April Harvest update

This month is the payoff of the winter garden.

Throughout the last two weeks, my harvest has been ongoing.  The lettuce, kale, cabbage, and chard have been abundant.  I have been snipping off individual outer leaves and it doesn't look like I have really made a dent in the lettuce.  It's gotten to the point where I have had to remove entire heads just to thin out the bed a bit.  The butter crunch lettuce is starting to form heads, which is very cool to see. I usually grow leaf lettuce and I wondered what arcane mystery was involved in this heading lettuce: it turns out the mystery happens all on its own.

I have removed the plastic row covers from the raised beds.   On the 17th, we had a low of 32 F. and on the 21st, we had a low of 36 F.  At this point, any danger of frost is over, and the cool evening temperatures would actually help these crops, to keep them from bolting.  The greater temperature concern now is from very high daytime temperatures inside the tunnel.

The other reason for the row covers is to give shelter against desiccating winds and soaking rains.  With the plants as substantial as they are, that is less of a worry.  The water table is lower so drainage is much better.  And the garden could probably benefit from any rainfall, at this point.

April Garden Update

Last post, I talked about the seedlings, some of which were added to the outside raised beds.  But there are a few crops already planted and growing well.  At the very end of February I planted butter crunch lettuce, and this is what it looks like after 5 weeks of growing:

There are a couple of the new arugula transplants at the bottom right.

According to the planting information, the lettuce will be ready in 60 days, which would put it at the end of April. Realistically, I could begin harvesting individual outer leaves in about 2 weeks.












The Kale and Chard are at about the same place, having been planted a couple days later:

Transplant March 5

And the Napa cabbage trailed by about a week so it will be ready in early May.

Growing for 30 days - April 4

I harvested a few of the outside leaves this evening for some greens to stuff my gyros.  Perfectly sweet and tender. 

Seedling Update

So we are a little over two weeks since our last post, and I was mentioning that I would need to re-pot the Aerogarden soon, because the seedlings were outgrowing the current situation.   The post was on a Thursday, and I did, indeed transplant about half of the seedlings into larger pots that weekend.  These went out under the 4-tube fluorescent fixtures in the garage.

This included all of the Bok Choi, Some Arugula, and two Swiss Chard.  I planted the plugs into a larger plastic garden pot, using generic potting soil.  When I opened the Aerogarden, the roots had grown together into a thick matted tangle, which I had to separate out with careful fingers.  Roots were snapped along the way, and I had to coil some around the pot to make them all fit.  This suggests to me that I probably should have re-potted sooner.

I didn't loose any of them, though, and they all seemed to like the new light, on an 18-hour cycle.  I also gave them a weak feeding of miracle-gro.  After two weeks in the larger pots, they became as you see them above, still rather compact, but pressing on the lights.

Emboldened by their eagerness, I took a small sample of 4 Arugula and 2 Chard and planted them in my outside garden, after a couple of days of hardening.  The garage is not heated, so they hadn't been in a climate controlled area for many days, and I still have the low tunnels up to enhance the microclimate So we'll see how they do.

This is what they look like in the raised bed.

The Arugula above is definitely looking a little ragged and I'm hoping a bit of space will help them even out.  The spatulate leaves seem to be yellowing, but new leaves are showing in the interior that are deeply lobed in the Rocket style, and are a much nicer shade of deep green.

The chard, to the right, is in beautiful shape. With a rich red color on the stems and veins.

Both of these had roots throughout the pot, growing out the bottom and up the sides, so two weeks seemed to be plenty to get them ready for outdoors.

These were seeds that I planted in the Aerogarden on March 4th.  It's about 5 weeks later and they are ready for transplanting into the garden.  My calendar for their progress looks like this:

• Week 1: planted seeds into aerogarden plugs.  By the end of the first week, all the bok choi, arugula and chard had germinated.  One week for germination
• Week 2-3: weeks two and three, the seedlings grew well.  Water and nutrients were cycled and light was on a 24 hour cycle
• Week 4: In the middle of this week, I transplanted the Bok Choi, Chard and Arugula into small pots.  2.5 weeks in the Aerogarden as seedlings.
• Week 5: Grew for 1.5 weeks in transplant pots under fluorescent lights.  At the end of this week, I transplanted into the garden the first half of the re-potted seedlings.
• Week 6: This is the transplant's first week in the raised beds.  I still have all the bok choi in pots for one more week, giving them the full 6 week start cycle.

That gives me about 6 weeks from planting seed to transplanting into the raised bed.  And these are for simple plants.  It is likely that other plants (like tomatoes and peppers) take longer to germinate and require a longer growing out period before they are ready for the garden.

