. It’s especially important to isolate hot peppers from sweet ones.The seed-saving procedure is identical; let the fruit get dead-ripe first.

Peppers are sometimes direct-seeded where the growing season exceeds 150 days (I know someone in Maryland who does that); I wouldn’t try it with eggplant unless the growing season exceeded 180 days. In short-season areas or in maritime climates, growing hybrid peppers is highly advantageous. In climates where the summers aren’t hot, if you don’t have a greenhouse, hybrid eggplant may be essential, and the best of the lot in Cascadian trials is Dusky Hybrid. In chilly areas, it may be to your advantage to grow peppers and eggplant on top of a black plastic mulch that covers their entire wide raised bed. The mulch warms the soil a few degrees and also increases the nighttime air temperature a few degrees.This little rise in temperature makes all the difference. It is not necessary to use drip or trickle irrigation beneath such mulch in the garden. Simply make the bed perfectly flat. Then lay and anchor the mulch and set transplants through small “X” slits.When overhead watering or when it rains, puddles will form in slight dips and depressions. Poke small holes in every one of these spots to let the water flow through.

Harvest and storage. I pick my scarce first fruits when they’re light orange because I hate to see any of them damaged by slugs or woodlice.After trellised indeterminates are ripening higher off the earth, there is less danger of damage (and many more fruit to spare), so I let them develop a completely vine-ripened flavor.At the end of the season I bring all full-sized green tomatoes into the house and keep them in airy baskets in a cool part of the house to ripen over the next few months.

To improve the performance of determinate varieties, about eight weeks before the first expected frost, pinch off about half the flower clusters as they appear. This lightens the fruit load and enhances size and flavor. About four weeks before the first expected frost, pinch off over three quarters of all the flower clusters as they appear.

Saving seed.There is little advantage to growing hybrid tomatoes, so you may as well grow open-pollinated sorts and save your own seed.Tomatoes (and peppers and eggplant) are self-pollinating, and you can save seed from a single plant. Let the fruit used for seed extraction get completely ripe on the vine; it’ll sprout better and store longer if you do.Then bring these dead-ripe fruit into the house, keep them in a warm place, and let them ripen even further for another few days.

Cut the tomatoes in half crosswise, exposing all the cells inside. With your finger, scoop out the juicy (seedy) pulp into a bowl. Put that watery mixture into a small jar that holds double the volume you are putting into it. Allow it to stand on the counter for a few days in a warm room. It’ll ferment, fizz, and foam, and white mold may grow on top.That’s fine.The acids caused by fermentation dissolve the sprouting inhibitors within the seed, making it much more certain to germinate. Swill the liquid around in the jar once a day to help settle the seeds out of the froth on top.Within three to five days most of the seeds will have settled on the bottom and most of the solids will be floating on the top.Now gently fill the jar with water, allow the seeds to resettle to the bottom, and gently pour most of that water off without losing many seeds. Refill and repeat this until the water is clear and the solids are gone.The few seeds you will lose doing this are to your good; these float to the top because they are lightweight and unripe.

Pour the contents of the jar through a tea strainer to catch the seeds. Rinse the jar a few times to get them all out. Then rinse the seeds in the strainer under running water until clean. Dump the seeds on top of several thicknesses of newspaper and let them dry for a few days before you put them away in a paper envelope.With most varieties, a few ripe tomatoes will provide enough seeds for the entire neighborhood.

Cucurbits are so similar that if you have known one, you know them all. The easiest one to start with is squash, because it is the most vigorous, most tolerant of chilling, and most tolerant of heavy soils.

Growing details. The key to success with cucurbits is to wait until the soil warms up enough before sowing. And you should almost always directly seed; they don’t transplant well.Whether while sprouting or when growing on, cucumbers need more warmth than squash, and melons (especially watermelons) need more than cucumbers. Sow squash and pumpkins after soil has warmed to 60°F (15°C) and ideally sow during a week of sunny weather.After squash seedlings are up and have begun to grow well, sow cucumbers. As soon as cucumber seedlings are up and beginning to grow well, sow melons. This timing method matches the steadily increasing temperature of soil in spring.

Any time the soil turns chilly and damp while cucurbit seeds are sprouting, they may die. Cucurbits are more sensitive to chill and damp before coming up than after. Should any young seedlings (or seed not yet emerged) experience a spell of chilly or rainy weather, remedy the situation using this method: As soon as the weather settles, resow at another spot in the same hill. If both sowings end up growing well, progressively thin both and finally choose the plant that grows the best. Sometimes in a chilly damp spring, a sowing made a week or ten days later will outgrow an earlier one that barely emerged, shivering and shaken.

For the same reason, you should be reluctant to water sprouting cucurbit seeds. It’s better to chit them first, plant them into moist warm soil, and then not water them at all until they emerge.

Cucurbits grow fast in full sun and in fertile soil (most fruiting plants do). Since the mainly shallow root system of all cucurbits is at least as extensive as their tops are (with bush summer squash, the roots may spread significantly more than the leaves do), the entire area their vines will ultimately cover should be made fertile; additionally, to get the seedling off and growing fast, sow seeds in a hill with extra fertility beneath it.

On hot sunny afternoons, gardeners often shrug off temporary wilting of cucurbits as unimportant. The attitude is: Inevitably the plant recovers, don’t worry. This is not correct; any wilting is a big stress and greatly reduces plant health and overall yield. Cucurbits don’t wilt on hot days when only one plant grows in each hill and the plant does not share its root zone. So where squash borer is not a problem (and the insect is rarely a problem with cucumber and melons), do not grow two or three plants per hill. Start three but thin to one by the time the vines start to run.

Varieties. Hybrid squash varieties now dominate in seed catalogs. Consequently, OP summer squash varieties have degenerated, excepting the old Yellow Crookneck (vining), which is by far the best-tasting of all summer squash and resists pests better, too. Hybrid winter squash may outyield the classics by half again, but they don’t taste any better, and for most people the production of one or two good hills of ordinary varieties is a gracious plenty. genuine heirloom Sweet Meat (from Harris Seeds or Territorial Seeds) or one of the somewhat shorter-storing delicata types (including Sweet Dumpling). Acorns don’t keep well at all.Australians have an especially long-keeping pumpkin named Queensland Blue (what North Americans call winter squash, people Down Under call “pumpkins”) that makes the best pumpkin soup you ever tasted. Johnny’s Selected Seeds sells an heirloom variant of this from the state ofWestern Australia called Jarrahdale.

Figure 9.6: A typical cucurbit root system — this one is Rocky Ford cantaloupe in midsummer. The drawing is viewed from above. The extensive root system is shallow, rarely going down more than two feet (60 centimeters). Winter squash, a more vigorous plant, makes roots covering half again more area. With cucurbits, you can assume that the roots are always at least as extensive as the vines are. (Figure 85 in RDVC)

Of cucumbers, the old sprawling classic “apple” or “lemon” is best adapted to lower levels of fertility and soil moisture. Hybrid cucumber seed is affordable; hybrid melon seed isn’t.However, in the cool nights of a maritime climate, only the earliest of hybrid melons will produce anything, and only when grown atop a wide sheet of black plastic. I spread a piece about six feet (two meters) wide, anchor it on the edges, and put one vine every four feet down the row. That’s the only way I can harvest ripe melons in a maritime climate.

Harvest and storage. Everybody Else says zucchini and other summer squash stop yielding much after a month or so, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you give them growing room, the plants will produce more growing branches, more flowers will form, and the yield will steadily increase until the weather turns against the crop. So don’t crowd them. I have grown bush varieties in hills on five-foot (150-centimeter) centers with great results. (“Bush” squash are really just vines with short spaces along their stem.)

Remove all overlooked oversized fruit from summer squash and cucumber vines because the burden of forming seed reduces formation of new fruit.

Winter squash don’t taste great until they are fully ripe.They have reached that state when the stem attaching the fruit to the vine has shriveled and become brittle, revealing that it is no longer passing vascular fluid.Most winter squash in the species Cucurbita pepo (acorn, delicata) don’t store as long as those in C.maxima (Hubbard, buttercup) or C. moschata (butternut). Ideal storage is 60°F (15.5°C) with low humidity and good air circulation.Warmer and dry is better than cool and damp. Storage time has a lot to do with variety. I’ve also found that leaving winter squash outside to experience more than the first light touch of frost greatly lowers their storage potential. Curing also helps lengthen storage. Bring them inside where it is warm and dry for two weeks; this toughens their skin. We heap ours up in the dining room. Then, cured, they go to a cooler dry place.

Cantaloupe, honeydew, and similar melons are ripe when the vine slips off the fruit with only slight pressure.They do not ripen after being picked,which is why supermarket melons, inevitably harvested when unripe (and still hard enough to pack in a box and ship), are inferior.To determine when to cut watermelons from the vine, you must thump them and knowledgeably listen to the sound they make. I can’t explain this talent in words. It must be developed with practice.

Saving seed. Cucurbits are pollinated by bees. Isolation of at least half a mile (800 meters) will prevent enough crossing for home-garden purposes.There are three commonly grown squash species: Cucurbita pepo, C. maxima, and C. moschata. These species do not cross, but every variety within one species does cross with every other.All summer squash, delicata types, acorn squash, and most jack-o’-lanterns are C. pepo.The large winter squash varieties are usually maxima.

Canteloupes (rockmelons) don’t cross with honeydew types. Some specialty melons are unique species. Check the seed catalog for their Latin names and assume different species won’t cross-pollinate. The seed is ripe when the fruit has become completely ripe (slips the vine).

Practically speaking, all this interesting information is irrelevant to the home gardener; when it comes to growing your own seed for these species, I strongly suggest you don’t try for more than one generation unless the seed-producing population exceeds 25 plants. Saving seed from only a few cucurbit plants leads to inbreeding depression of vigor; within a few generations the seed will barely sprout or grow. Few gardeners grow 25 winter squash vines! However, the seed is long-lasting and the first generation’s seed collected from just a few fruit will supply you and the whole neighborhood for the next ten years if properly stored. My suggestion is that at least every other generation you buy a packet of new stock.

Some maxima varieties have seeds that taste good, but some don’t. Sweet Meat’s seeds, for example, make great munching. You may be discarding the best of this vegetable’s nutrition if you don’t extract, dry, and eat its seeds.

These quite different vegetables derived from the same wild plant, whose Latin name, Beta, became “beet” in English. The vegetable “beet” was bred for the succulent sweet root; thinnings grown to the stage of developing baby-sized beets are often cooked, tops and all. Swiss chard was selected to emphasize large tender leaves, but dig one up and you’ll see a poorly formed beetroot. Beta, with a huge reservoir for moisture storage in the top of its root and a deeply adventuring root system, is good at handling long-lasting dry spells. If there is nutrition accessible in the subsoil, Beta does not need hugely fertile topsoil.

Growing details. Technically, beet seeds are fruits; each usually produces several seedlings.The commercially produced seeds can be stored a long time; six years is normal and ten isn’t unusual. So if you get some beet or chard seed that sprouts poorly, take it as an insult; it had to have been really sad old stuff. To get well-formed beets, careful thinning is essential. Shortly after germination, reduce the thickest of the clumps, but do so cautiously as there will usually be a fair number of mysterious seedling disappearances. Postpone the final, precise thinning until the plants are about four inches (10 centimeters) tall.Then thin them to whatever spacing you’ll want the mature beets to be growing to.

Varieties.Where winter consists of only frosts or chilly weather, two historic and virtually identical varieties, Lutz or Winterkeeper, are bred to make enormous roots that hold for months. Cylinder varieties are bred for canneries that want to slice rounds and also need quick-cooking vegetables; they have little fiber.White beets (sugar beet crosses) have a sweeter flavor.

Harvest, storage, and use. Most varieties of beet will continue enlarging without becoming woody or tasteless if only they have room to grow.Harvesting by pulling every second beet in the row helps the patch remain in better eating condition.Thinning to a wider spacing at four inches (10 centimeters) tall and using wider between-row spacings helps even more. I once dry-gardened delicious beets spaced one foot (30 centimeters) apart in rows four feet (120 centimeters) apart. After five entirely rainless months, each root was nearly the size of a volleyball and still delicious.

In mild climates, beets may overwinter in their bed. In Cascadia — where in the rare year a short spell of freezing weather may ice their crowns, killing them — burying the crowns under a few inches of soil is sufficient protection. Beets root-cellar well in a barrel of moist sand.

Because this crop is so well-suited to being a vegetable staff of life, I thought I’d suggest a few ways you can use beets that most people do not know about.

Figure 9.7: A beet root system about 110 days after sowing seeds. Clearly a single plant is designed to make use of all the moisture and nutrition from a cylinder of soil about two feet (60 centimeters) across and seven feet (215 centimeters) deep. Thus, in dry gardening, a useful spacing for this drought-tolerant crop would be about one foot (30 centimeters) apart in rows about four feet (120 centimeters) apart. (Figure 21 in RDVC)

Beets may be baked like potatoes and are delicious.This method of preparation retains more of their nutrition than boiling does.

Raw, grated-beet salad can be delicious in areas where the subsoil offers balanced fertility; given proper nutrition, the beetroot will not have any of that back-of-throat-rasping sensation many associate with raw beet. Mix grated beet with bits of navel orange and minced mild onion; dress with a bit of lemon juice and black pepper.

