February Planting Time

This week, we planted arugula, celery, chervil, cilantro, corn salad, curly parsley, Italian parsley, and scallions. The arugula and corn salad will be grown to maturity indoors, while the others will be ready for transplant to the garden in early March. This sowing is part of our evaluation of the LED lighting system I have mentioned in previous posts. 

Leek seedlings have grown beautifully with this light source. They were sown in January and are averaging about 4 inches in height. The plants exhibit no sign of yellowing or etiolation. Preliminary results, therefore, are encouraging. The use of LEDs in horticultural lighting remains somewhat experimental, but holds great promise. Electricity consumption is greatly reduced without sacrificing light intensity, making LEDs much more energy efficient than either fluorescent or metal halide sources, the two most commonly used in horticulture. The 20-watt unit I am evaluating adequately illuminates an area roughly the size of two standard nursery flats, sufficient for my backyard garden’s transplant needs.The difference in the size of the seedlings between the two photos is the result of only four days' growth.

If you were planning to add fruit or nut trees or berry bushes to the garden, February is an ideal time to transplant them. Strawberry plants should also be appearing in garden centers this month. Everbearing varieties will give you a decent crop this year, if planted early. Pick off and discard the blooms that may appear in late spring, to give the plants a chance to build a root system. This will not only improve the fall crop, but increases productivity for next spring and fall. If you’ve never grown strawberries, try ‘Sequoia,’ a widely available everbearing variety that produces big, flavorful berries all season once established. We are going to be renewing our planting of this berry this season. The strawberry patch needs relocation about every three years.

Other berry crops that perform well in the Tennessee Valley are blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. Among nut trees, native hickory and black walnut are good choices if you have plenty of room and patience. American filbert is more suited to the backyard garden, but typically only bears every two or three years. Fruit trees require attention to perform well here. June-bearing apples are perhaps the best adapted to our climate, but fall apple and pear varieties regularly appear at the local farmer’s markets. Local peaches also show up at the markets, too. Attention must be paid to pruning and pest control for fruit trees.

One fruit we seldom see in the market is cherries, which is surprising, because my grandparents always had an abundant crop from two sour cherry trees that my grandfather planted in the early 20^th Century. We also had a massive sweet cherry tree, far from the house, that undoubtedly had been planted by my great-grandfather, as it was a foot in diameter when I was a boy. All these cherries eventually succumbed to disease and were removed. They remain a challenge to grow here, owing to a plethora of diseases, but it can be done with dedication. For the backyard gardener willing to take up the challenge, ‘Montmorency’ is a traditional cultivar.

Vegetable Garden Basics

With the mercury hovering around 25 degrees, my thoughts turn to the warmer days ahead. I am refining my garden plan for 2014. If you have not made a plan yet, now is the time, before spring chores eat up most of your gardening time. Your plan need not be elaborate, but it should at least cover three things:

1. What am I going to plant?
2. Where am I going to put everything?
3. What is the best strategy for succession planting? 

Food garden at UT Gardens

Here are some tips for answering these questions. One of the best ways to determine what to plant is to ask the other people in the family. You may think growing salsify would be fun, but your kids may want tomatoes or strawberries. Make a list and let everyone vote. If you are a novice at food gardening, limit yourself to three or four crops until you get the hang of growing those, then branch out. My top four choices are beans, lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. If I could grow only four vegetables, I would grow these, lettuce in spring and fall, and the others as summer crops.

Choosing a site for your vegetable garden can be the most critical decision you make, in terms of success or failure. Of primary importance is sunshine. Veggies need at least six hours of sun a day, and the more sun, the better. Don't locate your food garden in a low-lying spot where water stands for more than a few hours after a heavy rain. No vegetable likes wet feet, although they all need about an inch of water a week. Speaking of which, be sure you can reach your vegetable garden with a hose, or you will be toting water in buckets during high summer. Your soil should be well-drained, moisture retentive and organically rich. Work in composted organic matter in late winter, as soon as you can work the soil. For a small plot, you can buy compost, peat, or pine bark fines to work into the bed. I suggest adding 3 two-cubic-foot bags of this material per 100 square feet of growing bed, unless your soil is already in great shape. Add more each year, and in five years time you will have the best veggie beds on the block. Good soil is the key to great veggies.

