Would You Eat Year-Old Vegetables?

This year we didn't quite know what the fall garden was going to look like.  With a drought that rivals anything that we've seen since we've lived here twenty-something odd years, we didn't even think we were going to get a fall garden in.  Couple that with Benjamin's accident that occurred at the beginning of September where we were in the hospital every day and night for over a month and well, the prospects of a fall garden was on shaky ground.

But we got it in.  The only crop that we missed the deadline on and didn't plant was Irish Potatoes.  We generally try to get a fall crop in, but not this year.  If you drift past the September 15th last planting day, you really risk it.  An early freeze will wipe them out.  That's experience speaking, ha ha.

The question that the title of this post asks is a little misleading.  I'll clarify.  I've learned to overplant seeds in the event that germination isn't good.  If your germination isn't good, you end up with enough plants to get a stand and achieve a good yield.  On the other hand, if they ALL come up, you can gently pull out some of the seedlings to get the proper spacing and either give the seedlings to family members and friends or replant them in another area of the garden.

Sometimes, however, I don't get around to doing that.  What ends up happening is that some of the seedlings are 'shaded out' by their larger counterparts.  They are still alive, but they are stunted in the undergrowth and never mature.  This year a funny thing happened.  After we harvested the ripe kohlrabi and broccoli in the spring of 2023 from the fall crop, some of the stunted seedlings lived on.  They lived on through the heat of summer and the drought.  Miraculously, we are harvesting some year-old vegetables right now.

Here is a purple kohlrabi.  It is a weird plant, but tastes delicious!

If one would ask me to envision what vegetables would look like that grew on Mars, the purple kohlrabi would be my answer.

We fed all of the leaves to the cows.  Then we harvested a bunch of florets off of the year-old broccoli and have been eating year-old vegetables for the past several days.

Later this week or perhaps the next, I'll show you another year-old vegetable that we're going to harvest.  The fall garden is really producing right now.  Lots of lettuce, radishes, sugar snap peas, snap beans, kale, bok choy, etc.  Most of those were just planted this fall.  That's expected.  It's the ones we're harvesting now that were planted LAST fall that are something different from what we've ever seen before.

Thankful For the Little Things

Thanksgiving isn't very far away.  It is my favorite holiday.  The others have all gotten so commercialized and lost a lot of their original intent.  Thankfulness is a virtue that is lacking in this day and age.  It does a soul good just to be appreciative to the Creator for the goodness that He showers over us.  We are told to count our blessings, name them one by one.

Today, I'll name one of them.  Fresh green beans.  Some call them snap beans.  Whatever you call them, what a treat they are!  It's one of my favorite things in the garden.  We planted a fall crop of them - two rows.  One of them Contender Green beans and the other, Roma II Italian beans.  Despite a few pests still eating on the leaves in the hot weather (still upper 80's), the fall crop has been healthy.  We are about 21 inches behind where we should be, so it is dry.  If I hadn't been turning on the water sprinkler every other day, these wouldn't be quite so lush and green, but maybe the composted chicken manure I collected from beneath the roosts and fed them with had something to do with it as well.

I like growing them in the fall also because one of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes is fresh picked green beans wrapped in bundles of bacon and cooked in the oven.  Today I picked the first crop of green beans of the fall.  The Contender variety wasn't quite ready, but the Roma II Italian beans were coming in strong.

Picking beans, I notice as I get older, is getting harder and harder on the back!  Next year I'll try to space the rows out so that I can sit on a little chair with wheels and push myself while seated instead of crouched over.  Once done, I put them in the sink and washed them up read good.  I'll put them in the fridge and we'll eat on these and enjoy them.

You can see the difference in the two varieties below.  Generally, the Contenders are a producer of great volume while the Roma II's are more flavorful.  They're flat, wide beans.  Delicious.  I gave some to Russ and he was eating them raw.  

Tricia has been away for a couple days visiting her family in Texas, so I figured I would send her a photo to visually communicate to her what I've been doing:

She got a kick outta that!  The beans are loaded with blooms and small beans so hopefully they'll continue to produce through the fall.  I'm thankful for green beans!

As the Worm Turns

For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.    Isaiah 51:8

Last week we picked the very last cucumber off the vine.  They had been producing since spring.  We have eaten a lot of cucumbers this year!  Production was off the charts, especially with the Marketmore variety.  But all good things come to an end.  I told Tricia that we'd have a brief time of no cucumbers, but...