Wind-pollinated, they need at least a quarter mile (400 meters) of isolation for rough purity. Seedmaking plants occupy a lot of space and inevitably make lots of seed. In early spring you should replant the roots to the depth of their crown at least one foot (30 centimeters) apart, in rows three to four feet (90 to 120 centimeters) apart. In midsummer, when much of the seed is dry on the stalk, harvest the whole plants and let them finish drying to a crisp under cover on a tarp.Then rub the seeds off their stalks and winnow to clean away the dust and chaff. To maintain a variety through more than one generation, include at least 25 plants in the gene pool. Four to six plants will make several pounds of seed that will last a decade if it has not been rained on or irrigated during the drying-down period.This is hard to achieve in areas with summer rain, which is why commercial beet seed is grown in Cascadia, where the summer is reliably dry.

To make chard (silverbeet) seed where the snow flies, dig half a dozen plants with as much root as you can get up, cut off their larger leaves, plant them in large tubs or beds of earth in the root cellar over the winter, and then transplant them back outside in spring. In moderate winters it might work to hill up soil around and actually over the plants, and then uncover them in early spring. Otherwise they are like beets and will cross with beets.

Growing details. I prefer growing corn with a bit more elbow room than most because the plant has a natural tendency to tiller,meaning it will put up additional ear-bearing stalks if there is enough growing room. And even if a plant doesn’t tiller (tillering is a trait modern breeders try to eliminate because ears forming on secondary stalks are smaller), having a bit more soil to access will protect it against drought and also make the main ears get a bit bigger.

Where soil moisture is not a problem, each plant should exclusively control at least 2 Il_9781550923858_0100_001

square feet (2,000 square centimeters). Eighteen inches (45 centimeters) on center or nine inches (23 centimeters) apart in rows 36 inches (90 centimeters) apart, or eight inches (20 centimeters) apart in rows 42 inches (105 centimeters) apart all work out to be about the same amount of growing room per plant.

Where low soil moisture threatens to be a short-lasting problem, you might increase the spacing to nine inches (23 centimeters) apart in rows 48 inches (120 centimeters) apart. Using a row spacing greater than 48 inches makes little sense for most varieties (see the root system drawing).Where a severe shortage of rain during the growing season is a certainty and watering is not possible, the maximum amount of space you should ever give a single sweet corn plant is about 16 square feet (1.5 square meters) or four-foot centers, imitating traditional Native American gardening; growing in hills spaced four feet on center, putting four seeds in every hill, and then ending up with one plant (one for the worm, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow) by thinning progressively if necessary.

Because the ears are wind-pollinated and the pollen is heavy, when corn is grown in a single long row you may find many ears will be only partly filled. It is best to grow corn in a patch at least two rows wide, with at least six plants to the row. It is better to make the entire corn bed moderately fertile, rather than confining soil amendments to the rows or hills.However, extremely high levels of fertility aren’t needed for this medium-demand vegetable.

Most varieties will sprout in slightly cooler soil than, say, beans will, but the plant is not frost-hardy.Unless you live in a short-season area, it is safer to wait until the earth is at 60°F (15.5°C) before sowing. If you’re growing in rows, first spread soil amendments over the entire patch and dig them in, lay out the rows with a string line, and then poke a hole in the earth about two inches (five centimeters) deep with your finger and drop in two seeds. If two come up from every spot, thin to one plant when they are about four inches (ten centimeters) tall and securely established. If you get the odd blank spot, allow two plants to grow in an adjoining spot. Keep the patch well (and shallowly) hoed until the corn has shaded the ground, suppressing any newly emerged weeds with deep shade.

Pests and diseases. After the pollen drops, the silks become attractive to the corn earworm moth, who may lay her eggs there.This is the time to treat the silks with Bt if that pest is a problem in your area.

Varieties.Hybrids will outproduce the best-maintained classics by at least half as much again, mostly because most classic open-pollinated varieties have deteriorated to the point of becoming nonproductive. If you want to grow your own seed or believe it is better to use OP varieties, I suggest that at first you sow your main patch with hybrid seed and also trial a few classics. If one of these proves worthy of growing, you can make the switch your second year.The classic sweet varieties are more closely related to the old Native American field corns and usually are acceptable for making cornmeal, flour, or parched corn.

If your intention is to grow a large patch of field corn (not primarily for use as sweet corn) to use as a family staple, then I’d reverse my advice about hybrid varieties.Hybrid field corn appears to be more productive than the old classic varieties because it has hybrid vigor (this factor alone increases yield maybe 10 percent) and its careful, uniform breeding insures there will be no off-type nonproductive plants, but these uniform hybrid ears offer less nutrition to the consumer. Because it doesn’t need to draw as many nutrients from the soil, hybrid field corn appears to grow better on less-fertile soil, but it will make more bulk containing less nutrition than the old-fashioned OP types. The classic OP varieties might fail on poor ground that the new hybrids can succeed upon, however, the hybrid’s low-protein, low-mineral, high-calorie food is not something I’d want to maintain my family’s health on. My advice is to do your own trials the first year; test as many sorts of OP field corn as you can find, determine the best one for you, and begin saving your own seeds the next year.

Harvest. Some varieties give a clear signal of ripeness: the wrapper changes color or the ear will lean out from the stalk.With others you have to peek into the end of the ear. The ear on the main stalk usually ripens a week ahead of those forming on tillers.

Saving seed. Corn is wind-pollinated; the pollen is heavy and won’t blow one mile (1,600 meters) except in a gale so strong it would knock corn plants flat. Isolating varieties by a quarter mile (400 meters) will be good enough for home-garden seed if the second patch is not upwind in the direction of the prevailing winds. If that is the case, I’d suggest a minimum isolation of half a mile (800 meters). If you give your plants a bit more space than Everybody Else recommends (i.e., do what I suggest), they will probably tiller and their tillers will receive enough light to develop good ears. This will be particularly true of OP sweet corn.

When you are harvesting the main ear, it is possible to determine if that plant is productive and desirable or not. It is even possible to take a nibble out of the tip of each ideal-looking ear and see how it tastes, thus making flavor selections.You can allow the plants that show desirable characteristics for the gene pool to remain standing so that the secondary ears will mature as a seed crop. Break off the undesirable plants at the roots or knock them flat with your foot. Do not try to continue a sweet corn variety unless you can allow at least 50 desirable plants each year to contribute to the gene pool.To choose 50 good ones out of 100 or more requires a patch of at least 250 square feet (23 square meters). I have also produced quite acceptable OP sweet corn by saving seeds from Miracle hybrid.

Allow the seedmaking plants to stand until they have fully dried out, or, if the season is not long enough, harvest the ears shortly after the first frost, pull back the wrappers without tearing them off, and plait them, hanging the seed ears in a warm dry place in braids of 25 or so. This is the Native American method of saving seed corn.

Everybody thinks legumes enrich soil by making nitrates.Actually, all nitrates formed in the roots are immediately incorporated into above-ground parts — leaves and then seeds. Thus legumes do not supply fertility to companion crops.However, if their tops are turned under while still green and lush, their decomposition does add significant quantities of nitrates for the following crop.Nitrates are made by specialized soil-dwelling microorganisms that beneficially colonize legume roots, forming nodules. These organisms won’t be present in soil that is highly depleted of organic matter.

Growing details. Legumes need substantial levels of minerals, especially calcium (lime) and phosphorus, as well as having the nitrate-forming bacteria present in their soil, or they don’t grow well. There’s an old farmer’s adage about this: Feed your phosphate to your clover, feed your clover to your corn (plow it in), and you can’t go wrong.

When starting a new garden in humus-deficient soil, it is reasonable to assume that nitrate-forming bacteria are not present in sufficient numbers. In that case, inoculating legume seeds with these organisms might seem sensible. Farmers using depleted soil do this to avoid buying nitrate fertilizers for legume crops. Inoculants purchased in bulk are far cheaper than nitrate fertilizers, but buying inoculants in small packets can cost as much as or more than fertilizing a garden patch moderately. After the garden has received some manure or compost for a year or two, the needed organisms somehow appear. You can tell when this has happened by digging up a growing bean or pea plant and seeing if there are small pinkish-colored lumps on the roots; these are the nodules.

Consider all legumes low-demand crops, as described in Chapter 2; prepare their soil accordingly. Spacing recommendations for all types are found in Figure 6.1. Except for peas, it is a good idea to plant two seeds in every position you want a plant and then thin to the best plant after they are growing well. Peas, which are usually growing in a season without risk of severe moisture stress, need no thinning unless they come up severely overcrowded.

Peas are frost-hardy; some varieties are so remarkably hardy that they are used as overwintering cover crops. They can germinate in the chilly soils of spring, but it’s best to chit the seeds if you’re aiming for the earliest possible sowing. Bush varieties do not climb; they mature in concentrated fashion and are best grown in massed, multiple-rowed plantings across wide raised beds. Each spring I start three successive shelling pea patches, each containing five or six short rows, sowing a new patch every ten days.That way I get a continuous harvest lasting more than a month. Bush snow pea and bush snap pea varieties do not climb either. Because bush peas leave the soil in magnificent condition, I also sow large areas of them as a potentially edible green manure on any beds that can be worked in early spring but are not needed for a few months. If I need the bed before the peas are mature enough to harvest, I yank the vines and compost them. If green manure pea patches grow on to maturity, I somehow manage to eat, give away or freeze all those extra peas.

Figure 9.9: A Tall Telephone climbing pea at maturity.Notice the incredibly dense and fine roots; is it any wonder they leave the soil in such friable condition? (Figure 52 in RDVC)

Climbing varieties such as the Alderman or Tall Telephone, the original Sugar Snap, and a few rare but still surviving climbing snow pea varieties do allow more extended pickings and also have superior flavor compared to any bush pea. Climbing peas require a trellis at least six feet (180 centimeters) tall. I make my own each year by weaving bailing twine into a square-mesh fishnet of about nine inches (23 centimeters) on a side. First I stretch the vertical lines tightly between a top and bottom railing, and then I tie the horizontals to the vertical strings.

Fava beans (broad beans) are even more frost-hardy than garden peas. In mild climates they are sown in autumn and harvested in spring; where the soil freezes solid they are sown early in spring, like peas, but they take a bit longer than peas to mature. In maritime or mild climates it is wise to sow them as late in autumn as the seeds will germinate in order to keep their stalks as short as possible over winter because when beans finally begin to set in spring, the pods may form so high up that the top-heavy stalks will fall over.

Fava beans usually become diseased in hot weather. Large-seeded varieties are mainly used as shelling beans; the small-seeded types make the most excellent cool-season green manure and sometimes are grown for seeds to be used as animal food.

Snap beans (French beans) are not frost tolerant. In climates with cold winters, sow them in spring once the soil has reached 60°F (16°C).Where summers are hot and steamy and winter almost nonexistent, sow again after the worst heat of summer has passed for harvest in autumn. Bush varieties yield for only a month at most; climbing varieties take a week or two longer to begin yielding, but they usually continue bearing as long as their roots have room to continue growing and the weather suits. Bush varieties have much smaller root systems than climbers and consequently systems than climbers and consequently are far less drought tolerant. Climbing varieties also have superior flavor; I prefer eating them. In my garden I put in a small planting of a quick-maturing bush variety to fill the gap before the climbing beans start bearing.

Climbing beans are more work to grow than bush varieties, but easier to harvest by hand.They may be supported by tripods made of eight-foot-tall (245-centimeter) skinny rough poles with bark and twigs still attached, lashed together near the top as though for a tepee. One plant grows up each pole. In the Willamette Valley, where for decades nearly all of America’s canned green beans were produced, Blue Lake pole was the variety of choice before labor costs made it necessary to grow the less-tasty machine-harvested bush types. To support the vines, stout and well-braced seven-foot-tall (210-centimeter) posts were erected at the ends of each row. A strong tight wire was stretched between them from top to top, and another wire was stretched five or six inches (13 to 15 centimeters) above the ground. Props were inserted as necessary to hold the massive weight that developed on a top wire that was hundreds of feet long. String was then run top to bottom to top to bottom, etc., in “VVVV” shapes. The bottom of each V was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) apart, with one plant coming up at the base of each V.High-school kids used to be happy to get jobs stringing beans.The plant spacing indicated in Column 3 of Figure 6.1 is based on this method.There are many other support variations possible. The most important thing about climbing bean structures is to allow the plants enough growing room; the vines can fork many times, and one plant may produce quite a few runners.

Figure 9.10: A bush snap bean when the flowers are beginning to set pods. (Figure 55 in RDVC)

Figure 9.11: This is a climbing bean whose pods were not picked but were grown for mature seed. The drawing shows the root system at full development; new pods have just stopped setting and the seed load is beginning to mature. Clearly, if given growing room, climbing beans are better adapted to dealing with moisture stress than are most bush varieties. (Figure 58 in RDVC)

Picking snap bean pods before seeds start forming in them increases the number of new pods set.

Runner beans (Phaseolus multifloris) grow more aggressively than climbing snap beans. I once entirely filled a seven-foot-tall (210-centimeter) boxy structure covering an area of four by eight feet (120 by 240 centimeters) with the vines resulting from sowing only three runner bean seeds. Scarlet Runner, the traditional Native American variety, was mainly grown for shelling beans and is not a great variety for producing edible pods, but the British refined this species into something that produces the most elegant-looking snap beans with the richest flavor. I recommend one called Prizewinner; it is aptly named. P. multifloris has difficulty with hot weather and does best in maritime climates where summer nights are cool.An effective way to make a far higher percentage of flowers set pods is to regularly spray water on the profusely blooming vines shortly before dark.

