Tag Archives: carrots

Much planted, much to go

51914 gardenAfter tomorrow I’ll have a lot of newly emptied squares. To date I have a lot of the summer crops in and growing. Tomatoes, cucumbers, summer lettuce varieties, chives, carrots, chard, scallions, potatoes, nasturtium, peppers, basil, and bush beans are all in. In the next day I’ll finish planting all the rest-zucchini, patty pan and banana/butternut squash, beets, scallions, and maybe some thyme. I’ll continue to plant lettuce all summer long to make sure I have a large enough harvest by the time the tomatoes ripen. If you’re looking for a nifty little gadget to tell you what to plant and when, you ought to check this out. It’s free and easy to use. You’ll get an email periodically to remind you what to plant next. Read about it here.  Hope this helps out.

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TWE first spring delivery

TWE 041514-1st deliveryI only grow for 5 customers but this is the first delivery for the 6 week spring season. What’s in there you ask? Radicchio, mizuna, claytonia, cilantro, poc-choi, carrots, swiss chard, and an artisan lettuce mix. The mix has a combination of black seeded simpson, red cross and skyphos lettuce, spinach, and tokyo bekana. The whole idea is simple: take a handful of lettuce and add any of the other salad green “mix-ins” for a different tasting salad for several nights. It’s not really cheap but my customers enjoy the freshest tasting salad greens and veggies around-especially this early. None of the local CSA’s are up and running at this time. The greatest thing? Taste-taste-taste! And no chemical/pesticide/fertilizer residues-ever.

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The square foot garden winter harvest

leeks 091513Here in zone 6 it’s time to fill all your empty squares with things you like to eat during the winter. Most of us try to avoid our gardens during this usually bleak time of year, but you don’t have to. By using the right crops that love cool or cold weather and providing the minimal amount of protection, you can be eating out of your garden all winter. And the eats are good too!! The varieties are a little different than many are used to, but my guess is you’ll love the taste of virtually all of them. If you don’t have your garden filled up yet, you still have a couple of weeks to get many of the crops in that will thrive during the winter months. Leeks, turnips, parsnips, lettuce, spinach, mache, claytonia, mizuna, minutina, arugula, pak choi, raddichio, carrots, etc. are some of the things I grew successfully last winter. I’ll be having my last gardening workshop of the season this weekend if you live locally. Bring a friend and come on out. Visit my website for more information. I’ll be having a one of a kind class during the first week of December. You’ll be hooked when you see it then…[ois skin=”below post”]

Fall planting schedule-what, when, and how?

cross view of covered garden in summerOne of the best ways I’ve seen in figuring out what to grow, when to start it, and what to plant is the crop scheduler from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Besides having the best things on the planet(personal view), they are outstanding at support. Just plug in your average first frost date and you’ll see when you should start, what you should start, and how to do it-either with transplants or direct seeding. You can read all about it here.  You’ll see the planting calendar on the right hand side of the page.  By planting the right crops for the right season you eliminate a lot of headaches-like trying to grow tomatoes in weather that’s too cold.  Or spinach in the summer.  Cold weather and frost isn’t too far away-it’s time to start planning if you want a great fall garden and harvest.  I’ve still got plenty of lettuce(in terribly warm weather)coming on, along with chard, tomatoes, peppers,  zucchini, squashes, carrots, basil, parsely, chives, corn, and beets among other things.  All of these-with the exception of lettuce-love the warm weather.  I’ve had to do some extra work with the lettuce to keep it from tasting bitter(more on that the next post), and going to seed, but it’s easy work.  I’ve got some fall square foot garden classes to teach coming up in the next few weeks in order to help others get ready for the fall season.  I hope you can experience the success and the taste of a fresh brussel sprout pulled right off the stem-along with all the other great fall crops.

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June carrots-delicious

june carrotsPulled a head of black seeded simpson lettuce and chard tonight along with some new carrots.  I grow 4 varieties of carrots-one that’s a smaller-sized carrot for early in the season, another that’s the size of these carrots shown in the picture, and then two that are larger, storage type of carrots.  For the early crop this year I grew minicor-which were really good.  They came up in about 55 days.  The picture shows Napoli-and they are really good.  In other places I’ve got Mokum and Scarlet Nantes-both excellent tasting varieties that will be ready in the fall.  There’s something about carrots right out of the ground-it almost ruins buying carrots at the store-at any time of the year.  One square will give you 16 carrots….unless, of course, you know the ninja secret for them….

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