The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener BLAD

how to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a year No Matter Where You Live

Year-round Vegetable gardener

Year-round Vegetable gardener

the

P h o to g ra P h y b y J o s eP h D e s c i o s e

N i k i J a b b o u r

S p r i n gUse cold frames and mini

hoop tunnels to get a jump on spring

S U m m e rHarvest warm-weather crops

weeks earlier

fa l lplan for succession to

continue the harvest through the summer into

the fall

w i n t e rKeep harvesting straight

through the winter

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62568YearRoundBLAD.covers.indd 3 5/5/11 2:04:12 PM

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NoN-Stop CropS!

The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener Full-color; photographs and illustrations throughout

256 pages; 8½ x 10‡/•

Paper: $19.95 US / $23.95 CAN

ISBN: 978-1-60342-568-1; No. 62568

Hardcover: $29.95 US / $35.95 CAN

ISBN: 978-1-60342-992-4; No. 62992

eBook available

December 2011

The Author

Publicity

December 2011

Nova Scotia-based gardener and writer Niki Jabbour shares her secrets for growing food during every month of the year, pro-viding a never-ending supply of delicious produce. Her season-defying techniques, developed in her own home garden where short summers and low levels of winter sunlight present the ultimate challenge, are doable, affordable, and rewarding for food gardeners living in any location where frost is the usual end to the growing season.

Publicity Contact: Adam Carmichael (413) 346-2139 or [email protected]

Niki Jabbour is a food gardener and garden writer

who lives near Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her articles have

appeared in Canadian Gardening, Garden Making,

Gardens East, The Heirloom Gardener, and other pub-

lications. She is the host of The Weekend Gardener, a

call-in radio show that airs throughout the Maritime

provinces on News 95.7 FM and www.news957.com,

and she blogs at yearroundveggiegardener.blogspot.

com. Her garden boasts over 40 heirloom vegetables and herbs that keep her

family eating fresh food year-round.

• Book trailer & photo exhibit offered for online slideshows

• Garden & food website and publication features

• National publicity in daily newspaper gardening columns

• Author’s own blog and radio show promotions

• Author events in U.S. and Canada


Introduction 10

Part 1 Rethinking the Growing Seasons 18

Chapter 1 Getting the Timing Right 19Chapter 2 Intensive Planting 33Chapter 3 Growing Into Winter 52Chapter 4 Designing Productive Gardens 70

Part 2 Growing the Right Vegetables 89Chapter 5 Vegetables 90

Chapter 6 Herbs 200

aPPendix

Builders’ Guide 230Succession Planting and Interplanting Charts 235Resources and Suggested Reading 240Index 250

Basil • Chervil • Chives • Coriander • Dill • Greek Oregano • Parsley • Rosemary • Sage • Thyme

Arugula • Asparagus • Beans • Beets • Broccoli • Broccoli Raab • Brussels Sprouts • Cabbage • Carrots • Cauliflower • Celery & Celeric • Claytonia • Collards • Corn • Cucumbers • Eggplant • Endive • Garlic • Kale • Kohlrabi • Leek • Mâche • Melons • Mibuna • Mizuna • Mustard • Onion • Pak Choi • Parsnips • Peas • Peppers • Potatoes • Rutabagas • Spinach • Sweet Potatoes • Swiss Chard • Summer Squash • Tatsoi • Tomatoes • Turnips • Winter Squash