Dry beans and shelling beans are the same species (P. vulgaris) grown as snap beans.Anyone who cooks even a few pounds of beans a year might grow their own, if only because fresh beans (less than one year old) cook a lot faster and taste much better; what is sold in the supermarket is often of indeterminate age.You can cook the seeds of any snap bean; many are delicious, though some are only “acceptable.”Varieties bred for the purpose are usually best.Almost all dry bean production these days is done with bush varieties. These are grown exactly as though growing snap beans, but the beans should not be harvested until the crop has dried in the field.The old Kentucky Wonder Brown Seeded (climbing type), sometimes called Old Homestead, also has delicious seeds and, given sufficient growing room, is more drought tolerant than most bush types.

Ideally, delay harvest of dry cooking beans until the odd mature seed is shattering out of its pod. But harvest in a rush if nearly ripe seeds are about to be rained on. Pull the plants, roots and all, shake off the soil, and then spread them out under cover with good air circulation to finish drying down. When they are crisp, you can thresh them in various ways: grip a plant by the lower stalk and vigorously bang it back and forth inside a metal oil drum; spread the plants on a tarp and hold a dance; patiently shell the dry pods one by one. To clean the chaff, winnow the seeds between two buckets in a stiff breeze. Make sure the seed is fully dry before sealing it up. It’s best to store large seeds in something that will pass moisture and air, like a paper sack or old feedbags (they respire quite a bit of oxygen).

Vegetable soybeans have seeds that are eaten green, like shelling beans. Soybean varieties are quite specific to a narrow range of latitudes because they grow vegetatively until the daylength orders flowering and seed formation.At this point the plant completely goes into bloom and makes one set of seed that ripens all at once. To get an extended soybean harvest, you must grow several varieties of staggered maturity. You can sow all varieties at the same time. Obviously, all other things being equal, the later seed formation happens, the larger the bush will have grown, the more flowers it may form, and the larger the harvest will be. But if you use a variety bred to grow closer to the equator than you are, it might start seed formation too late to mature seeds.

To prepare vegetable soybeans for the table, wait until most of the seeds have become fat but are still soft and tender. Cut the whole plant just above the soil line, stuff it into a huge pot with an inch (2.5 centimeters) of water on the bottom, and steam it for about five minutes. It’s cooked as soon as the seeds pop out of the pods when the pod is gently squeezed. Don’t overcook! Remove the whole thing and put it into a big bowl on the center of the table for the whole family to share, like hot popcorn.Tug the pods off the stem and then pull each pod through your front teeth, popping the seeds into your mouth.Traditionally, the whole plant is lightly salted when it is taken from the steamer, like popcorn.

Dr. Alan Kapuler of Peace Seeds in Corvallis, Oregon, does much work with edible soybeans; so does Johnny’s Selected Seeds.

Lima beans grow excellently in heat but, surprisingly, do not set seed well in really hot weather. Where summers are long, hot, and steamy, sow lima beans in spring for harvest before it gets really hot, and then sow them again about two months before the weather cools down, for autumn harvesting. Louisiana State University agricultural extension service says small-seeded lima varieties, locally called butter beans, do better in the Deep South of the United States. LSU also strongly recommends that home gardeners grow climbers because they may be picked for a longer period.

Southern peas produce only where nights are warm. Each sowing matures a batch of shelling peas more or less simultaneously. If you want a continuous harvest, you’ll have to sow a new patch every few weeks.There are two general sorts, vining and bush. The vining type needs a wider spacing and must be hand-harvested.The bush types were bred for commercial production and do not have the flavor of the old standards. If planted much more densely than for eating, southern peas make an excellent and quick-growing summertime green manure.

Pests and diseases.There is an insect called the bean weevil (the pea weevil is different, but a similar species) whose larvae tunnel into ripening seeds, pupate inside, and then tunnel out, emerging as little crawling insects. Each seed that hosted one will have a small exit hole in it. The seed usually germinates successfully, but it has lost a bit of its food supply, consumed by the larvae and emerging adult. These insects are annoying but not catastrophic and may be stopped in their tracks before emergence by freezing the seed for a few days shortly after harvest. I have cooked beans that grew weevils to adulthood and they tasted okay. These critters do not exist Down Under, which is why bean and pea seeds may not be freely imported.

Saving seed, all types. Legumes are all self-fertile species; most species rarely if ever cross. However, mutations do happen; peas and fava beans have far more tendency to cross than others. If you’re saving seed for peas or favas, isolate varieties by at least 25 feet (7.5 meters).

For the purposes of growing just enough seed to plant a small garden and also to keep a legume variety pure, it’s best to save seed from only one or two perfect plants. If you’ll be needing more than an ounce (30 grams) or so of seed for any variety, allow two seasons to increase your seed stock. The first year, start by saving the seed from only one ideal plant; the second year, grow that seed separately in what breeders term a “line,” and keep a close eye on that line. Remove any plant that seems to be off-type (this is called “roguing” in the seed trade). The seed you harvest from the perfect plants in that row or line (and with luck all your plants will be perfect) is your planting stock for the forthcoming few years. High-quality breeding would reject any line that was not absolutely uniform.

When I grow bush peas of any sort, I save seed from the inevitable overlooked pods. When these have three-quarters dried out on the vine, I pick them and bring them into the house to completely dry out. Doing this gives me twice as much seed as I need for the next year which is why I can afford to use garden peas as a spring green manure crop. I never overlook pods when I harvest climbing peas, so instead I allocate two or three of the vertical strings on my netting for seed production and pick the rest for the table. I do the same with climbing beans.

It’s been many years since I’ve lived in a place hot enough to grow this vegetable; I sorely miss it.

Growing details. Okra needs heat and prefers humid conditions. The plants can get quite large and will continue bearing as long as they can continue growing. The seeds are difficult to germinate, so it is wise to sow four seeds about three quarters of an inch (two centimeters) deep at every point you will want a plant and then progressively reduce competition to a single plant. Do not sow until the soil has warmed up to at least 70°F (21°C), and it’s best to soak the seeds overnight before sowing.

Okra does best if it is not put in super-fertile soil; too much nitrogen makes it set far fewer pods. However, like all plants that will fruit continuously, once it has been bearing for a while it does better if it is given a bit of fertigation or a light side-dressing of COF. Okra makes a deeply penetrating taproot and an aggressive system of surface feeder roots; it can survive drought, but to keep bearing heavily it needs more than minimum moisture. In dry spells this is a perfect crop for periodic fertigation.

Pests and diseases. Grow the crop on a spot that hasn’t seen it for many a year. Okra is sensitive to attack by soil-dwelling nematodes. These tend to build up in soils that grew sweet potato or squash, so do not follow these crops with okra the next year. The best garden crop to precede okra is corn, which lowers nematode levels. Leaf-eating insects may bother the crop, especially damaging small young plants when the weather hasn’t warmed up enough to suit. Once rapidly growing plants have attained some size, they will usually shrug off a little nibbling.When they are small, spraying rotenone/pyrethrum or Bt (for loopers) might get them past the danger point.

Harvest, storage, and use. Initially the pods form rapidly.While enlarging fast, they are tender. After the initial growth spurt slows, they become woody. Size does not indicate the state of the pod, because if the plant is growing lustily, the initial rapid growth spurt might create pods over five inches (13 centimeters) long. Do pick pods before they start getting crunchy. It’s best to do that by cutting them off with a sharp knife. Some people are sensitive to the plant’s tiny spines and should wear gloves when picking.

It seems to me that okra is inevitably overcooked. I suggest you try eating a raw pod in the garden the instant it is picked. In my okra patches, hardly a pod ever made it past the harvester and into the kitchen. If chilled below 45°F (7°C), the pods rapidly deteriorate; if not cooled, they rapidly become woody, so it’s best to eat them promptly.Harvesting must be done almost daily.

Saving seed. If you have a large patch — over 25 plants — why not save seeds? Okra is bee-pollinated, so to preserve a pure variety requires isolation of over half a mile (800 meters), though pure varieties are not essential for producing lots of edible pods. On every plant that has mostly desirable characteristics, allow one unharvested pod to mature and dry out. The seed develops rapidly. Do not let more than one pod per plant form seed unless you are only growing a seed crop; unharvested pods greatly reduce formation of new pods.

Chicories are remarkably cold-hardy salad greens, but most can’t withstand frozen soil. In cold-winter climates, chicories are harvested in autumn. In hot climates with mild winters they are a cool-season crop. In maritime climates they are good eating in both autumn and winter, although there can be disease problems caused by winter humidity. Rarely are problems caused by frost.

If you believe endive and escarole are horribly bitter, you probably tried some that had not experienced any serious chilling. Frost kills plants because when their cells freeze, they burst. Some plants survive frost by converting starch in their cells into sugar. A solution of sugary water freezes at a much lower temperature than plain water does; the sugar acts like antifreeze in an automobile’s radiator.After the temperature comes back up, the sugar remains and the flavor is much better. This same thing happens to kale, Brussels sprouts, and many other leafy crops when they get frosted but not killed.

Growing details. Chicories may be considered low-demand vegetables that will grow faster and bigger when given more than the minimum. But it doesn’t seem to matter how large or how small they are when they arrive at the cool season; their eating quality is about the same. I suggest that if you’re growing them more slowly on poor soil, sow them a bit earlier. Seed is usually quite long-lasting; if you don’t get effective germination, you were sold some really old stuff.Thin chicories progressively; try to place the seed so their row starts out with about one seedling per inch (2.5 centimeters).

Chicory root systems resemble those of other biennials like beetroot or carrot, penetrating subsoil in search of moisture and nutrition.They are capable of surviving drought and coming out the other side of it in the cool season with some salad greens for you.

Pests and diseases. In maritime climates, chicories tend to develop mold in winter. The heads may rot back to stumps. In really wet winters they will die; in milder, dryer years they grow steadily right through winter and into spring, when they go to seed. Erecting an open-sided roof of clear plastic over the plants almost guarantees winter survival and much higher leaf production. Talk about frost-hardy! I have seen endive and escarole shrug off nighttime lows of under 10°F (–12°C) — but the soil was not frozen).

Varieties. Lately, productive and uniformly heading radicchio (with small, round, red, cabbage-like heads) have appeared. Radicchio usually heads in autumn in cold-winter climates and probably would be a good cool-season crop in mild climates. Endive and escarole are basically non-heading radic-chios, but one has broad thin leaves and the other highly frilled stemmy leaves. There are other haut cuisine chicories, too. One, in English called Sugarhat and in German, Zuccerhat, makes a conical and firm head a bit like a Chinese cabbage. I find it rather bitter. Also, a few hybrid heading chicories similar to radicchio have begun to appear recently.Most chicory varieties are open-pollinated and so far I see no need to use expensive hybrid varieties.

Harvest. In climates where the soil doesn’t freeze, permit a few outer leaves to remain alive on the stem when you are cutting the heads. If you do this, the plant will not die but will start producing a whole new batch of smaller leaves that may be picked later in winter. These will be more tender than the big heads. In climates where the soil does freeze, you can dig out endive and escarole a week or two before the soil starts freezing. Remove their largest outer leaves, shake the soil from their carrot-like root, and then transplant them into tubs or beds in the root cellar, to be used during winter. If these plants survive winter in the cellar, you may replant them outside in spring for making seed. If only a seed crop is intended, you can trim the tops (without damaging the crown and its growing point) and cellar only the roots overwinter, stored like carrots in moist sand.

Saving seeds. Chicories are biennials. After overwintering, the plants put up large masses of waist-high jointed stalks covered with pretty blue flowers that almost always self-pollinate. However, it’s a good idea to isolate varieties by 50 feet (15 meters). Chicories have a tendency to mutate, so it’s best to save seed from a single good plant, much as I suggested for saving bean seeds. The capsules holding chicory seed are quite hard and difficult to shatter. If you hold a vigorous tap dance on thoroughly dry stalks spread on a strong tarp on a hard surface, a goodly portion of the seeds will be broken loose. After sieving out the larger trash, you can winnow the seeds from the fine chaff. After throwing chicory trash into the compost heap, I’ve had zillions of endive and escarole plants coming up all over the garden — a not undesirable bonus.

To achieve the best eating quality, lettuce must grow fast and unstressed. Its root stores water, but when lettuce has to survive by drawing from its moisture reserve, new growth stops and the leaves become bitter and tough. Its soil has to be fertile and the plants must not be crowded; competition slows growth.Any leafy plant needs nitrates to grow.To grow as many leaves as rapidly as lettuce should demands high levels of available nitrates. So when preparing its growing bed, consider lettuce a high-demand crop.

Most varieties don’t tolerate much heat; lettuce seeds won’t even germinate in hot soil, much less grow. Thus, where summer is hot, consider lettuce a quick-growing cool-season crop. Fortunately it is frost-hardy; some varieties can harden off to become remarkably frost tolerant, especially when half-grown, but I know of no variety that will withstand short-term freezing the way kale can.

Growing details. The most important thing, besides giving lettuce the soil conditions it requires, is to thin progressively, carefully, and promptly. Competition slows growth; don’t let it happen.

Varieties. Dark green looseleaf varieties grown on properly balanced mineral-rich soils have been tested at nearly 20 percent protein, almost as high as some forms of flesh food. And unlike meat, salads are eaten raw, so are far more digestible than cooked flesh. Iceberg and other ball-heading types with blanched cores, lacking high-protein chlorophyll, are much less healthful.

Harvest. Growing salad mesculin — a densely spaced salad greens mixture that is cut repeatedly, like mowing a lawn — has become a popular practice. The catalog suggests that from a single sowing you can harvest for months. But I believe that after the first cutting, mesculin usually results in second-rate salads. Of course, if you spread a strongly seasoned fatty dressing on your greens, you won’t notice how bitter and dry they have become.

