First Token Harvest of 2012

Chives and oregano harvested on April 3, 2012 for
The 1000 Pound Challenge.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

I had vowed to make a harvest and take the lead in the 1000 Pound Challenge on the first day of the competition which was April 1st. Instead I ended up helping my in-laws to move from Connecticut to our house here in New Hampshire and did not have any time to get out to the garden until today. Today, however, I did make a harvest of four separate crops: leeks, chives, garlic, and oregano.

The garlic and leeks were planted in our terraced garden bed last year and overwintered in place. Ordinarily, all the garlic that I let overwinter in the garden would be dug up, separated and replanted rather than harvested for the table. Each clove will grow a new garlic bulb to be harvested in late summer or fall. In fact, I only harvest three small cloves and the rest will be replanted. For those looking to propagate garlic using this technique, I have written up a tutorial on planting and propagating garlic. The slideshow has step by step photos and instructions. Once garlic starts to grow in the spring, the fullness is sapped from the cloves as the stored energy is consumed by the new plant. If intended for the table, therefore, it's best to harvest late in the growing season as the leaves dry up and wither. I did pick out three good cloves weighing in at 0.004 lbs with the tops that I will use in a vegetable soup along with everything else I picked today.

A leek prepared for cooking.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

I trimmed the fibrous green leaves off the top of the leek and the growing roots off the bottom before weighing it up. This is the part that will go into the soup later. It weighed in at a paltry 0.02 lbs. The other leeks that overwintered will be allowed to grow bigger this year.

Finally, from the herb garden, I picked fresh chives and a little oregano that will also go in the soup. The total weight of these two items combined was 0.026 lbs. Both oregano and chives can be used fresh as I will today, or they can be dried and preserved for later use. In the fall, when the plants in the herb garden are as big as they'll get and the threat of early frost is upon us, I'll harvest as much as I can and dry it out for use all winter long.

The young green shoots of spring garlic can be shopped and
used for cooking.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

My total yield for the 1000 Pound Challenge, as of April 3rd, 2012, is 0.05 or one-twentieth of a pound comprised of four varieties of produce. It's not much, but it's enough for the lead over "The Good (& Simple) Life" in Georgia.

If you haven't seen it yet, there is now a Facebook page dedicated to the 1000 Pound Challenge.

Spring planting

After a week or two of rain and cold temperatures, known in New England as Mud Season, we are now into full summer with 80 degree temperatures. Technically it's not summer for another month, but close enough. Tomatoes that are hardened off (gradullay accustomed to the harsh UV of the sun and the temperature extremes of night and day) can be planted outdoors now with almost no risk of frost kill.

Already growing in our gardens outdoors are:
strawberries (blossoms forming now)
Concord grapes (flower bud clusters forming -lots of them!)
apples (several varieties- blossoms fading now)
asparagus (We've already harvested two batches this spring.)
chives (ready to harvest)
garlic (from outdoor overwintered bulbs)
leeks (second year for seed)
chocolate mint
cilantro (tender to frost, but it self-seeded from last year and I guess it knows when it's safe to start growing)
lemon thyme (ready to harvest)
oregano (ready to harvest)
lovage (ready to harvest)
wintergreen (growing wild throughout our forest)
rosemary (freshly planted)
blackberries
garlic chives (ready to harvest)
(I had also planted Jerusalem artichokes, but they were eaten by moles (or voles or some other such little burrowing beastie)

Today, May 26th, I planted:
red cabbage
summer squash (yellow straight-neck)
cucumbers (Marketmore)
fennel
pickling cucumbers
tomatoes (roma, brandywine red, and another indeterminate heirloom variety whose name escapes me at the moment)

In the house I have:
1 large brandywine red tomato which I plant to grow throuhg the fall and into winter as long as I can keep it healthy and fruiting
6 miscellaneous miniature hot pepper (chili) plants in an Aerogarden
two freshly cloned brandywine red tomato plants

Those are the edilbes that we have growing at present. I'll add more soon, beets, green beans and others to be determined.

Free landscaping stock, transplanting

One of the best things about growing plants that are native to and very hardy in the area where you live is that they tend to reproduce. This gives you free landscape stock to use elsewhere on your property. A short list of cold-hardy perennials, shrubs, and trees for northern climates can be found here.

I just finished digging up three brand new forsythia bushes from around the one big one that we had in our yard. Forsythias reproduce mainly by a form of self cloning. The tips of the long braches that extend out along the plant's perimeter will eventually droop down to the ground and take root. In just one year of growth after these new rots begin to take hold, new shoots as much as two to three feet tall will mark a new plant that can be separated from the parent plant and transplanted.

Simple Tips for Eco-Friendly Landscaping

Our big forsythia has a diameter of perhaps twenty feet from branch tip to branch tip. Around its perimeter are perhaps 15 small plants. Each one is made up of many individual shoots coming out of the ground from a common root ball. When you dig them up, you should keep the clusters together to avoid damaging the roots too much trying to separate them. This will also help the young plants to look fuller and more colorful while they are still small.

The proper time to transplant varies by the type of plant. Generally, I like to do it in the spring. The ground is moist and not likely to dry out or require too much extra watering and many plants here in New England are already in the "re-establishing mode." That means they are actively sending out new feeder roots to fuel the development of new spring leaves and flowers as well as the year's new growth. If you dig them up without damaging too many of the roots that have laready begun growing, you can take advantage of this spring activity and the transplants can get off to a strong start in their new locations. Depending upon the plant species, this may differ a bit from conventional advice, but it works well for me as long as I provide the TLC needed after transplanting.

As with any newly transplanted landscape stock, keep a close eye on it for a few weeks to make sure it stays healthy. If roots are damaged or if, as with a forsythis you have to cut around a root ball to keep it manageable, you need to watch for signs that the plant isn't getting enough water through its remaining root system. If it starts wilting or loosing leaves, that's a sure sign of dehydration and the plant should be thoroughly watered until it no longer wilts between waterings.

As eco-friendly gardners, using collected rainwater for this purpose is a good idea, especially for those who live in areas where clean water sources are overtaxed by increasing human demand.

OK, now I'm off to separate some irises that have multiplied to the point of overcrowding.

Happy Gardening!

Keeping seed stock for self-sufficient spring planting

One of the ways in we try to become more self-sufficient as gardeners is to keep our own seed stock at the end of the year so that we can grow or own crops year after year without buying seeds. This doesn’t work well for everything we grow. For some things we’re still better off buying commercially available seeds, but  garlic works quite well in the New England climate and is also one of the easiest to propagate.

Read more with complete step by step instructions and photos on how to propagate and plant garlic...

Photo by Brad Sylvester, all rights reserved