COnTEnTS

62568YearRoundBLAD.interior.indd 1 5/5/11 2:03:25 PM

F o ur Se a s o n s o f F re s h V e g e t a b l e s

June 6th August 5th

November 14th January 15th2


IntroductionIt all started with a row cover. Years ago, on an

unexpectedly mild day in late November, I happened to wander up to the empty vegetable patch. I hadn’t actually been up to the garden since the garlic was planted in mid October, thinking the season was over until the following spring. Yet as I strolled the pathways, I discovered that the bed where we had enjoyed arugula until early October was still going strong! I immediately headed back to the house for a bowl and picked a big salad for supper. That night it snowed a few inches, but the next day, I headed back up to the garden to see if the arugula had suc-cumbed. It hadn’t! Instead, the vigorous leaves were poking out of the snow, begging to be picked. I grabbed a few row covers from the garage that I typically used to protect the tomatoes after spring planting and placed them on top of the arugula patch. With that simple level of protection, we enjoyed arugula from the garden until after Christmas. I soon began to experiment with some of the hardier vegetables that I found listed in seed catalogs — leeks, salad greens, carrots, scallions, kale — and realized that with some basic shelter, the traditional gardening season could be extended by months. A few good books, such as Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman and Solar Gardening by Leandre Poisson and Gretchen Vogel Poisson helped point the way and introduced me to cold tolerant veggies that I had never heard of before, much less eaten. These included mâche, claytonia, tatsoi, and more. I also discovered that cold-season gardening involves much less maintenance than warm-season gardening. Once the temperature plunges in late autumn, little work is needed to keep crops happy. You don’t need to water, fight bugs (okay, maybe I find an occasional slug hiding in the cold frames in late autumn), or weed. I think of our winter cold frames as in-ground refrigerators that protect and hold our crops until we’re ready to eat them. As I learned during that first winter, even the most basic season extender — the row cover — can be a valuable tool. We use our row covers in spring, fall, and winter

to protect a wide variety of cool- and cold-season crops. They’re even draped over winter carrot and parsnip beds to hold down the thick mulch of shredded leaves that insulates the root crops. Another handy season-extending tool is the cloche. Gardeners have been using cloches for centuries to shelter crops. What could be easier than putting an old glass jar upside-down over a newly planted tomato seedling? Or a milk jug with the bottom removed? Yet, this simple barrier against the elements can help expand your growing season by several weeks at either end. I also like the water-filled cloches, which let me plant tomatoes in the garden weeks before the last frost, giving me the earliest tomatoes on the street! Of course, we don’t harvest heirloom tomatoes in January (although I do keep a dozen large bags of garden tomatoes tucked away in the freezer for a winter treat). Rather, we’ve learned to work with the seasons and grow the right veg-etables at the right time. In spring and summer, we have all the usual characters — beans, peas, tomatoes, carrots, broc-

coli, lettuce, and much, much more. Come autumn, we don’t hang up our gloves and put the garden to bed. Instead, we switch gears and begin to harvest the cool-weather vegetables like kale, leeks, scallions, car-rots, parsnips, tatsoi, spinach, arugula, and claytonia. Even in the dead of winter, we’re

able to harvest the most cold-tolerant varieties of these vegetables, with the help of season-extending devices like cold frames and mini hoop tunnels. And we don’t live in a sunny corner of the world, either. Our garden is perched on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in the Great White North — Nova Scotia, Canada. In this book, I’ll walk you through the process of creat-ing a year-round vegetable garden. But it’s only fair to warn you that the ability to harvest fresh, organic vegetables year-round from your own garden is potentially addictive. Plus, it’s extremely satisfying and easier than you might think. Interested? Keep reading.

Even in the dead of winter, we’re able to harvest vegetables

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G rowing up, I was a very picky eater, and it wasn’t until I became a serious vegetable gardener in my 20s that I truly

embraced the diversity of the food available to me. No longer did my salads consist of chopped-up iceberg lettuce and a few chunks of carrots. Instead, I took great pride in mixing a variety of greens: leaf lettuces, spinach, Swiss chard, and beet greens, for example. When I realized that I could push the gardening year well into the depths of winter, I encountered many vegetables

Year-Round Vegetables

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Chapter54


5 cold season crop cool season crop warm season crop 5

that I had never heard of before, much less tasted — arugula, mâche, tatsoi, mizuna, and claytonia — and soon they became garden staples. This opportunity to try new things is one of the greatest pleasures of being a year-round gardener. The arrival of the seed catalogs in my mail-box in midwinter is a welcome reminder that spring is just around the corner. In spite of the fact that the garden is usually blanketed with a thick layer of snow at this time, we’re still enjoy-ing crunchy sweet carrots, tender mâche, suc-culent claytonia, hardy kale, peppery arugula, and many other cold-tolerant crops. I tend to order from a handful of my favorite catalogs each January, keeping in mind that I will be planting seeds throughout the year — not just in the spring! Picking which vegetables to grow is one of the highlights of having a garden. Should we try Tom Thumb lettuce and Black from Tula tomatoes? What about Costata Romanesco zucchini? Don’t shy away from unfamiliar crops; instead be open to new tastes, textures, and flavors, trying something new each year. Also keep in mind that some varieties or cultivars may be more cold tolerant (or alterna-tively, heat tolerant) than others. For example, most lettuces thrive in the cool temperatures of spring and fall, but certain ones, like Winter Density or Merveille des Quatre Saisons are extra cold resistant and thus ideal for winter plantings. Be sure to read the descriptions in seed catalogs carefully before you order your seed to make sure you’re selecting the best cultivar or variety for each season. If that sounds like too much work, you’re in luck, as I’ve listed