I prefer to grow looseleaf heads to full size so that their small inner leaves semi-blanch, as they’re supposed to, and then cut the entire head at the stem. I don’t allow mature heads to sit around uncut, wasting valuable space in my garden, because when they are only a few days too old they rapidly become bitter. I compost old lettuce. If you have chickens or rabbits, I’d suggest giving it to them — they like it. A single sowing of one variety remains in prime eating condition for only seven days in warm weather, so I plant each lettuce patch with several varieties of differing maturities, sown at the same time.And I make repeated sowings, usually about three weeks apart. Three weeks is about the longest period I can stretch the harvest of assorted varieties made on a single sowing date.

We try to eat one huge leafy green salad every day that it is possible to produce a green salad. In my climate, that’s 365 days a year. Our salad is large enough to be a meal in itself.Usually half of that salad is lettuce, so the kitchen needs about one mature looseleaf head every single day. One looseleaf head occupies about ten inches (25 centimeters) of row. Three weeks’ worth of lettuce, 21 heads, is about 18 row feet (5.5 meters). The short rows across my raised beds are about four feet (120 centimeters) long. So spring through summer, I start five such rows every three weeks. And going into the cool season, when the entire garden grows much more slowly, I’ll make larger plantings because when the sun is weak, nearly mature plants will slowly size up for weeks.

Saving seed. Lettuce is a self-pollinated annual that grows vegetatively for a time and then has seedstalks emerge (when the stalks emerge, the lettuce is said to be “bolting”). These become covered with tiny yellow flowers; each flower capsule forms only a few seeds. After the seed has ripened, the plant dies. Success at making seed depends on how warm and how long summer is where you live; it may also depend on how cold winter is.My winters are mild and occasionally frosty. So I sow my seed crop in mid-autumn and overwin-ter the seedlings outdoors without protection. In harsher locations the seed plants can be started under glass at the first signs of spring and set out the earliest possible date. Either way, the heads must be fully developed and probably must be bolting before summer heat arrives if the plants are to mature their seed load. Most varieties reach a critical point about six to eight weeks after the summer solstice when, prompted by shortening days, plants forming seed will switch over from ripening that seed load to growing vegetatively again. If your seed crop hasn’t matured by then, it won’t.

Although lettuce flowers are almost always self-pollinated, there is a slight tendency for crossing. If perfect purity is a big concern, isolate varieties by 50 feet (15 meters). If you are willing to yank out (or eat) anything visibly off-type, then don’t worry about isolating varieties and don’t be concerned if one plant in a thousand is a cross.Who knows? That unexpected cross might be bred into a new variety you’ll treasure.

The seeds ripen irregularly and tend to shatter, so as soon as you can see mature seeds on a particular branch, cut off that branch and place it on a tarp in an outbuilding to mature.When you have picked all the seedstalks and they are pretty much dried, drag the tarp into the sun and let the stalks dry to a crisp, then rub each stalk between your (gloved) hands, breaking up the dry flower capsules. Discard the twigs and straw. Put the dusty remainder into a large bucket and (wearing gloves) rub it between your hands until all flower parts have been fully powdered. Then winnow out the seed on a day with a gentle and steady breeze. There is not much difference in weight between the dust and the seed; if the breeze is too strong, you’ll lose most of your seed.My yields are not high. I suspect if I were in coastal southern California, where nights are warmer (and where most commercial lettuce seed is grown), I’d get double or more the yield I get on Tasmania. I try to let at least two plants from each variety I grow make seed every year. I give lots of it away as gifts.

Arugula is a near-wild leafy annual in the cabbage family. In small amounts it perks up salads.When cut early, before the flavor gets too peppery, it can be made into a salad all by itself. Buy a large seed packet because it must be sown frequently. The seed should be inexpensive.

In hot weather the leaves go from being pleasantly mild to being too strong to eat in under two weeks. If you want to harvest much before it turns bitter, give the plants fertile soil. I start about four row feet (120 centimeters) of arugula at least every three weeks. When I sow my lettuce patches, one extra short row is always arugula. Sprinkle the seeds thinly into the furrow so the seedlings touch at emergence, then thin progressively as you wish to eat it. Small seedlings are especially delicious.

In hot climates it is best to grow arugula in spring and again after summer’s heat breaks. I overwinter my seed crop, but where winter is too harsh for that, spring sowings will mature seed in summer.

I’m saddened when I see a corn-and-tomato gardener buying parsley seedlings in a garden center.This vegetable is not hard to grow from seed if only you know how to make the seeds come up. Pregermination helps, but is not essential. What is essential is starting the seeds earlier than someone who “puts in their garden” over one weekend in late spring can do.Midspring, about the time the apple trees are blooming or the daffodils have nearly finished, sprinkle the seed about a quarter inch (six millimeters) apart in a furrow and, if possible, cover it with a bit of finely textured mellow compost instead of soil. Germination is slow; it can take as long as three weeks, but at that time of year the soil naturally stays moist. If it doesn’t, you’ll have to keep it moist; water the row. Progressively thin until the plants stand about four inches (ten centimeters) apart. Then pluck leaves as wanted.

Figure 9.12: Leaf parsley at 60 days after emergence. Note how weak and slow-growing the root system is. Parsley is the only relative of the carrot that needs a bit of coddling.(Figure 65 in RDVC)

Parsley does not aggressively mine the subsoil as its relatives carrot and parsnip do. If you’re not getting as much production as you’d like, side-dress the row with something containing a good deal of nitrogen and make sure the plants are getting enough moisture. In mild-winter areas, parsley may continue producing all winter. In hot-summer areas it may have to be started after the heat of summer has passed. In that case, erect temporary shade over the rows and keep them moist.

Parsley is a biennial and a relative of the carrot.Make seed as you would for carrots.

To grow the best parsley leaf, think of it as a fragile root crop that makes edible leaves.There is a variety often called Hamburg that is grown for its edible roots, not the greens.These taste much like parsnip and may be eaten raw, grated into salads, or cooked.Grow these slow-to-mature roots as though producing carrots that need more growing space, maybe 5 by 18 inches (13 by 45 centimeters).

To my thinking, the carrot typifies the survival strategy of all biennial root crops — sneak a deep tap root through the opposition; then begin drawing on moisture and nutrition located deeper than its neighbors can reach. A supply of raw materials assured, it fills a storage chamber with surplus food. Then it rests over the winter. In spring it starts with a huge nutritional storehouse that it uses to rapidly overtop its neighbors and shade them out, then begins making seeds.

Figure 9.13: A chantenay carrot seven weeks after emergence. (Figure 61 in RDVC)

Growing details. It is easy to grow carrot tops; the edible part is not quite so easy. If you put in the necessary work at the right time and use decent seed, then eight out of ten plants should make a near-perfect carrot. If that isn’t your result using quality seed, then it is probably your fault. To succeed, keep this principle in mind: To be sweet and tender the root needs to develop rapidly; slow-growing, struggling plants make woody carrots that often are bitter.Three things contribute to rapid growth: enough soil fertility (but not too much or you’ll end up with more top than bottom); open, loose soil, especially a top foot (30 centimeters) that graciously allows the root to swell up as fast as it wishes to; a steady moisture supply in the subsoil. It’s best if the plant doesn’t have to struggle against too much competition for this third requirement.

Commercial crops are grown on light, sandy ground that is naturally open and loose. In hard soil, carrots must develop more fiber so as to be able to force the soil aside, making them tougher and irregularly shaped. If your soil tends to become compacted, you’ll need to dig in a large quantity of compost or well-rotted manure, perhaps as much as a two-inch-thick (five-centimeter) layer. But beware of using potent compost; if the layer of soil that the carrots themselves form in is too fertile, they can become hairy and may fork. Your carrots need to discover most of their nutrients in the subsoil.

Figure 9.14: The same carrot at 11 weeks, at a size most would consider barely large enough to eat. (Figure 62 in RDVC)

Providing the crop with a steady supply of moisture has more to do with thinning than with watering. Thinning is success with carrots. First, try not to sow too much seed. I thoroughly blend a heaping half teaspoon (2.5 milliliters) of strong carrot seed into a quart (liter) of fine sand or compost, then uniformly sprinkle this mixture into the bottom of 25 feet (8 meters) of furrow. I end up with evenly spaced seedlings standing about half an inch (1.25 centimeters) apart. If yours come up thicker than this, do some preliminary thinning right after germination to get them closer to this density.Don’t overthin, though; many seedlings die in their first month. As they grow, thin the row progressively, steadily reducing competition.About the time the tops are three to four inches (seven to ten centimeters) tall, there should be no more losses due to diseases. Then you should thin the row so that when the carrots mature, they will just touch. How far apart this will be depends on the size of your variety. Some are the size of your fingers; others may be as much as three inches across the top at maturity.

Varieties. Tender, juicy varieties bred for munching don’t have enough fiber to store well or grow large without cracking.The classics of this sort were called Nantes types.Now they have many different proprietary names. If you are growing carrots on heavier soils that require they have sufficient mechanical strength to push aside resistant earth when the roots are filling out, grow more fibrous types — traditionally called danvers, chantenay, berlicum, or fla-kee, but these days often given proprietary names. These are also better for overwintering in the earth or for storage in the cellar.

Harvest and storage. If you do not have a younger carrot patch coming along, harvest by removing every other one in the row.This is not always possible if the variety you’re growing has weakly attached tops; these sorts may only be harvested by digging. You will be amazed at how large some varieties of carrot can become while still remaining tender and sweet when they have little root-zone competition.

In mild climates, carrots will overwinter in the earth. In places where it can get severely frosty, covering the crowns by hilling up a few inches of soil over them will serve as protection.Where the soil freezes, the roots may be root-cellared in a barrel of moist sand.

Saving seed. The wild carrot is commonly called Queen Anne’s lace.The garden carrot was domesticated only recently, less than 500 years ago in fact, and crosses freely with Queen Anne’s lace. If there is none growing in your vicinity, you may grow carrot seed.

In spring, replant overwintered roots, carefully hand-selected for perfect configuration, about one foot (30 centimeters) apart in rows at least two feet (60 centimeters) apart. They will shoot and make flowers that will eventually turn yellow-brown as they curl up, wrapping the mature seed inside. Cut the flowers one by one as they are nearly dried out (before any seed is lost) and put them in a large open bucket or toss them onto a tarp in the shade under cover.When fully dry, put them in the sun one afternoon to dry to a crisp and then rub the flowers between (gloved) hands to separate out the seeds. Winnow out the dust and chaff. Carrot seed that did not get rained on while drying down and that fully matured before being cut will last many years if given decent storage.Thus it is possible for one gardener to grow seed for several varieties. Because the species is bee-pollinated and depends on outcrossing to maintain its vigor, do not make seed for more than one generation unless you are able to include at least 50 plants in the seedmaking process. A 25-foot-long by 4-foot-wide (762 by 120 centimeters) raised bed with a double row of carrots making seed will produce enough seed to last the neighborhood for a decade.

Figure 9.15: The same carrot at 15 weeks. If the carrot were not competing with other carrots, it might weigh nearly half a pound (220 grams) at this point; because it never stopped growing rapidly, it still would be sweet and tender. If allowed to continue growing, that carrot might weigh a pound (450 grams) by the time frost came and would still be good eating. (Figure 63 in RDVC).

Parsnips are like carrots with differences. Most varieties are longer than carrots, which means they need a deeper layer of loose topsoil to succeed. They have a slightly lower need for fertility and grow more slowly than carrots, but do not crack when quite big as some varieties of carrot will.The biggest difficulty is getting short-lived parsnip seeds to germinate. Most seed lots are faltering only two years after harvest. Growing your own parsnip seed is a good idea. I sell my extra seed at the local garden center.My neighbors buy it eagerly because they know it will come up! It also grows a uniform crop because it is produced from hand-selected roots. Each year this sale earns enough to pay for all that I wish to buy at the garden center.

Growing details. Fresh strong parsnip seeds sprout slowly; rarely more than 25 percent emerge, so get quality seed in a big packet and sow it thickly. Cheap stuff makes mostly misshapen roots if it comes up at all.

If parsnips are started in spring, when naturally moist earth would make it easy, they’ll have become so enormous by autumn that they’re almost inedible and may be showing damage from insects and soil diseases. I start them on or shortly after the solstice so they size up when weather gets cooler. Gardeners living closer to the equator might start their parsnips closer to the equinox and consider them a crop that grows during the cool season. It can be daunting to get the seed to sprout in the heat, and the flavor of parsnips improves a lot after they go through some stiff frosts. Sow thickly. It helps to shade the furrows or to cover the seed with compost instead of soil. Pregermination and fluid drilling also help. Some gardeners place thin wood planks over the furrow and check under them every day; as soon as some seedlings are emerging, they remove the planks.Watering every day really helps and, again, sowing thickly helps.Then thin progressively and otherwise grow them as you would carrots.

Harvest and storage. Parsnips usually must be dug.When the earth gets close to freezing, the whole patch may be dug and the roots cellared in a barrel of moist sand, as carrots are. Some gardeners leave a part of the crop in the earth over the winter and find that when the soil thaws in spring they can still be dug and are quite good eating.

Saving seed. Save seed as you would for carrots. To avoid inbreeding depression of vigor, use at least 25 roots in the seed crop.Grow seed only from carefully hand-selected roots that show exactly the traits you want. Segregate the strongest and largest seed from the main central flowers and use that for yourself; give the rest away (or sell it).The seed falls from the flowers when it’s fully dry,much as dill seed does, so cut off individual flowers one by one at the point when one or two seeds have detached. Let the flowers finish drying in a big bucket or spread them on a tarp under cover.