Not to worry.  I had planted some Boston Pickling Cucumbers from some seed we saved in 2016.  They ALL germinated and were beginning to vine.  It was time.  I took them out to the garden, put a little composted chicken litter down in the holes I dug, and planted the cucumber plants.  I trained the vines to wrap around the trellis.  The cucumber plants were happy.  I walked inside thinking, "We'll have cucumbers for most of the year!"

There's an old saying about not counting your chickens before they hatch.  The very next day, I walked out to check on the cucumbers and this is what greeted me:

Some little green worms were wiping the edges of their mouths with handkerchiefs and then burping loudly after devouring every green leaf off of every cucumber plant!

I had transplanted spaghetti squash in the garden.  So far the worms have not discovered them.  These right here are butternut squash.  I think I'm going to keep them right here on the patio for a little while - or at least until I can pick up some Neem Oil.

The tomato plants I planted for the fall crop are looking healthy.  If the Good Lord's willing, we may have a fall crop of tomatoes, but then again, we may not.  Here is the first tray:

And here is the second.  If you look down to the very bottom of the photo, you'll see a six-pack with just dirt and no plants... yet:

Those are Round 2 of the fall cucumber crop.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again.

Cole Crop Planting in the Middle of Summer

Looking ahead!  In gardening, planning and preparation are key.  If you are planting from seed, some things, like broccoli, take 100 - 150 days to mature.  You've always got to be thinking weeks or months ahead.  Right now, the garden is pretty slow except for the okra.  It is amazing how fast okra blooms produce pods.  I'm also watching the sweet potato vines consume the garden.

I got out my LSU AgCenter Vegetable Planting Guide and discovered that if I want to be harvesting delicious cole crops this fall/winter, then I'd better get on the ball and plant some seeds.  There is nothing wrong with waiting until much later and going to the feed store and purchasing plants that are 6 to 8 inches tall and transplanting them into your garden.  In fact, sometimes when I have germination problems, I do that very thing.  There is just something authentic and pure about putting a dead seed in the ground and watching it grow.

I filled seed pots with seed starting mix and pulled all of my seeds out of the freezer.  First, I planted some broccoli.  I'm going with Waltham broccoli, which is a traditional broccoli.  I'm also planting a Romanesco Italia broccoli.  It is light green and has a very interesting feature.  It has numerous spiral heads that have a 'nutty' flavor.

As far as cauliflower is concerned, I planted three varieties.  First, Erfurter, a traditional while big-headed cauliflower.  Next, a Green Macerata cauliflower, which, as the name suggests, is green.  Finally, a Purple of Sicily cauliflower that has a big purple head.  I also planted a flat of brussels sprouts even though we haven't had success with them for the past several years as the little heads burst open instead of making the "little cabbages."

As far as cabbage is concerned, I planted three varieties.  One is a variety simply labeled "Cabbage," that I bought at the feed store years ago.  The next is Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage and then finally, Brunswick cabbage.

I simulated a rainfall on the flats of freshly planted seed and put them up on a table on the patio.  With our warm weather, these ought to sprout quickly if I keep the soil moist.

I'll have to remember each evening and morning to give them a good soaking.  I would also be wise to keep a sharp eye out for the cats as I don't want them to jump up on the table and wreak havoc on my seed starts. 

Sowing a cold weather crop in the peak months of summer requires patience - a virtue I haven't got much of!

Laboring on Labor Day

I keep some old sheets of tin that I salvaged when demolishing the chicken tractors and they come in handy as being a type of "mulch" that covers the ground to keep weeds from growing until it is time to plant.  Finally the ground dried up a bit and it was time to plant tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts.  So I removed the tin so expose soil with no weeds and the ground underneath soft and pliable.

Unfortunately, the tin doesn't cover much more than two rows.  For the area that I'll plant today, I used a weed-eater to knock the weeds down to dirt level.  I burned it right down to the ground and will plant without tilling.  I have the tomato seedlings all ready to plant.  Due to the rain delaying planting, some of the tomatoes are root-bound and some are yellowing, but most will survive and do just fine if I can get them planted today.

I separated them by varieties and got busy.  I simply took a hoe, dug a hole, filled it with some organic garden soil and popped the tomatoes out of the Community Coffee cups that they are in and planted them. Caffeinated tomatoes, perhaps?

They aren't beautiful tomato plants, but as you can see, the newest growth is green, vibrant, and healthy.  We'll see if we can keep that going, shall we?

When finished I have 36 heirloom tomatoes planted for the fall crop.  We'll see how it goes and if I'm able to harvest some fruit before the frost gets them.