Niki’s Picks — the best cultivars or varieties for a year-round garden — at the bottom of each vegetable description. I love that my children are growing up with a garden. Because we grow such a wide variety of veggies, they think that it’s normal for a cucum-ber to be round and butter yellow or carrots to be purple (or red, or white, or gold) or lettuce to be deep burgundy. They also think nothing of going up to the cold frames in the middle of winter to brush snow from the sash and help pick greens for a salad or dig a few super-sweet carrots. To them, the mini hoop tunnels are tents for vegetables, and covering a crop with a floating row cover is like tucking it in for the night with a cozy blanket. I don’t know if they’ll be gardeners when they grow up, but I do know that they’ll appre-ciate the quality and variety of the food they grew up with — even if they didn’t actually eat all of it! (“What do you mean you don’t eat broc-coli raab? Just try it, you’ll love it!”)


carrots Carrots are one of the most important vegetables in our year-round garden. Not only are they an easy-to-grow, low-maintenance crop, but they’re also cold tolerant and may be stored right in the soil where they’re grown for a winter-long harvest of sweet, crisp roots. In fact, as tem-peratures take a nose dive in late fall, their flavor continues to improve as the starches in the roots convert to sugar. In terms of yield per square foot, carrots are also tops. Because they can be grown so close together and take up so little space, carrots offer a big harvest from a small plot. But perhaps the most important reason to grow car-rots is their taste. The flavor of just-dug garden carrots is sensational: crunchy, sweet, and absolutely delicious! They even smell good — fresh and earthy. Carrots are one of the few vegetables our kids will eat without my nagging; they even run up to the garden to eagerly dig a few for their lunchboxes and after-school snacks. It probably helps that, thanks to increasing demand, heirloom carrots in shades of purple, white, yellow, red, and of course, orange have been re-introduced into seed catalogs. Digging for carrots is also so much fun! Everyone loves to harvest from our “rainbow” bed because you never know what color you’ll end up with. (I’m partial to purple.) Whatever types of carrots you choose to grow, with a basic cold frame or even just a thick layer of shredded leaves and a row cover, you’ll be able to enjoy them practically 12 months of the year.

❆ first fall

frost

8–12 weeks before: direct sow

in cold frame or mini hoop tunnel for fall/winter harvest

10–12 weeks before: direct

sow in the garden for fall/winter

harvest

s P r i n g s u m m e r

P l a n t i n g c a l e n d a r

❆ l ast

spring frost


sow in the garden


sow in a cold frame

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7 cold season crop cool season crop warm season crop

t y p e s o f C a r r o t s

Although you can pick from hundreds of varieties of carrots, these are typi-cally bunched into five main groups:

imPerator. These are the big ones! Imperator carrots are long, typically 9 to 10 inches with narrow shoulders that taper to a pointed tip. Because the roots grow so long, they do best in a deep, loose soil.

chantenay. Chantenay are the best carrots to grow in shallow or heavy

soil. The extremely tapered roots are shaped like an ice cream cone and grow just 5 to 6 inches long with 2-inch-wide shoulders. The flavor is sweet and crisp, and it improves with a few light frosts.

nantes. Extremely popular, Nantes-type carrots are known for their crunchy sweetness and cylindrical-shaped roots with a blunt tip. They grow up to 7 inches long and are a good choice for winter plantings.

danvers. Similar in shape to Imperator carrots, Danvers are shorter and can be grown in shallower soils. The conical roots grow 6 to 8 inches long and are resistant to cracking and splitting.

sPecialty. This category is reserved for unique carrots like the round Parisian-types that grow 1 to 2 inches across. We enjoy them straight from the garden, but they are also delicious roasted or steamed.