These vegetables are so similar that their cultural differences can be described in a few lines.

Growing details. All are medium-demand crops. All appear to be root crops, but kohlrabi is actually a swollen stem forming a ball-shaped vegetable above ground.Accurate spacing and a steady supply of soil moisture are essential for all of these crops. Except when using costly hybrid kohlrabi seed, I sow in furrows, then thin progressively and accurately to enough separation that the edible parts will not quite bump at maturity. Turnip and rutabaga seeds are tiny, necessitating shallow sowing, but they usually sprout rapidly and vigorously. If you are sowing in hot weather, it is best to cover them with fine compost and water daily.

Salad radishes are annuals; shortly after bulbing they go to seed. In hot weather, radishes go to seed even more rapidly, taste more pungent, and quickly get pithy when oversized, so in most cases the salad radish is either grown as a spring crop or is sown late in summer for harvest in autumn. In mild-winter regions it is sown in autumn for winter harvest.Make sure that by the time radish tops are about three inches (7 centimeters) tall, they are at their final spacing. If you treasure radishes, I suggest making two sowings about 10 to 14 days apart in spring and two or three sowings a few weeks apart at the end of the season.

Winter radishes act like biennials; they go to seed after overwintering. Do not sow them until several weeks (or more) after the solstice or they may go to seed in autumn.They form large roots that have thick protective skins.My favorite is Black Spanish. Peeled, coarsely grated, and dressed with a bit of olive oil, finely minced onion, and black pepper, it makes a great salad. Black Spanish needs a spacing of about 6 by 18 inches (15 by 45 centimeters); most winter radish varieties need this much room. In regions with freezing soil, most types are quite cellarable.

Turnips, like radishes, are spring and autumn vegetables; they’re cool-season crops in hot places with mild winters. But if you grow them for spring harvest, you’ll have to manage their tendency to go to seed before sizing up by encouraging them to grow extremely rapidly (and by harvesting them) before they bolt.When I was new to this game, I grew spring turnips for the challenge of it. Now I don’t struggle and only sow them at the end of summer. Turnips will root-cellar; in my mild-winter climate they withstand the autumn/winter frosts while sizing up. But if left in their beds too long into winter, they become pithy and dry. The Asian hybrid varieties are excellent eaten raw.

Rutabagas (also called swedes) are an autumn crop that in mild-winter climates have an excellent ability to stand in the garden through the entire winter, remaining in good eating condition until they make seed in spring. They’ll get quite a bit larger than turnips; I thin them to about eight inches (20 centimeters) apart in the row. Rutabagas are probably the most cellarable of the lot.

I lived in British Columbia for a few years and discovered rutabagas in Canadian markets were thinly coated with wax, such as is often put on the skins of cold-storage apples. I suspect the home gardener with a root cellar could melt paraffin or beeswax floating atop a large kettle of hot water, thin it by blending in a bit of vegetable oil, let the water cool somewhat (but not to the point that the paraffin became solid again), and then quickly plunge roots in and out, sealing their pores to prevent them from dehydrating. Rutabagas make a welcome change from spuds.

Kohlrabi, the small-sized variety, is a difficult spring crop — not because it goes to seed like turnips do, but because it rapidly gets too woody to eat in hot weather. But as an autumn crop there is nothing better! Kohlrabi is another vegetable you should not grow from cheap seed, of which there is too much about. If you start with a top-quality (usually hybrid) variety and then grow it right, 98 percent of your plants should make near-perfect balls the size of grapefruit, sweet and crisp, tasting better than the giant varieties. I sow hybrid kohlrabi in clusters of three or four seeds, half an inch (1.25 centimeters) deep, on stations of 5 by 18 inches (13 by 45 centimeters). Then I thin the clusters progressively so that by the time they have three true leaves, only one plant stands at each spot. I first sow about 30 days before the weather will begin to significantly cool down; thus by the time the bulbs begin forming, the weather suits them.With proper genetics, the bulb will slowly enlarge in cool weather without getting woody, slowly enlarging. Beware: Some commercial varieties are bred for a quick once-over harvest and don’t hold long after reaching marketable size before becoming woody.

In my mild-winter climate, I make a second sowing to size up after the weather turns really chilly.This lot remains in prime eating condition until the spring warm-up begins. Kohlrabi is also cellarable if the roots are left attached, the large leaves are cut off to facilitate air circulation, and they are replanted in a bed of damp soil. I peel mine and eat them cut in chunks dipped into curry-flavored mayonaise. (Raw cauliflower and Asian turnips are also good munching that way.)

Pests and diseases. Cabbage root maggots are a big problem with inthe-ground brassica crops in Cascadia and the United Kingdom. However, the rutabaga’s thick skin seems to protect it; the skin gets scarred up, but the insides remain edible. The edible part of kohlrabi, forming as it does several inches above the soil line, is not invaded by maggots, and their presence in the roots does not do major damage during cool weather. Turnips and radishes, however, are nearly impossible in Cascadia unless you use fine-mesh row covers. I do not know enough to comment about problems in other climates. Where I live now there are no root maggot difficulties of any kind. Hallelujah!

Saving seed. All these bee-pollinated outcrossing crops suit home seed-saving because they are small plants; the gardener can maintain a large enough population to prevent inbreeding depression of vigor. All are members of the Brassica family (fortunately, they are different species that don’t cross), and their seed is handled as described for kale.All require the closest selection for perfect shape or else your line will rapidly degenerate.

Salad radishes, if you recall, are annuals.Grow a large bed in spring and, out of 100 or so plants, select the most perfect 25 or 30 as you’re harvesting for the table. Pinch off their larger leaves and replant them one per square foot (30 by 30 centimeters). Soon they’ll be growing again and putting up seedstalks.

Winter radishes are intrinsically more vigorous. I have found that 10 or 15 plants is plenty for maintaining the gene pool’s vigor. They must overwinter first. If cellared, replant in spring, giving each at least two square feet (1,850 square centimeters); four square feet (3,700 square centimeters) is better.

If you grow turnips primarily as a spring crop, let the last bolters (with good shape and other desirable qualities) of the spring sowing go on to make seed. If your interest in turnips is as an autumn/winter crop, grow seed from overwintered roots.

I have been saving seed of a local variety of rutabaga for four generations now, working from only a dozen plants in each generation, and have noticed no deterioration. Give each turnip, rutabaga, or kohlrabi at least four square feet (3,700 square centimeters) to make seed in.

Kohlrabi seed is produced like that of the other root crops. The vegetable is strongly biennial, and perfect specimens should be transplanted into a seed-making area after overwintering. If they overwintered in the garden, snip off at least half their leaf area (take the largest leaves) in early spring and set them in the earth right up to their crowns.

When grown for autumn or winter harvest, consider these vegetables medium-demand crops. For spring harvest they are high-demand.Why the difference?

Because they bolt in spring, so the plants must be pushed to harvestable size before going to seed — and that means the highest possible fertility, especially nitrogen.However, when sown for autumn or winter use, the plant will over-winter before bolting (or possibly freeze out), so there is no need to make the maximum growth at the fastest possible speed.

Growing details, spring. Both species will germinate in cool soil. In fact, where winter is severe, some gardeners sow spinach seed thickly in autumn with the reasonable hope that some of it will sprout shortly after the snow melts off. There can be many mysterious seedling disappearances in spring; sowing thickly and then thinning progressively insures against failure. Use strong compost or, better, COF made with some tankage or even one part highly potent bloodmeal instead of one part seedmeal.Work it into the bed before sowing, then side-dress closer to the rows of seedlings as soon as they start forming their first true leaf. Where I live, if the weather cooperates (meaning if the sun shines most days), the plants will get large enough before starting to bolt to make it seem worthwhile growing them.

Growing details, summer.Almost all varieties go to seed shortly after the seedlings begin growing. However, there are a few spinach varieties, bred for reluctance to bolt, that can be grown in summer.The seed catalog will proudly mention this trait.There is also one Asian mustard that will not bolt in summer. It is mild flavored, with broad off-white stalks, not as fancy as some of the tsi-tsoi types, but still pretty good. Johnny’s Selected Seeds has a hybrid pac-choi for summer;Territorial still offers the older OP variety I have known and grown since the early 1980s.

Growing details, autumn/winter. Start mustard or spinach after the heat of summer has ended or a month after the solstice in short-season climates. They grow quickly; thin progressively.

Harvest. Except when thinning, do not cut whole plants unless they’re starting to put up seedstalks. It’s better to cut or break off large outer leaves. Do not take so many that the plant is crippled — one leaf per week from each plant in the row is about right. In spring, at the first signs of bolting, harvest the patch and resow the area to another crop. In autumn, if growing season remains but production nearly ceases, feed them.

Saving seed. Mustard is a bee-pollinated brassica. To maintain your variety’s vigor, you must insure its gene pool contains at least a dozen plants; 50 would be better. Spinach is wind-pollinated and also has plants with gender: male, female, and hermaphrodite. The males only make pollen. Because roughly half of the seedmaking bed will be females, you need a starting population of at least 50 plants to maintain a spinach variety.

Close selection to a perfect type is not important in either species, however, any tendency to make seed ahead of the others is a highly undesirable trait. Early bolters should be destroyed before they can release any pollen. Spinach seed is generally made only from spring-sown plants, although it sometimes overwinters in mild-winter climates when not too much rain falls. It is not usually cold that kills it, but humidity. Mustard seed will mature from either spring-sown or autumn-sown plants (if they survive winter).

One advantage of growing your own seed is that it costs you nothing. In that case, consider using spinach as a spring-sown green manure.Early in spring, broadcast seed on roughly hoed beds, then cover it with broadcast manure or compost or shallowly hoe in the seed. The species makes a dense, tender root system that decomposes rapidly and leaves the earth in fine, friable condition. As soon as some of the plants start putting up seedstalks, chop the whole bed in with an ordinary sharp garden hoe.Wait a week for it to decompose; then, with a bit of raking, you’ll have made an excellent seedbed. Mustards can be used as autumn green-manure crops where winter is severe. Start them at least 40 days before killing frosts.

Straight-shanked onions are easier to grow than bulbing sorts. There is no need to push them into rapid growth and no need to sow them early in spring because scallions continue growing steadily until they either freeze out in winter or make seed the following spring.

Growing details. All onions prefer light, open soils, like loams or sands, and won’t grow fast in heavy ground. If you garden on clay, prepare their beds with large quantities of compost or well-rotted manure in an effort to lighten it up.Digging a two-inch-thick (five-centimeter) layer into a clayey onion bed wouldn’t be excessive. Scallions will eventually grow quite large if given only moderate fertility, but they can’t grow at all well if they can’t make roots.

I prefer to grow my scallions rather crowded and then harvest them by thinning. When the soil is naturally loose, individual plants can be gently tugged out of the row. That way, a single patch satisfies the kitchen’s needs for the year. If you’re gardening where summers get really hot and humid, it probably would be best to sow scallions after the main heat of summer has passed. Consider them a winter vegetable.

Figure 9.16: Two onion seedlings: the one on the left grows in open, loose earth; the one on the right grows in heavy, compact ground. Both are drawn to the same scale.

Pests and diseases. The minuscule sap-sucking thrip troubles commercial growers because it reduces the ultimate size of the bulb; rarely do home gardeners realize that there may be the odd one in their onions.

Onions of all sorts get fungal/mold diseases, especially in humid weather; these the gardener does notice. Molds and mildews can be serious trouble. Prevention is the best cure. First, give your plants more space so they get better air circulation. Judging only by their root systems, scallions could be grown on 12-inch (30-centimeter) between-row spacing, but I recommend 18 inches (45 centimeters) because it allows more air to flow around the plants. To enhance air circulation, thin early, thoroughly, and progressively. Small scallions can be finely minced as though they were chives. Second, after harvest, clean up all onion trash and compost it; this action provides fewer overwintering havens for disease organisms.

Onion molds can invade the vascular system. Once they are inside the plant, only systemic fungicides of the sorts commercial growers use will save the crop. It is possible that frequent spraying (every few days) with mild external fungicides like lime sulphur or compost tea will prevent infection. I have found that leeks and garlic have far higher resistance to these diseases then onions do.

Figure 9.17: A two-month-old onion seedling in good soil. Notice the minimal root development. (Figure 7 in RDVC)

Varieties.Most seed companies these days sell only Allium fistulosum varieties, also known as Welsh onions.However, Stokes still offers my favorite, the Lisbon onion, which is Allium cepa and will cross with other bulbing onions, which are also all A. cepa.Why do I prefer Lisbon? Because, although smaller and more trouble to prepare for the table, it is mild, tender, and sweet, while Welsh onions tend to be a bit hotter and tougher. Lisbons, however, are not very mold resistant.

Topsetting onions are a less-refined and usually easier to grow medium-demand crop. They are a non-bulbing perennial, much like a giant chive. But instead of forming a seedmaking flower, they form little bulblets on top. The weight of maturing bulblets makes the stalk fall over. Then the bulblets self-sow a foot (30 centimeters) or so away from the plant and start another plant. That’s why this sort is sometimes called “walking onions.” Harvest the stalks one by one as needed before the bulblets form. Unmanaged topsetting onions that walk too far can become a pest.To grow them, plant a few bulblets begged from a neighbor, or a bit of a root crown.