Late winter is also a good time to incorporate organic fertilizers into your garden soil. Doing so gives the weather and beneficial bacteria a chance to decompose these materials into a form your plants can use. I add a cup of cottonseed meal per 10 square feet of growing space, along with a similar amount of bone meal and two tablespoons of pelletized dolomitic limestone. (I leave out the lime if I am growing potatoes.) These amendments are best added around the first of February, if you intend to begin planting in March. That allows a month for breakdown to begin. If you determine that plants need more nitrogen later on in the season, I suggest using a balanced organic fertilizer mix available commercially, rather than more slow-release amendments. When plants are really growing the nutrients will not be released fast enough.

I should also say that, although I prefer organic fertilization wherever possible, I see nothing wrong with using a soluble fertilizer, such as Miracle Gro(TM) in order to salvage a crop of veggies. Doing so is less likely to cause harm than allowing the plants to get stressed and attract insect pests.

Regarding succession planting, this is the key to growing a lot of food in a small space. The most important point to remember is that here in the Tennessee Valley, we have three growing seasons. Two cool ones in spring and fall, and a warm to hot season in summer. Once you have your veggie list in hand, divide it into cool season and warm season crops. The most popular warm season crops are beans, corn, cucumbers, okra, peppers, tomatoes and squash. Greens of all types are the easiest cool season crops, including arugula, lettuce, mustards and spinach. The cabbage family also needs cool temperatures, as do green onions and leeks. Plan on growing cool season crops from March 1 to June 1, warm season crops from June 1 to September 1, and cool season crops again around Labor Day. for the ones to be grown from transplants, either plan on purchasing them from a garden center (recommended for beginners) or start seeds about four to six weeks before you will need plants.

When your early crops of greens and scallions are done, remove plant debris and move in the summer crops. When these are up and growing well, fertilize. Start moving in the fall plants as the summer veggies start looking exhausted. Feed the fall crop when all the summer crops are gone and the fall plants are established. 

By following these simple guidelines, you should be able to grow enough food to eat, and perhaps have some extra to can or freeze this summer. 

Food Gardens and Curb Appeal

People often say to me they would grow more veggies but they don’t like the look of vegetable gardens. What they undoubtedly have in mind is the traditional garden with rows of beans on poles and caged tomatoes. While gardens like that have a certain charm, one would look out of place in front of the typical suburban home. I recently had this discussion with a friend of mine who is thinking about growing garlic next year, but worried that it would not look very pretty in the yard. As the photo from UT Gardens illustrates, food gardens need not be boring and ugly.

Here are some of the points I made:

1) Garlic is not ugly; it just doesn’t offer much to the eye. But that is also true of, say irises, when they are out of bloom. One way to deal with this issue in the design of the landscape is to surround the boring thing with something eye-catching. Annual flowers are cheap, readily available, and in many cases edible. They also come in a sufficient array of colors as to work with any other features of the landscape. Another approach to redirecting the eye is to create a focal point in the middle of the bed. For this, you could use a daylily. They are perennial, carefree, and edible. They also come in a wide range of colors, to blend with existing plantings, if necessary.

2) Very low-maintenance plantings can be created with perennial herbs. You get flavor, seasonal flowers and foliage all year from rosemary, French thyme and Greek oregano.

3) Lettuces, annual herbs (basil, cilantro, dill, parsley) and numerous other salad greens are highly decorative, although more trouble to grow than perennial herbs.

4) Another possibility is strawberries.  They remain compact, bear all season long and have brightly colored foliage at this time of year.

These are but a few examples of things that could combine with a garlic patch to render it not only attractive, but also productive, easily repaying the costs involved by food production. Furthermore, the spot will be re-used year after year, and consequently will get better and better at production as the soil improves. This seems to me to call for a permanent border, so why not have one that is also productive?