p l a n t i n g

Plant your carrots in a sunny spot with deep, well-drained, and clump-free soil. A raised bed is ideal, especially for varieties with very long roots. Before plant-ing, dig the site well to make sure any clods of soil are broken up and rocks are removed. If possible, enrich your spring-planted carrot bed the previous autumn, so that the organic matter has had plenty of time to break down. Manure must be well aged (at least 2 years), or the elevated nitrogen levels might result in a patch of forked, hairy carrots. In fact, when growing carrots, it’s more important to loosen the soil well — to a depth of about a foot — than it is to make it super fertile. To help encourage super-sweet carrots, I also sprinkle a thin layer of wood ash onto the planting bed, raking it into the top few inches of soil. Carrots love the potassium in the wood ash, and it also boosts my soil pH, which tends to be low.

s p r i n g . Carrots are best direct seeded into the garden, starting about 3 weeks before the last spring frost. You can also start an early cold frame or polytunnel crop about 10 to 12 weeks before the last spring frost. You may occasionally see carrot trans-plants for sale at nurseries, but don’t buy them. Carrots, like most root crops don’t transplant well and should be seeded directly in the spot where they will grow.

If you don’t have nice deep soil for carrots, don’t despair; try baby or round carrots, which don’t require deep soils. Carrots can also be grown in deep containers (at least a foot deep).

Carrots that are direct-sown into deep, rich soil will form lovely, straight roots (left). those that are transplanted will fork (right).


I plant intensively to get the most out of my space, and in a 4-foot-wide gar-den bed, I plant 7 to 8 rows of carrot seed, spacing them around 6 to 8 inches apart. I try to sow 2 to 3 seeds per inch, planting them ¼ to ½ inch deep. Carrot seeds are small, so it can be difficult to spread them thinly and evenly. It helps to plant pelleted seed, which is simply seed that has been dipped in an inert material, such as clay, that dissolves when planted. The pelleted seed is much larger and easier to handle than uncoated seed and makes sowing carrots a breeze. The downside is that only a handful of carrot varieties are available in pelleted form, so you sacrifice selection for convenience, and pelleted seed also costs more. Some seed companies also offer seed tapes, which are long strips of seeds suspended in paper for ease of seeding and spacing. Like pelleted seed, these seed tapes eliminate the need to thin, but they are more expensive and only a few varieties are offered this way. Don’t despair though; there are a few simple tricks to help you sow carrot seed more evenly. Many gardeners find that mixing their carrot seed with sand helps ensure even planting. Others like to combine carrot and radish seed, sow-ing them together. The radish seed will germinate quickly, marking the row and when they’re harvested in 25 to 30 days, they’ll loosen the soil to make room for the growing carrots. Carrot germination can be slow, but most seedlings will emerge in about 1 to 2 weeks, with the slowpokes taking up to 3 weeks, depending on the tempera-ture and soil moisture levels. Warm, moist soils are best, so keep newly planted beds well watered. Crusty soil can reduce and slow down germination rates. To prevent soil crusting, cover newly planted beds with a thin layer of sand, a row cover, or a board, removing the board as soon as the seeds sprout. You can always sprinkle more seeds in the empty spots to fill in spotty germination.

s u m m e r . For a long season of crunchy carrots, sow seed every 3 weeks from mid spring until about 8 weeks from your first fall frost — early to mid August in my garden. I also sow my cold frame carrots at this time. It can be difficult to keep soil cool and moist for midsummer carrot germination. For the cold frame crop, I lay an untreated piece of scrap wood over the just-seeded wooden frame to cast shade for a few days until the seed germinates. With the warmer tem-peratures of summer, germination is much quicker than in the early Spring. In the garden, a thin piece of wood can be laid over the beds. Just be sure to check every day for germination. If you wait too long to remove the wood, the crop will be damaged. Another option is to use the ribs of your mini hoop tunnels to support a length of shadecloth. The dark fabric will shade the soil, preventing water evaporation and ensuring a good germination rate. Again, remove the cloth as soon as the seed germinates.

fa l l / W i n t e r . The last garden planting will be for our winter harvest, so once the cold weather arrives in late November and the tops begin to die back, I add a 1-foot-thick layer of shredded leaves or seedless straw over the beds, securing a row cover, old sheet, piece of burlap or length of chicken wire over the top to hold the mulch in place. To make winter harvesting easier, I mark the end of the rows with a bamboo pole or stick.