Potato onions are actually a type of shallot with medium-demand fertility requirements. They have two uses: the bulbs can be used as rather pungent cooking onions that store well; the tops taste good, make an acceptable substitute for scallions, and tend to be far more mold resistant than the usual onion variety.To grow them, get one bulb (or a few) and plant it shallowly in spring (or in autumn in climates with mild winters). Snip the odd stalk as needed for scallions. Otherwise, treat it as though you were growing garlic. This is an excellent alternative for someone having difficulty growing the usual bulbing onions.

Saving seed. Saving seed from scallions entirely suits the gardener because 25 or more plants don’t use much space. If a bed of scallions will over-winter where you garden, it’ll go to seed in spring. Allow the seedballs to mature on the plants and harvest them before the small black seeds start falling out of their capsules. Watch each plant; when you see a few mature seeds showing in one, tug the stalk out of the ground, place it on a tarp in the shade under cover, and allow it to continue ripening and drying.When the stalk has become brown and crisp, the seed should be totally done. Then clip off the seedballs and put them in a large shallow bowl; bring the bowl into the house and put it in a warm place until the seedheads themselves are crisp enough that when you rub them between your hands, the seeds will pop out of their capsules. After rubbing, winnow in a light breeze. You may find this surprising, but your own seed, allowed to fully ripen this slow and patient way, will usually be superior to anything bought commercially. Alliums are bee-pollinated and need about half a mile (800 meters) of isolation from other onion flowers in the same species (as mentioned earlier, there are two onion species).

I produce about 50 heads of garlic each year that hang in braids decorating our kitchen, and another 30 to give away as gifts.

Growing details. Garlic overwinters as a small plant. In spring it rapidly grows leaves, the leaves make surplus food that is stored in belowground bulbs, and then the plant goes dormant. In every variety I’ve ever grown successfully, bulbing happens while days are long and still lengthening. It is probably different with varieties suited to tropical latitudes.

To plant garlic, first break the heads up into individual cloves. One clove becomes one plant that forms one head containing many cloves. If you use only the larger cloves for seed, you’ll harvest larger heads. Plant cloves root-side down, about two inches (five centimeters) deep. If the plants bulb in compacted soil, the heads will be small, so if you have heavy soil, lighten it up as though you were growing scallions (or any other allium) by blending in a goodly amount of compost or well-aged manure before planting.

Most varieties are harvested before the summer solstice; a few very late ones are dug shortly after that.The size of the head is completely determined by the size the top has achieved before lengthening days trigger bulbing. If you want big heads, you have to push the tops for size during the months this can be done — give them fertile soil.

Garlic may be planted early in spring, but the heads will form somewhat later and will be considerably smaller. Even where the soil freezes, garlic should be planted to overwinter unless that proves impossible where you live. David Ronniger, from snowy northern Idaho, plants his garlic late in September. He says that if the little plants are given some mulch before the snow falls, they survive winter and start growing again first thing in spring, with a big head start on anything sown in the spring. I sow mine (in a maritime climate) about a month after the equinox.

Garlic produced in a climate that allows the tops to grow vigorously over the entire cool season (in California, for example) gives the highest yield. If that climate features a predictably dry spring, there is no risk of rots occurring in the ground, and the crop will be of the highest quality as well as the highest yield. That is why almost all North American commercial garlic is grown around Gilroy, California.

As soon as growth resumes in the spring (relatives of the alliums such as daffodils and crocus will come up at this time), I suggest side-dressing the garlic patch with high-nitrogen fertilizer, COF, or chicken manure compost. Keep it well weeded; the shallow roots are not able to compete. Your entire intention should be to grow the largest possible top before bulbing begins.

Exactly when bulbing starts depends on the variety. A month before bul-bing starts, there is no longer any point doing more fertilizing. From the time bulbing first begins, dig a plant once a week to learn by observation how your variety matures. If you are routinely irrigating, keep in mind you’ll harvest higher-quality garlic if it is dug from soil that is just barely damp.

Pests and diseases. Insects and disease are usually not a problem above ground, but rots will happen if the soil is too moist when bulbing is close to finishing. There are virus diseases that infect garlic and carry over from year to year in the cloves.Most of these are called “yellows” because they cause premature yellowing of the leaves and considerably reduce the yield. It’s to your advantage to start out with disease-free seed.

Varieties. There are many varieties of garlic. Some only suit tropical daylength patterns; most varieties available in seed catalogs are bred for temperate latitudes. In Australia, much garlic for eating is imported from tropical China; these varieties don’t perform well farther from the equator. I suggest visiting ethnic specialty markets (Greeks and Italians use a lot of garlic in their cooking) and see if you can find some locally grown garlic for sale; use that for planting stock. This will save you quite a bit of money compared to buying “seed” garlic.

There are two basic types of garlic: hardnecks and softnecks.When hard-necks start bulbing, they also put up a central stalk crowned with tiny bulblets.Mature bulblets may be planted; each will make a small garlic plant that makes a small head the first year.Often this first-year head contains only one large round clove. Unless your intention is to rapidly increase your planting stock for the purpose of selling garlic, it is best to clip off that seedstalk as soon as it appears.This allows the plant to put its entire resources into forming cloves below ground. Hardnecks are difficult to plait because the stalk remains.

Softnecks do not make this secondary set of bulblets. The entire top shrivels as onion leaves do, so they are easier to plait. Softnecks also tend to store longer and have slightly milder flavors (but not always). However, their cloves tend to be a bit smaller. I grow one hardneck and two softneck varieties.

Finally, there is a non-garlic garlic, called Elephant garlic. It actually is a giant leek with a garlicky flavor. It also puts up a seedstalk, but one that makes seeds. Gourmets disdain Elephant garlic, although in terms of bulk yield it may be the highest-producing form. There is a serious downside to Elephant garlic; as many varieties of leeks do when making seed, it forms little corms at the base of the bulbs (gladiolus bulbs also do this). Inevitably, some corms are overlooked at harvest and resprout. It can be nearly impossible to eliminate this crop from a bed it grew in without more than a year of constant hoeing.

At first look, growing garlic seems an attractive and highly profitable homestead enterprise, needing little land to make a big income. But there is an obstacle — the labor crunch that comes at the time the heads must be peeled and dried. There are never enough hands in the family to process nearly as much garlic as there is labor in the family to grow. There is also a lot of risk should the weather go against you and turn rainy just before harvest. So before you invest huge amounts of money (for seed), time, and energy into this as a business venture, I suggest you first figure out how to grow three or four different varieties whose maturity is spread out over enough weeks that you can process the harvest. Then increase your own planting stock for a few years while you work out the peeling and drying of large quantities.

Harvest. Dig the plants when the cloves have fully segmented but before the heads begin to burst open or otherwise deteriorate (dig one every week and learn your variety’s behavior). Gently shake off the soil. Bursting heads permit soil to enter; these heads won’t ever store well, and they don’t look attractive, either. Garlic dug before maturity makes excellent cooking stock; because its flavor is milder, it is especially good in salads. Garlic heads dug before segmentation has started are like small garlic-flavored onions, excellent in stir-fries.When it’s time for the main harvest, dig all remaining plants and carefully spread them out under cover in the shade with good air circulation. Dry the plants for two or three days and then strip off two or three layers of leaves. Peeling removes all clinging soil and exposes the beauty of the bulbs. Then allow drying to continue (it’s best to dry them slowly) until the leaves are dry enough to plait, or else let them completely shrivel and clip them off an inch (2.5 centimeters) or so above the bulb. Some growers who braid garlic allow the leaves to shrivel almost completely and then remoisten them, softening them up enough to braid. If you don’t hang braids in the kitchen, put the heads in an onion sack and hang that; lots of air circulation is crucial to long storage.

Saving seed. A portion of your harvest is your seed stock. I always reserve the appropriate number of my most perfect heads for planting stock.

The vegetables in this group require abundant soil moisture throughout their growth and/or require extremely fertile soil and/or have other tricky aspects.

Asparagus is here because starting it is an investment taking several years to pay off, and it also demands good management if the bed is not to be ruined.

Let me warn you in advance: This section is complex because I am not a Pollyanna garden writer. I’m an ex-seedsman who wants his friends to grasp the real story.

Growing details. If this weakly rooted crop is to thrive, not just survive, it needs loose, fertile, constantly moist soil; minimal competition from other onions nearby; and no weeds to contend with.The species is disastrously prone to mildew-like diseases, which is another reason not to crowd the onion bed. These diseases rarely cause trouble when the crop grows in dry air with enough elbow room to allow good air circulation. Humidity is the prime reason bulbing onions are not grown during the summer in the southern United States. Mildew is the reason that onion growers on Tasmania use fields exposed to almost-constant sea breezes.

Figure 9.18: A long-day storage onion plant 105 days after direct seeding. Bulbing is half completed. Little additional root development will happen from this point. (Figure 9 in RDVC)

The onion grows vegetatively until a certain date (based on daylength at the latitude it is being grown at); then it forms a bulb whose size depends almost entirely on the size the tops achieved before the start of bulbing. The changeover to bulbing has little to do with how long the plant has grown. Usually if you have achieved tall husky tops before bulbing starts, you’ll get big bulbs. Getting a big top is especially important when growing sweet intermediate-day onions because if these types don’t get big, they won’t be sweet. There are three basic sorts of onions used in temperate climates:

• Short-day varieties are bred to be grown at latitudes below 35°, where winter is mild enough that they don’t freeze out. Short-day varieties are sown during the cool season (autumn/winter), and overwinter in the field as small plants.They finish bulbing before the summer solstice and are usually mild, tender, and sweet. Rarely are they long-keeping onions. A few varieties are hardy enough to overwinter in a maritime climate.

• Intermediate-day varieties are intended for growing between 32° and 38° latitude. They are sown in the spring and tend to be on the sweet side.

• Long-day varieties are intended for growing from 38° latitude on, as far toward the pole as agriculture can be done. They are sown in the spring and tend to be hard, pungent, and long-keeping, exactly what is needed in a climate with a severe winter.

To fully comprehend using the three types of onions, you need to understand how daylengths work at different latitudes. (The full explanation of this belongs in a geography text, not a garden book.) To tickle your memory, let me remind you that on the two equinoxes, which occur around March 21 and September 21, every place on earth has a day of exactly 12 hours and a night of exactly 12 hours duration. The longest and shortest days occur on June 21 and December 21. One more crucial thing: the farther from the equator you go, the longer the longest day is; the shorter, the shortest day is. For example, at 45° latitude the longest day is exactly 17 hours from first light to last light, while at 35° latitude the longest day will be only 15 hours, 35 minutes.

Suppose we breed an onion variety that will start bulbing when the daylength is both decreasing and has reached 15 hours and 34 minutes. If grown at 35° latitude, that onion will begin bulbing one day after the solstice. If grown at 45° latitude, that same onion will begin bulbing either February 5 or August 5, depending if you’re in the northern or southern hemisphere. August 5 might be a perfectly appropriate date for the start of bulbing of a storage variety grown at 45°N latitude, leaving the bulb a month or more of warm weather to finish sizing up and be cured, but that same variety, grown at 35°N, hardly has a chance to take advantage of the summer to grow a big top before bulbing starts, resulting in a small onion that matured far too early to keep through the winter. A spring-planted onion bred for the mid-latitudes (i.e., bred to start bulbing at about 14 hours of daylength) would grow vege-tatively until mid-August. But if an onion that started bulbing at 14 hours of daylength were grown at 45°N, it wouldn’t start bulbing until August 28 (or February 28 in the southern hemisphere).This would result in maturity being so late that autumn would have arrived before the onion had finished growing — and you can’t cure an onion in cool, humid conditions.

Please thoroughly consider the preceding paragraph; read it over a few times until you fully grasp the concept. Then it should be clear to you why I say that the main tricks to growing large-sized intermediate-day and long-day onions are: (1) to use a variety that matches your latitude, and (2) to direct-seed them as early as possible in spring (or even late in winter in a greenhouse or heated frame) and then supply conditions that will help them grow as big as possible before they must bulb. Fortunately, onions transplant easily, especially in cool weather. Gardeners seeking to produce lunkers often grow their seedlings in flats or trays, putting them out in the garden as soon as spring weather settles down a bit.When directly seeded as early as possible, bulbing varieties won’t achieve “lunker” class, but still make a respectable harvest if they otherwise get what they need in terms of fertility, soil conditions, and moisture.

So what about short-day varieties? These grow vegetatively during that part of the year when the days are shorter, and bulb when daylength increases. They are the sweetest, mildest sort and are my favorite type for eating raw with bits of aged cheese and a few olives, or sliced into salads.

The onion is frost-hardy, but not infinitely so; tiny seedlings are not as hardy as plants with three or four leaves. So short-day onions are usually grown where winters are only a bit frosty at worst. Of all the sorts of bulbing onions, these are the trickiest because if the plant should happen to grow too well during an unusually mild winter, if it should get too big too soon, the plants will fail to make bulbs and will, instead, produce seedstalks (called “bolters”; bolters are useless for the table). The key to success with them is to divine the correct sowing date.The formation of seedheads (instead of bulbs) is triggered when their growth stops and resumes several times over winter after the plant reaches a minimum number of leaves. In simple terms, if the plant has not gotten larger than a lead pencil when its growth is checked in winter, it will still make bulbs. If its stalk is thicker than a lead pencil and harsh winter weather checks its growth, it will almost certainly make seed and not bulbs.This means you should sow onions later in the autumn rather than earlier: early enough that the soil is still so warm that the seeds will sprout and the plant will grow a few leaves, will become big enough to withstand a bit of frost, but not so early that it will grow big before spring and become a seed crop. It also means it is wise not to make the soil super-fertile when sowing short-day onions. Instead, you should side-dress the crop heavily as soon as it has securely resumed growth in spring — i.e., when the ornamental bulbs like crocus or daffodil, onion’s relatives, have begun coming up.