Also, please remember that a food garden need not be rectangular in shape nor laid out in rows. Free form designs, or anything that works with existing landscaping is the way to go. But instead of filling with flowers and shrubs, you fill with food plants that perform the same visual functions in the landscape.

You can find a lot more tips on attractive food gardens in The New American Homestead. It is available both in paperback and as an e-book wherever books are sold.

Let me please offer one more observation that I hope will be encouraging: a successful food garden  more often results from a lot of mental effort rather than a lot of physical effort. If well designed, a space the size of my parlor rug could produce an amazing quantity of fresh food.

 

Local and Regional Food Finds

Local Food Report

Local food advocates are no doubt as happy as I am about the uptick in availability of local products as the growing season progresses. Strawberries are abundant, spring greens and onions are reaching perfection, and the area farmers markets are in full swing. This week’s visit to Three Rivers Market turned up kale, arugula, chard, bak choy, lettuce, and onions, along with the strawberries. Farms in Spring City, Loudon and Jefferson Counties are the sources.

A regional producer, Shuckman’s Fish Co. & Smokery in Louisville, KY, is featured in the meat and seafood case at Three Rivers. Besides producing fish flavored with Kentucky bourbon and slow-smoked, Shuckman’s offers what they call “spoonfish” caviar. This product is the eggs of the Mississippi paddlefish Polyodon spathula. Tennesseans know this same species as “spoonbill catfish” or simply “spoonbill.” This rather ugly river fish is a holdover from an ancient line that has survived in the Mississippi River watershed, and is esteemed for caviar rivaling the best that Russia’s Volga sturgeons produce. If you are planning something fancy, like a June wedding, this regional product should certainly receive your consideration.

Farmers Markets Opening Across the Region

Farmers markets across the region are operated by various entities. The Farmer’s Association for Retail Marketing (FARM) operates markets in Knoxville and Oak Ridge. Learn more about them here.

The FARM market opens in Knoxville on Tuesdays and Fridays, at the Laurel Church of Christ on Kingston Pike, across from the entrance to Cherokee Boulevard. Hours are 3:00-6:00 PM. In Oak Ridge, FARM markets are 3:00-6:00 Wednesdays and 8:00-noon on Saturdays.

The Market Square District Farmers Market operates on Wednesdays 11:00-2:00 and Saturdays 9:00-2:00. Maryville also has Saturday and Wednesday markets.

Last year, the Knoxville News-Sentinel published a list of area farmers markets.

If you are traveling anywhere in East Tennessee, you can find a farmers market, depending upon when you travel. Oak Ridge and Norris are the only ones open on Mondays, and none are open on Sundays. Saturday is clearly the most popular market day in most communities. A visit to the Saturday market on Market Square in Knoxville is a trip back to a time when this was the thriving center of commerce for the city.

I have made many pleasant food and gardening discoveries at each of the farmers markets I have visited. Extra-early Garnet Beauty peaches made the best jam I have ever tasted last season. I will be looking for them again. Wild blackberries, which may arrive prior to July 4 this year, are always worth bringing home. I admire anyone who endures the briars, bugs, hot sun and the occasional snake to pick wild blackberries. Furthermore, the flavor of wild berries is unmatched in the domesticated varieties. Arrive at any of the larger markets in late July and you may find more than two dozen varieties of tomatoes alone.  Growers explore new varieties, hoping to find one that makes their booth a stand-out. This gentle competition among the vegetable growers is a bonanza for shoppers looking for something different to cook with.

Vegetable, herb, fruit and flower plants also appear in abundance at the markets. Not only can you find new and interesting flowers, you can also locate old stand-by varieties of useful plants that people have grown in this region for generations. Novice gardeners take note: the old stand-bys achieved their status by not placing unreasonable demands upon the always-busy farm families of past generations. They will be equally forgiving in your suburban back yard.