Once I finished that, I planted 3 varieties of cabbage seedlings, 2 varieties of broccoli seedlings and some brussels sprouts.  I'll have to plant the cauliflower tomorrow as it got to be 4 pm and I had to get the bbq pit fired up.  Happy Labor Day, fellow gardeners!

Mulching our Fall Potato Crop

I wanted to do a little update on our Fall Potato Crop.  For the first time ever, we're trying to raise a Fall Crop of Irish Potatoes that will replenish our potato inventory from the Spring crop.  We harvested the Spring Crop of Irish Potatoes back in May and I think we only have about 8 scrawny ones left in the bottom of the bin.  But that's okay.  We had a bumper crop this year and they have stored well throughout the summer.

We picked out a few from existing inventory that were shriveled up and had some nice sprouts on them and planted them in a 12 foot bed.  I didn't want to go overboard, because goodness knows, we'd rather eat them than put them in the ground if the frost is gonna get 'em.  They all sprouted and are looking mighty healthy. Now that they are up out of the ground, I want to be sure to get some mulch around them to discourage weed growth and conserve soil moisture.

That's where an old hay bale comes in handy.  Bales of hay that are more than a year old can often be found in the corner of someone's pasture, decomposing and shrinking back into the land from whence it came.  I like to cut the baling twine off of it and use it to thickly mulch around all the vegetables in the garden, whether in Spring or Fall.  I break off swaths of hay from the bale, trying to leave it in long pieces that I'll lay across the ground as sort of a mat.

A wagon full of year-old hay

And here is the row of potatoes that we planted and posted about on September 24th in This Post.  They stand about 10 inches tall right now and a relatively dry October has the soil dried out.  You can also see a few weeds creeping up that will compete with the potatoes if we don't do something about them.  I hate weeding.  Mulching is much easier.

A row of Fall Potatoes

I laid the hay around the potatoes like you'd pull a heavy quilt over you on a cold winter's night. With the potato plants all tucked in, we're good to go.  Irish potatoes take between 90 and 120 days until they are ready to be dug up, so that means that somewhere between December 23 - January 22nd, they'll be ready.  We'll have some frosts before then, so I'll pile more hay on top of the plants on those days to see if we can get some more potatoes before the frost kills them.  It is a gamble, I know. We'll see how it goes.  

All tucked in bed

They are very healthy, happy potato plants right now.  I'll give them a good sprinkling of water and the hay mulch will retain that moisture and slow the evaporation that you experience from bare ground.

Since we had success storing our potatoes throughout the summer, next year I'm going to plant more potatoes so that we maintain a strong potato inventory year-round.  If the Fall potatoes are successful, I'll begin growing my own seed potatoes for the Spring crop.  Right now all is looking good.

Out with the Old, In with the New

The tomato vines supported by the Florida Weave trellis system look sort of eerie in late summer.  Their long outstretched vines are mostly free of foliage and there are a few stink bug damaged tomatoes left, clinging desperately to what used to be prolifically producing plants.  We had a great crop of tomatoes and put many of them up to enjoy later, but it is time to remove the vines to make room for the Fall crop.

I cut the baling twine from the T-posts and threw it all away and then pulled up the T-posts and stacked them neatly out of the way.  Ordinarily I would have just pulled up the tomato plants by the roots and composted the whole plant, root and all, but I read that the better thing to do is to cut the plant off at ground level.  This allows aeration of the soil as the plant rots, leaving tunnels where the roots once were.  So using a knife I cut them all off at ground level and pile up the vines.

Tired, haggard vines after a season's production

Instead of piling them directly on the compost pile in the back corner of the garden, I threw the vines over the garden fence.  The chickens promptly gobbled up the tomatoes and foliage.  Then the cows came along and finished off anything that was left.  I'll scoop up what's left and pile that up in the compost pile to decompose.

Chickens cleaning up the crop

Here is what is left of the garden where the tomatoes used to be - just a few peppers, some basil and some okra.  It looks mighty barren without the tomatoes.  The tomatoes have been growing since January 1 of this year when I planted them and now on August 1, they are gone.

Not much left to the Spring Garden

But gardening is a seasonal adventure and just as soon as one crop is gone, it is time for another one to take its place.  In fact, just as we planted okra last week, I also planted cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels Sprouts seeds this weekend. Those plants, in addition to many others, will take the place of the tomatoes we just removed.

Seeds for the Fall Crop

In the past I planted the seeds directly in the ground, and that worked okay, but planting them in seed pots and caring for them until they are larger to transplanted helped me to be able to better deal with the pest pressure and the dry weather that the month of August usually brings.  I'll nurture these seedlings along as they sprout and then transplant them into the garden where they'll provide some fresh food for the Fall.