One special case with short-day varieties: Some have been bred to be extraordinarily cold-hardy. These can be grown over winter in maritime climates.

Gardeners living on the boundary between short-day and medium-day territory who have a greenhouse and the desire to grow prizewinning lunkers may start both short-day and medium-day varieties in flats about the time of the shortest day of the year, grow them as fast as possible under protection, and then transplant them out to their beds as soon as conditions settle. Gardeners who live where winter is severe and who have a heated greenhouse or hotbed may start medium- or long-day varieties during winter between the solstice and the equinox, grow them as fast as possible in a greenhouse or frame, and transplant them out as early as possible.However, growing lunkers is not necessary.With far less trouble you’ll harvest nearly as many pounds per square foot growing medium-sized bulbs on somewhat denser spacing.

Remember that bulbing onions, like almost all other alliums, require extremely fertile, airy, always moist soil.The usual procedure for all types is to sow seeds thinly in furrows and thin progressively so that by the time the seedlings have achieved the diameter of lead pencils, they stand as far apart in the furrow as you hope they’ll be at maturity — usually three to four inches (seven to ten centimeters) apart unless you’re growing a small-bulb variety. Keep the crop well-irrigated until bulbing is about half completed and then hope the soil will be rather dry at the time the shriveling tops fall over. There is no point in side-dressing or foliar feeding after (or even a few weeks before) bulbing begins. Otherwise, grow them like scallions.

Varieties. As hybrids have taken over all commercial applications, the classic OP sorts, lacking the loving attention of plant breeders, have degenerated into something nonproductive. (Translation of my polite phrases into plain English: Do not buy cheap seed.) One exception to this concerns only a half million Tasmanians, whose island has an industry growing long-day onions of an OP variety called Creamgold; seed stocks for Creamgold are still excellent.Make sure you know if you’re dealing with short-, medium-, or long-day varieties and grow them accordingly.

Harvest and storage. All sorts may be eaten as scallions (spring onions) before bulbing begins.When about half the tops have fallen over, push down the rest. Then wait a few days and pull them from the earth. It might help to loosen the soil a bit with a shovel first. Ideally, let them lie on dry soil in the sun to cure for a few days. If the soil isn’t dry or the weather isn’t settled, bring them indoors, spread them on a tarp under cover, and allow them to dry until the tops have completely shriveled. Onions in storage need lots air circulation and cool, dry conditions. I suggest begging some onion sacks from the local supermarket and storing your harvest in these bags, hanging them from strong hooks.

Saving seed. In maritime and other mild-winter climates, please do not produce onion seed by sowing seed late in summer. This shortcut does not permit you to select perfect bulbs and reject off-types; in the seed trade, this production method is called “seed-to-seed” and is only done by primary growers of the cheapest home-garden seed, unethical businesspeople who do not care if their product actually makes many bulbs. Always grow onion seed by planting mature, hand-selected bulbs. Choose well-wrapped, middle-sized bulbs with the correct shape and narrow necks (which usually result in longer storage). You should include at least 50 bulbs in the gene pool.Where winter is severe, plant the bulbs out in spring after wintering them over; set them about one foot (30 centimeters) apart in rows two feet (60 centimeters) apart. Plan on staking up or otherwise propping up the seedstalks.Where winter is mild, bulbs may be set out in autumn (or late in summer if they’re sprouting). Otherwise, grow the seed as though for scallions.

Depending on your climate, raising this slow-growing vegetable can be easy or daunting. In a maritime climate, leeks effortlessly withstand winter, sizing up during mild periods and holding fast when the weather turns really chilly. In this circumstance, leeks are not difficult because you have lots of time to wait for them to get big. Where autumn rapidly turns freezing, leeks must be pushed to make the most rapid possible growth and then harvested before it gets too cold. This means you must use techniques that allow for the earliest possible sowing and provide ideal soil conditions throughout their seemingly endless growing period.Where summers get too hot for them (and for most other members of the onion family), leeks must be started after the worst heat of summer breaks. This gives them little time to size up because in all three situations the leek, having overwintered, will go to seed shortly after the spring equinox. So in the American south or in the warmer parts Down Under, growing leeks also means sowing after the end of hot weather and then pushing them hard with maximum fertility and soil moisture.

Growing details. Leeks take 150 to 180 days to achieve admirable size. I wouldn’t intentionally grow leeks to eat when they are small; in that case it would be easier to grow scallions (spring onions). In all climates, start them as soon as possible in a carefully prepared nursery bed where the seedlings can be given ideal conditions. I find that a single four-foot-long (120-centimeter) row of seedlings produces enough to transplant for my garden and the gardens of two friends. Take a small bit of bed or row and amend it with at least two inches (five centimeters) of your best compost or well-aged manure, well mixed in. Also give it COF or chicken manure compost or some other rich source of complete plant nutrients that becomes rapidly available to the plants. Then sow the seeds rather densely, say, 12 seeds to the inch (2.5 centimeters). In a maritime climate, do this when convenient in spring after the weather has settled; about when the apple trees are blooming.

In mild-winter/hot-summer climates, start leeks on the earliest possible date after the main heat of summer that you can be sure to get germination. It would be wise to presprout the seeds. Consider putting the nursery row under a structure that provides about 40 percent shade for the first month.

Now, GROW those seedlings. If you get a good germination, thin them to about six to the inch (2.5 centimeters) after a month or so. Side-dress the seedlings with a bit of extra fertilizer if they aren’t growing really fast (for leeks). If you can manage it, don’t ever let this little bit of row get dry. In my maritime climate, depending on variety, it takes leeks about 90 days to get to the size of lead pencils.That is transplanting size and is also about when they are getting far too crowded on a spacing of six to the inch. Leeks are a special case in terms of competition; it is desirable for them to compete in moderation because struggling against each other makes them “leggy,” creating a larger gap between the roots and the place on the stem where the first leaf emerges. This elongation is desirable, as you’ll soon read.

Immediately before transplanting, dig up the entire seedling row, gently shaking the earth from their roots while doing as little damage to the roots as possible. Now separate them by size (large, medium, and small) and closely inspect them. If you’re planning on growing your own leek seed, sort them again within the medium-sized category and remove any that show a swelling at the bottom. Put those without a perfectly straight shank back with the large ones. These big ones and nonperfect medium-sized ones are the seedlings you’ll replant to grow for the table. The medium-sized ones with straight shanks and the longest space between root and first leaf are the ones to grow on for a seed crop. (If you’re growing seed, make sure there are at least 25 in this lot.) If you have neighbors to whom you can give leek seedlings, take the small ones, replant them shallowly in the leek nursery, spaced at about half an inch (1.25 centimeters) apart, and grow them on like scallions for another month or so before digging them again and giving them away.

Now, grasp the big and medium-sized seedlings in large handfuls, held so that their roots are all at the same position, and with a sharp knife cut off approximately half the leafy part (not including the length of their stem); with less leaf they won’t have to draw so much water when they are put back into the earth. This insures 100 percent success with transplanting. (Do this with the rest of your seedlings, too — the ones for gifts and those for making seed.) Keep bare-root seedlings out of the sun. I put them in a bucket, roots down, with about a quarter inch (six millimeters) of water on the bottom of the bucket. This will hold them while you prepare a place to transplant them.

When preparing soil for the “for eating” transplants, dig it deep. Make their bed as loose and as fertile as you possibly can.With a pointed stick about 1½ inches (four centimeters) in diameter, poke a hole in the soil about eight inches (20 centimeters) deep and large enough around that the seedling (and its roots) may be dropped in. Bottom out the seedling and then draw it back up so that the roots are stretched out, pointing downward.When the first leaf that emerges from the stalk is at the same level as the soil’s surface, push in earth to fill the hole and hold that seedling in place. The part that is underground will make a white shank, the most desirable part to eat. (This is why you grew the seedlings to make them as leggy as possible.) Side-dress a bit of fertilizer along those rows in another month or so, and if you can, pull up a bit of earth against the stalks with your hoe as they grow.Only do this when you can avoid getting soil into the lower leaf notches; soil in the leaf notches will be taken into the kitchen at harvest. Hilling up more earth increases the length of the white shank.

Pests and diseases. Pests and diseases should not be a problem if you do not grow leeks (or other alliums) in the same soil more than once every three or four years.

Varieties. There are three kinds: autumn, winter, and spring. Autumn leeks grow faster and are less cold-hardy. They are intended for commercial production in Europe, to supply the market before the weather turns too cold. Their flavor is usually milder; their texture more tender. Use these as a cool-season crop in climates where summers are too hot for leeks.

Winter leeks grow a bit more slowly and are tougher, more fibrous, more pungent, and much hardier. Generally this is the sort offered in home-garden seed catalogs.

Spring leeks are bred to bolt as late as possible; they are intended to supply the European spring market after overwintering in the field. Since I garden in a maritime climate similar to Holland, Belgium, or the north of France I prefer “spring” varieties, but you may not be able to obtain these outside of European seed catalogs.

In every type of leek, good breeding shows as a non-bulbous stalk that is long to the first leaf notch.

Harvest. Leeks must be dug.They are remarkably cold-hardy and even in places as cold as Pennsylvania (at low elevations), the hardiest varieties may survive winter in the earth if some soil is pulled up against them. But they are not infinitely able to withstand long freezing. Leeks may also be held over winter in the root cellar.

Making seed. Make seed as you would do with other alliums. In my mild-winter climate, I transplant carefully chosen perfect specimens in a separate area, and don’t bother to bury them deeply nor to make their soil super-fertile. Where the soil freezes in winter, replant them about one foot (30 centimeters) apart in rows about two feet (60 centimeters) apart when they come out of the cellar after overwintering; there’s no need to replant these deeply. Otherwise treat them as though you were growing seed for giant scallions.

Leeks won’t cross with ordinary onions. The seedheads sit atop enormously tall stalks and usually have to be supported. Seed maturation seems to take endless time. Eventually, even though the small black seeds are not yet showing inside their capsules, you’ll find that you can pull the stalks out of the earth with the gentlest of tugs. Each seedstalk loses its roots at a different point. Test each one about once a week.When a stalk lifts from the bed easily, place it on (or hang it upside down over) a big tarp to catch some of the seeds. Do this under cover with good ventilation and let it continue drying down. At this stage the seed is still forming, being fed by the nutrition and moisture in the stalk. Eventually the stem will dry out below the seed-ball. At this point I cut the seedballs free from their stalks and bring them inside, where it is warm, to finish drying to a crisp before I rub them between my palms, releasing the seeds. In my climate it takes until mid-autumn before the seedballs are crisply dry.Where summer is hotter, I expect it would go faster.

If you want a large, tight, succulent head to form before this vegetable puts up a seedstalk, then you need (1) top-quality seed, (2) highly fertile soil that is always moist, and (3) knowledge about when to plant.

Growing details. Chinese cabbage is a close relative of mustard, and like mustard it has an almost irresistible tendency to go to seed when days are long. Breeders have not yet fully overcome that trait. Sowing early in spring for harvest in early summer is extremely dubious, even if you have purchased a variety that pretends to this ability. Sowing in late spring for harvest midsummer is nearly as dubious. My advice: Do not start this crop until after the summer solstice. It’s best to wait at least one month after that event. In mild-winter climates wait two months. Timing is everything. In warm climates where the crop may be grown to mature in the cool months, it must still be sown in time to head up before spring days get too long. You should certainly sow it in time to be harvested around the equinox. In colder places, if you start it too late, growth will slow with the onset of chilly conditions, and the plant may put up a seedstalk before it heads, or the head may be tiny and of poor quality, or it may freeze out before doing much of anything. You can only determine the right sowing date by trial and error. If you’re eager to attempt this crop, I suggest that the first time you do so, you sow two heads every two weeks over a few months. See what happens.

Speed of growth is everything with Chinese cabbage! Make the soil as rich as you know how.Keep it moist.Don’t crowd the crop or competition will slow growth. Each plant needs to control about four square feet (3,500 square centimeters). Put four seeds in the bottom of a thumbprint atop an especially well-fertilized spot.Thin to a single plant as they begin to compete. Certainly within one month of emergence there should be a single one. Do not try to transplant Chinese cabbage; it forms a taproot and never grows as well without one.Keep that in mind if considering purchase of garden center seedlings.

Pests and diseases.All the usual brassica pests may pester it.All the usual pest remedies apply. In Cascadia, the cabbage maggot has an especially nasty way of feeding on Chinese cabbage: the maggots tunnel across the bases of the leaves, collapsing them and rotting the plant.When I lived in Cascadia, I grew Chinese cabbage under a spun fabric tent to exclude the fly.

Varieties. I know of no OP varieties that retain much uniformity; if you grow an OP, be prepared in advance to have over half your plants fail to head before bolting. If you use a quality hybrid, be prepared to have nearly every plant make a perfect head. There is a non-heading variety called Santoh, which compares to Chinese cabbage as collards do to European cabbage. Santoh is much easier to grow.

Harvest. If, when harvesting, you do not cut off the entire base, but instead allow a few of the larger outer leaves to remain attached to one side of the stem, the plant will continue putting up small leaves and then seedstalks; both are good in salads or stir-fries.Thus a non-heading plant or early bolting is not a complete loss if you remember that the upper portion of seedstalks are good in stir-fries if cut before the flowers open.