Our pet project this year has been “Strawberry Fields,” a container garden inspired by the Beatles song. How we came to design it requires a little explanation. We bought one of those 10 by 10  canopies for the deck only to find the fabric was not particularly durable. After running through two roofs in as many seasons, we have this year turned the metal frame into a support for plants. Hanging baskets at each corner hold a pair of strawberry plants, and large pots on the floor under each basket have three plants each. We have additional pots of strawberries here and there among our collection of dwarf evergreens in containers that we display on the deck. Strawberry Fields has been giving us a nice bowl of berries every day, and they are free of dirt and slug damage because they are elevated above ground level.

Coldframe Pros and Cons

I'll say up front that we love our walk-in coldframes. Winter gardening will just never be the same again. But in our Tennessee Valley climate, especially with the unusually warm weather in March, they do have one big drawback. They get much too warm for good results with brassicas. We have tried various methods to produce spring crops of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage without having to resort to almost daily sprayings with Dipel to keep the cabbage butterfly larvae from ruining the crop. We were hoping that the coldframes, which physically prevent the butterfly from reaching the plants to lay its eggs, were the answer. Alas, no. Even with all the windows open, the temperature climbs into the upper 80s on sunny days. We may get some decent cabbage, but broccoli and cauliflower would not tolerate the heat.

So instead of brassicas, we have planted some early beans, and we will soon be replacing the cabbage with squash and cucumbers. We plan to try some fall-planted brassicas, so the plants will be maturing during cooler weather in November and December. In the meantime, we may figure out some way to ventilate the coldframes better, while still screening out the cabbage butterfly. Stay tuned.

Recycle Beer Cartons as Weed Blocker
If you are planning on building a new raised bed and wondering how to deal with existing sod or weeds, you may have considered placing a weed blocker fabric over the undesired plant material. This works great, and you can build a bed right on top, but there is a free alternative: beer cartons. Those trapezoidal twelve-packs that bottled beer comes in make great weed blocker. Separate the cardboard at the glue seams and fold the container out flat. You will see that the flattened cardboard pieces can be interlocked, owing to the way they are die cut. A single layer of these interlocked pieces stops even tough weeds like poke and dandelions. It takes about 18 months for the cardboard to break down, which is plenty of time to eliminate all the weeds under the raised bed. Weedblock fabric, by contrast, does not break down at all. And it does not come packaged with a frosty beverage.

Local Food Report
The first local strawberries have appeared in the market. The ones at Three Rivers Market came from the Colvin Family Farm in Spring City, TN. They must have been forced in a greenhouse, but they are far tastier than the berries now coming in from Florida and California. Good work, Colvin Family! Several varieties of lettuce, along with beautiful rainbow colored Swiss chard, from Hines Valley Farm in Loudon County were also on offer. Watercress from Hancock County appeared to have been foraged. Wild watercress is better than cultivated, in our view, and the harvest of wild watercress is certainly not environmentally harmful.

Speaking of wild veggies, I am surprised that we don't see more foraged greens in specialty markets like Three Rivers. Besides watercress, there is upland cress (or "creasy greens" to oldtimers hereabout), along with poke salad, dandelions, wild asparagus, wild onions and many more. I used to go on foraging trips with my grandmother, who believed that eating a good mess of wild greens was beneficial to one's health. I also wonder why ramps never seem to appear in the produce section, despite having a degree of popularity among upscale chefs in the big cities.

Strawberries in Containers

The strawberries we enjoy today result from a long history of selection and hybridization among several of the fifty-odd natural species. Everbearing (or day-neutral) strawberries produce a bumper crop in early summer, another smaller crop in late summer and a few berries here and there throughout the season in between. Because of the long harvest season, they are a good choice for home gardeners.

Regardless of the variety, strawberries grown in the ground must be relocated about every three to five years. The plants are subject to viral disease and pests that can reduce yields significantly. Many of these problems persist in old, dead foliage or in the soil. Regular renewal of the plants and their growing medium offers the best natural defense against these problems. In terms of standard crop rotation, strawberries should be separated by five years from soil that has previously grown any member of the potato family. This is because several important crop diseases are common to the two groups of plants.  Crop rotation can be a real problem for the backyard grower with limited space. In the case of strawberries, container growing offers a great alternative, since plants can be repotted in new, sterile growing mix every season or two.