Niki’s Picksnapoli f1 (58 days). This has become our go-to carrot for a fall and winter harvest. I seed a whole cold frame full of napoli in early August, cover the soil with a thick layer of shredded leaves in late December, and we’re able to pick super-sweet roots from December until we run out. The 6- to 7-inch-long orange roots are cylindrical and have a blunt tip. As the temperature drops, the sweetness increases, making napoli one of the best cold season veggies available.

parmex (OP) (60 to 70 days). A nearly round carrot, Parmex has sweet orange roots that are best picked when they’re around 1 inch across. Plant these uniquely shaped carrots in contain-ers, window boxes, or directly in the garden. They’re a real hit with kids, so make sure to pick up a packet if you have any young garden helpers.

atomic red (OP) (70 days). This is an imperator-type carrot with long, tapered roots in an unusual shade of reddish purple. The roots get their eye-catching color from the antioxidant lycopene. When the carrots are cooked, the red color intensifies, as does the mildly sweet flavor.

purple Haze f1 (73 days). Each autumn, I bring a big basket of mixed vegetables to our local elementary school to show the children the diverse variety we grow. As I pull out the bunch of Purple Haze carrots, the room goes quiet and all eyes are firmly glued to the long, deep purple roots. This All America Selections winner is a stun-ning carrot whose dark exterior hides a bright orange center. The sweet tasting roots grow 8 to 10 inches long and will lose their color if overcooked. We like to eat them raw or lightly stir-fried.

Yellowstone (OP) (75 days). A unique yellow carrot, Yellowstone is vigor-ous and sweet, producing roots up to 10 inches long. We pick them when they’re about 7 to 8 inches for opti-mum quality and mild flavor.

carrots, continued

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9

• Book trailer & photo exhibit offered for online slideshows

• Garden & food website and publication features

• National publicity in daily newspaper gardening columns

• Author’s own blog and radio show promotions

• Author events in U.S. and Canada

cold season crop cool season crop warm season crop

G r o w i n G

once they’ve gotten past the first month or so, carrots are extremely low main-tenance. but for the initial few weeks, the tender, newly germinated carrot seedlings can be finicky and will benefit from a bit of babying. The young seedlings are no match for weeds, so keep competition at bay by hoeing shallowly or plucking any offending plants that pop up. also, if earwigs or slugs are a problem in your garden, be vigilant, as they can munch an entire bed of carrot seedlings to the ground in just one night — something that I can confirm from personal experience. a row cover makes a great babysitter for delicate carrot seedlings by keeping pests out and locking in moisture and heat. I’m sure there are expert carrot seeders out there, but I have never been able to plant a bed of carrots that didn’t need thinning. Thinning doesn’t have to be a chore, though. If you planted your seed uniformly — about 2 seeds per inch — you’ll be able to eat your thinnings as gourmet baby carrots. Simply thin every other carrot when the tops are about a ½ inch wide, leaving about 1 to 2 inches between the remaining roots. once the carrot tops grow together, they will create a dense living mulch that will shade the soil and discourage weeds, but until they reach this stage, a 1-inch-thick layer of grass clippings, seedless straw, or screened compost will keep weeds at bay and prevent the soil from drying out. as the carrots mature, use additional mulch or soil to cover up any roots that poke out of the ground. If exposed to the sun, the shoulders will turn green and the top part of the root will be bitter. If deer like to graze in your carrot patch, bend a sheet of 6-inch con-crete reinforcing mesh over the bed in a half-circle. This low wire tun-nel will prevent the deer from nib-bling on your carrot greens, but light, water, and air can still penetrate. Plus, the 6-inch squares will allow you to reach in for a quick and easy harvest. This also works great for low-growing salad greens.

H a r v e s t i n G

although you can pull your carrots out of the ground by their tops, the greens are often not strong enough to withstand this pulling, and you’ll be left with a handful of leaves. So, I always bring along my trusty garden fork when it’s time to harvest some carrots; a quick dig will loosen the soil and reveal the bounty hidden just beneath the surface. baby carrots are typically ready in about 50 to 60 days and can be pulled when the shoulders are around ½ inch wide. Mature carrots, on the other hand, will need a few more weeks and, depending on the variety, are typically ready to harvest in around 75 days.

the simplest way to keep carrots for winter harvest is to cover the bed with bales of straw. Whenever you’re ready to dig some roots, just move the bales aside, replacing them over the remaining carrots when you’re done.

winter harvested carrots.


P h o to g ra P h y b y J o s eP h D e s c i o s e

N i k i J a b b o u r

The ye

ar

-ro

un

D V

eg

eta

ble

ga

rD

ener

Jabbour

ßStoreywww.storey.com

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The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener BLAD