Asparagus is a perennial whose establishment most people believe involves a great deal of effort and some considerable expense. They also believe they should not harvest it for the first two years after establishing a bed. They learned this from Everybody Else.

Almost all people defer to the viewpoint of Everybody Else before deciding what to do about something. About growing asparagus, Everybody Else states confidently that two-year-old crowns should be transplanted into ditches that have been deeply dug and made super-fertile.Naturally, if Everybody Else is in favor of it, I will come to disagree. It always seems to work that way in my life.

My method will give you a much more productive result at a far lower cost and in far less time. If you find the difference between my viewpoint and that of Everybody Else distressing, keep in mind that wild asparagus doesn’t transplant itself. Its seeds merely fall to earth, sprout, take hold, and survive freezing winters. Also remember that the reason asparagus beds peter out is because overcompetition from seedling plants started from seed made by the bed itself reduces the size of the shoots.

Growing details. You can grow asparagus if you live where there is sufficient winter chilling for it. That doesn’t mean freezing soil. Just a few cool months will do. In North America that generally means north of southern Georgia, and certainly anywhere south of Sydney in eastern Australia will be okay.

Asparagus does not do well in clay. Period. In times of heavy rain it requires well-drained soil or its roots become diseased. If clay describes your situation and having asparagus is your passion, consider making a special bed of sandy soil that is raised up at least one foot (30 centimeters) above everything else for planting it. I knew a gardener who grew excellent asparagus on a clayey site that was occasionally underwater during winter rains. He built a marine plywood box that was four feet (120 centimeters) high, four feet wide, and eight feet (240 centimeters) long, filled it with sand dug from beside a nearby creek, and grew his asparagus in that.

In early spring prepare a four-foot-wide (120-centimeter) raised bed as though for growing a high-demand crop. Asparagus ferns can exceed five feet (150 centimeters) high and may shade neighboring beds, so consider that when choosing its position. After making the entire bed fertile and digging it well, make an extra fertile strip down the center of that bed. At minimum, spread a layer of compost or aged manure about an inch (2.5 centimeters) thick and a foot (30 centimeters) wide, running down the center the long way. I would also spread about three quarts (three liters) of COF for every 25 feet (8 meters) of row.Mix these amendments in thoroughly, digging as deeply as your shovel will go.Make a furrow about half an inch (1.25 centimeters) deep down the center of that extra-fertile band of soil and sow asparagus seeds two inches (five centimeters) apart. Do this about the time the apple trees are blooming, before it starts getting hot. Keep the seeds moist until they sprout.

A month after the seedlings come up, thin them to about six inches (15 centimeters) apart and side-dress them with some chicken manure compost or more COF. If you want to harvest a little asparagus the next year, make them grow fast in their first season. It is also a good idea to irrigate these seedlings every few weeks during their first year’s growth. In subsequent years the bed should survive long periods without rain without problems.

Keep the bed thoroughly weeded. Always. In the beginning and in coming years, too. The need for a weed-free bed is the hardest part of attaining success with asparagus. If your bed grew well, the plants will make seed toward the end of summer. Some plants will prove to be males, which form little sacks that release pollen.The females make seedballs that turn red when ripe. Before the seedballs ripen, and before any seed drops on the bed, dig up and destroy the root crown of all the female plants.Make absolutely sure they are all dead. (When you dig these six-month-old female plants, you’ll be amazed to discover that the roots you are excavating with such difficulty have already become huge, far larger than so-called two-year-old crowns for sale at your local nursery.)

Now you have an all-male row that, by the law of averages, will be spaced roughly a foot (30 centimeters) apart. If there should be any gaps that are more than 24 inches (60 centimeters) wide, sow a few more seeds in these spaces the next spring and again remove any that prove to be females. If the next year a few more plants turn out to be females, dig them up too and destroy them. (You may not have identified them because they did not make seed their first year.)

Why create an all-male bed? Because seed formation is a huge burden on the plant and reduces the size of its spears. Making pollen is not nearly so much effort, so males make more shoots and larger ones, which is what you want. This is why plant breeders have lately come out with all-male hybrid varieties. There’s another, more important, reason for an all-male bed. Everybody Else confidently tells you that an asparagus bed lasts only 10 to 15 years.That is not necessarily true, as is the case with most of what Everybody Else tells people. Asparagus beds peter out mainly because of self-sown seeds. These cause the density of the planting to increase, and this incredible overcrowding wrecks the bed. But if no seed drops on the bed, the bed continues producing large handsome spears — as long as it is kept fertile and weeded.

Ongoing maintenance. Each spring before the asparagus starts shooting, cover the bed with a half-inch-thick (1.25-centimeter) layer of finished compost or aged manure and a hefty dose of COF or other complete fertilizer. Asparagus doesn’t absolutely have to grow in super-fertile soil, but it does if you want a big harvest. If you don’t use COF, at least give it a dusting of lime (five pounds per 100 square feet of bed or 2.25 kilograms per ten square meters) once a year. And keep the weeds out. Thoroughly. The crowns will gradually spread out across the entire bed. One other thing you might do if you don’t garden right next to the ocean: each spring before the crowns shoot, you could broadcast half a pound of rock salt per square yard (250 grams per square meter) of bed. All the 19th-century growers swore by salt on their asparagus beds. Those living by the ocean might mulch their beds with seaweed, which will naturally provide the salt.

Pests and diseases. The worst insect pest is the asparagus beetle. It, and its larvae, defoliate the ferns, reducing harvest in the coming year. If there are many, spray them. Pyrethrum/rotenone will serve if you use it every few days when the beetles are active. The most important preventative should be done during early autumn. Clip all ferns at ground level (in a manner that won’t damage the crowns) and remove them from the bed. If you don’t immediately compost the ferns in a heap hot enough to kill the beetles and their pupae, then burn the ferns.

Varieties. Gardeners using all-male hybrid varieties have reported disease problems; the hybrids that produce the usual 50/50 mix of sexes are fine. Unless your local agricultural experts have a strong recommendation,my suggestion is to start with UC 157, which is commonly available, is not expensive, and has proved adaptable to most places.

Harvest. It is possible that your asparagus plants will begin making shoots larger than three eighths of an inch (nine millimeters) in diameter as soon as their second year. Harvest all shoots this size or larger. The rule for harvesting is the same no matter how old the bed is: Any shoot that exceeds three eighths of an inch in diameter may be eaten; any shoot smaller than that is allowed to continue growing and to form a fern that recharges the root with food.The first flush of shoots in spring will usually be the largest ones. As you clip them, the stored food in the roots will gradually become depleted and the shoots will get smaller. As soon as there are no more shoots exceeding three eighths of an inch, it is time to stop harvesting. In the second year of a bed’s life, the harvest may go on for only two weeks. In later years it might continue for six weeks or more. Once you’ve quit for the year, should any shoots come up in summer that are large enough to harvest, it is best not to cut them.Give the bed every possible chance to recharge its food storage for the next spring’s production.

Saving seed. My advice: Don’t allow seed to happen. To grow all the asparagus you’ll ever want for as long as you garden in a place, you’ll need to buy only one big packet of seed.

Celery (and celeriac) require deep sandy loam soil to grow to perfection. Sand doesn’t hold quite enough moisture and the result will show that; soils containing more than about 25 percent clay will not grow great celery. Clay soils (more than half clay) are out of the question. I know that nearly every clay-soil gardener is going to try growing celery anyway; you folks should know that there is an herbal form, far better adapted to poor situations. It is called “Chinese” celery or “cutting” celery and is a short-stalked type with a stronger flavor, used wherever regular celery might be included in a recipe.

Growing details. Celery and celeriac require maximally rich soil that unceasingly provides readily available moisture.The bed must also be worked deeply because celery makes a rather weak taproot that needs to extend downward over four feet (120 centimeters) if the plant is to grow properly.Wild celery grows in marshes; because it has little need to forage for moisture, its lateral root spread might not extend much more than a foot (30 centimeters) from its center.This is one crop for which you should double-dig.To prepare the celery row, simply dig a ditch one shovel’s blade deep; temporarily place the soil beside the ditch. Put a two-inch-deep (five-centimeter) layer of well-aged manure or fine compost into the bottom of the ditch, as well as a full dose of COF (or a goodly dose of chicken manure compost and a light sprinkling of lime), and then dig that into the subsoil, going down another shovel’s blade deep (and wide).Then spread a similar amount of manure, compost, and fertilizer over the soil removed from the trench so that when you refill the trench, the amendment will be mixed into the topsoil. Now the celery can grow in a zone of super-fertile loose soil about 12 inches (30 centimeters) wide and at least 20 inches (50 centimeters) deep. If, when going that second shovel’s depth, you encounter clay and you hope for good celery, remove the clay and fill the ditch with topsoil. I have to do that. Blend the clay you removed into your next compost heap.

Celery grows extremely slowly. It can take ten weeks, easily ten, to reach the size that most people would consider a “transplant.” So if you’re growing a large celery patch and direct-seed it, you may be wasting a lot of valuable growing room. I suggest that you start a nursery bed instead. Make it as fertile as the growing row will be, but since the plants will not be allowed to grow too big in their nursery, there is no point in double-digging it. Few gardeners will need more than eight feet (240 centimeters) of nursery row since that much will produce 24 to 36 husky seedlings. After digging, rake the nursery smooth, sprinkle the fine seed thinly in narrow bands, half an inch (1.25 centimeters) wide, atop the earth. The bands should be about 12 inches (30 centimeters) apart. Then cover the seeds with fine soil or fine compost about a quarter inch (six millimeters) thick. With your hand, pat it down firmly enough to restore capillarity.

In maritime, short-season, and moderate climates, the time to start these seedlings is about when the earliest apple trees are blooming, before it gets too hot and while the soil will stay moist for a day or so after you lightly water it. This is when your seeds will germinate easily. Celery often dies in extremely hot weather, so where summers are steamy, consider it an autumn/winter crop and sow the seeds after the heat of summer breaks.To get the fine seed to germinate in this situation, you may have to erect shade over the nursery bed and water it frequently. Celery seed also germinates rather slowly, commonly taking 11 to 14 days to emerge.

Once the seedlings are up, thin them progressively so that when they are two to three inches (five to seven centimeters) tall they stand four to six inches (10 to 15 centimeters) apart. Keep the nursery bed well watered. Always. I locate my celery bed conveniently close to the garden faucet, and every time I use a hose, I direct it briefly at the celery bed. Nineteenth-century growers used to cut seedlings back an inch, like pruning a hedge, after they had grown to over four inches tall. Sometimes they would do this twice. This is a good idea because it makes the seedlings develop stronger roots that better withstand transplanting shock. After pruning the seedlings and growing them on, dig them up and transplant them into their growing row (which has been prepared as I suggested above.) When transplanting, take care to lift the seedlings with soil and roots intact, doing as little damage to the root structure as possible. Press the earth firmly around them after setting them in. You will have had time to grow and harvest an early crop on the row or bed that will receive the celery transplants; I suggest early peas. If growth slows after transplanting, side-dress the plants with some COF or chicken manure compost, or ferti-gate/ foliar feed them.

Where water is short, or if you’re mainly growing your garden on rainfall, I suggest direct-seeding small clusters of celery or celeriac seeds in their final growing positions and thinning each clump progressively down to a single one because transplanting destroys the taproot and converts the plant into more of a surface feeder. Direct-seeded crops endure rainless spells better.

Pests and diseases. Insects rarely trouble this crop when it is growing healthily. However, there are diseases.Most prevention involves rotation, not crowding the bed, and making sure the plants can continue growing rapidly. This is determined by soil conditions, fertility, and moisture; most of these conditions had to be created before the seeds were sown or transplants set out.

Varieties. Quality seed companies inevitably offer quality market varieties, but be cautious about betting the ranch on heirlooms.A lot of breeding work has gone into modern commercial varieties, such as Utah and Ventura, to prevent celery from bolting to seed in the first year and to build in resistance to various diseases. Be especially wary of cheap celeriac seed; it will not make much for you to eat after you have peeled away all the rough knobs and protuberances.

Harvest and storage. Where celery can withstand the frosts of winter, your harvest goes on until spring; in this case, snap off or cut off individual outer stalks as they are needed, or pull celeriac plants as wanted while the others continue sizing up slowly. If you are growing celeriac in a climate where winter brings only a short period of freezing cold weather, you might, as a precaution, want to hill soil up against, and an inch (2.5 centimeters) above, the edible balls, leaving most of their leafstalks exposed.

Where winter means snow and ice, your celery and celeriac crop should have become large enough to begin harvesting toward the end of summer. For winter use, celeriac is eminently cellarable and so is celery. Keep whole plants, roots and all, at close to freezing and they can overwinter. Celery can also over-winter in its growing bed if you have hilled earth up against it and have taken steps to prevent that soil from freezing so solid that you can’t get at the plants when you want one. I suggest a careful reading of the Bubels’ book on root cellars, or enjoy an interesting read of Henderson’s classic Gardening For Profit.

Saving seed. You can grow seed if the plants overwinter. The flowering and maturation process is much like that for carrots, but celery will make thousands of small seed-bearing flowers instead of only a few per plant as carrots do. If a celery plant makes seed during its first year, and if that seed somehow matures, definitely do not save that seed for sowing (though it might be useful in the kitchen as seasoning). Celery is a biennial, and plants that act as annuals, going to seed quickly, are highly undesirable.

You should not try to maintain a fancy celery or celeriac variety unless you can manage a plant population of at least 25 in your gene pool. I urge seed savers who want to have a celery in their collection to grow one of the herbal types. These are much closer to wild celery and much more tolerant of less-than-ideal conditions.