Plant breeders have produced new lines of strawberries that are better suited to container cultivation than their traditional counterparts. Dutch hybridizers have produced varieties that not only bear luscious, tasty strawberries but also have large, showy flowers. This makes the plants decorative as well as productive. The variety shown in the photo at left is “Tristan.”

Strawberries need full sun and a well-drained sandy soil of slightly acidic pH, about 6.0-6.5. Any good commercial potting mix will work for strawberries, or you can make your own by mixing equal parts of sifted compost, horticultural peat and sand. Rainfall or irrigation should provide an inch or two of water per week during the growing season. Purchase certified disease-free plants in late winter or early spring, before they break dormancy. Although plants will grow and bloom in a small container, choose a pot that holds at least a gallon of growing medium for best results. Smaller containers may need watering more frequently than you would prefer.

I try to avoid the traditional “strawberry jar” (an urn with extra openings in the sides for planting) because they seldom hold enough soil to accommodate the roots of all the berry plants tucked into them. I also avoid hanging baskets, because I find they dry out too quickly and thus demand too much attention during the hot summer months.

Remove runners from container plants as they form. Allow the occasional runner to root in a small pot before detaching it, if you want to increase your stock of plants. Just set the crown of the runner on the soil. When it roots itself sufficiently to resist a gentle tug, cut it free.  Such plants will bear the following season, typically.

Feed everbearing strawberries regularly. Due to the repeated flushing of the container with water, nutrients will be lost. Watering with compost tea or a similar soluble fertilizer every other week will keep plants productive. Or use a timed-release fertilizer.

After the first frost sends plants into dormancy, remove any dead foliage and place the containers in a sheltered spot for the winter. Cover them with a blanket of pine needles or autumn leaves. You can wait until the plants break dormancy to return them to their sunny position on the porch or balcony, or you can bring a plant or two indoors in early January. Place the pots in the sunniest location available, protected from frost. This will allow you to harvest the first berries about a month to six weeks earlier than normal. We currently have berries ripening along with spring lettuce, allowing us to enjoy a delicious salad topped with freshly picked berries. See the accompanying photo of a plant forced as just described, taken yesterday. This plant, by the way, is growing beautifully in a nursery container holding only a half gallon of growing medium, demonstrating how well adapted to container culture this breeding line really is. The variety shown is "Loran." The fruits are slightly tart, and bursting with strawberry flavor. If you get too much rain while fruits are ripening, they tend to become watery. Another advantage to containers is that they can be moved out of the rain when needed, to avoid this problem. 

A well-grown plant in a roomy container can produce about one pound of fruit or more per season. Strawberries can be frozen or made into jam or preserves. Rich in vitamin C and phytochemicals, fresh strawberries can be added to salad or turned into a cold fruit soup (see the recipe below). They also star, of course, in desserts like strawberry shortcake.

Strawberry Soup

For 4 servings:

1 pint fresh strawberries, stemmed

2 cups apple or white grape juice

Juice of one small lemon

10 large, fresh mint leaves, plus small leaves for garnish

Salt (if desired)

Sugar (if desired)

Sour cream or yogurt to serve (if desired)

Reserve four perfect strawberries for garnishing the dish. Roughly chop the remaining strawberries and process in a food processor or blender, in batches if necessary, with the juices, the mint leaves and a pinch of salt, until you have a smooth puree. Chill until very cold. Taste and correct the seasoning with salt, lemon juice or sugar, as you deem necessary. Slice the reserved strawberries lengthwise, beginning at the pointed end, stopping before you completely cut through the stem end. Ladle the soup into chilled bowls. Place a dollop of sour cream or yogurt, if using, in the center. Fan out the berries gently and float one on each bowl of soup. Garnish with small mint leaves and serve.