So that means that if I want to plant tomatoes and peppers in the first week in June, I need lead time of at least 6 weeks to prepare seedlings.  If that's true, I should be preparing to seed peppers and tomatoes soon.

The lower bed

Napa cabbage

This is the lower bed, which I set up today.  The raised bed has been used for the last few years so the soil is in good shape.  There just isn't enough of it to fill the bed.  Today I added peat moss, compost, and one bag of actual potting soil.  The resulting mix was very light and workable.

This bed had been part of a high tunnel in the past but now I'm dropping it down to a low tunnel.  The high tunnel was creating too big a profile and kept catching the wind abs breaking ribs

Napa Cabbage is listed at 75 days to harvest but I need to subtract two weeks since these are already at the transplant stage.  That gives us 60 days from today, so around the beginning of May these should be ready to harvest. 

The March Challenge is to prepare the remaining three beds.  This is the first of those three.

March Photo Record #1

This is the exterior of the first raised bed with low tunnel as it was set up last weekend. This is assembled from 4 hoops of 1/2" grey conduit draped with 6 mil plastic.  Because of my troubles with gusting wind, I have clamped the plastic to the top of the raised bed using 2 x 6s and one in-elegant 4x4.

In the background, you can see another bed covered with a brown plastic tarp, weighed down with planting containers and concrete blocks.  That will be part of this month's project.

On the right is a look at the interior.  You can see the conduit hoops (used because they are UV resistant) set into 1" pvc that has been fastened to the raised bed frame.

This bed has been planted for about a week.  Kale is in the foreground, with chard in the middle and butter crunch lettuce at the far end.  I watered it about 4 days ago but you can see that the soil is still darkened.  The plastic creates a microclimate that conserves moisture, and condensation forms on the inside of the plastic.

With cool days as we have in March, I won't need to water much for the next several weeks.

I amended the soil with compost and turned under the leaf mulch that I covered the bed with last November.  When planting, I added Espoma Plant-tone organic fertilizer.












Below is a closer view of the bed

Leafy bed is planted

Just a post to confirm that the Kale and Chard have been planted in the upper bed.  The challenge on the February garden schedule was to get the first bed in by the end of February.  With an off-the-record midnight planting session, I can confirm that this goal was met.

Kale lists itself as 45 days to maturity so I can begin harvesting leaves in the middle of April.  Chard and Buttercrunch lettuce are both listed as 55-60 days to maturity, so they will be ready at the end of April.  Both of these should be picked young, starting with the outer leaves.

The high temperature today was in the low 70s, although at 6 am this morning, I was scraping frost off my windshield as I left the house.  The new seedlings are under plastic so they should be fine.  In fact, the lettuce that I transplanted a few days ago is standing up straight.  So any doubts that I may have had that February was too early for cool season crops have certainly been put to bed, so to speak.

So now I have the second and third beds to plant if I wish. I am following the garden layout I detailed here.   I don't have to do any more than one, but they are sitting there fallow if I am so inclined.

Winter Challenges

Winter means different things in different locations.  Here, the threat of winter is not so much the deep cold.  We seldom get temperatures below 30 F;  and nights in the lower twenties are an extreme rarity.  We will receive significant snowfall perhaps twice a winter, and that is merely a snowfall over 2 inches, usually in late January or early February.

Instead, what we are usually faced with are soaking rains causing saturated ground, and gusting wind.  Because of our flat terrain and low elevation, the ground drains very poorly, and gardens dug into the ground will usually remain saturated.  The solution is to build raised beds to dramatically improve the drainage.  With raised beds and low tunnels to give a modest amount of frost protection, but more importantly rain and wind protection, winter gardening should be fairly straightforward. 

This would be true except for the other factor of this area: gusting winds.  Winter storms can bring with them tornadic winds that will rip apart row covers, and poly film stretched over pvc hoops is especially vulnerable.  The danger is that you have a winter garden that you've nursed for several months, but one severe windstorm will tear your covers to shreds and then leave your garden exposed to desiccating winds or soaking rains, or both on alternating days.

So the bottom line is that structural integrity is the primary factor in securing the low tunnels.  In the videos, you see happy gardeners digging a shallow trench with a hoe and covering the loose plastic edges with a few inches of soil.  That is simply not happening here.  You'll be chasing your agribon into your neighbor's yard after the first weekend. I've had the wind move concrete blocks off the plastic.

So now I'm wrapping the ends around 2x6s and clamping the boards to the top of my raised bed perimeter. with 4" C-clamps.  It does secure the row cover, but it makes it more difficult to get into the bed when you want to harvest a few leaves for your dinner salad.

The result, however, is that we're creating an excellent winter microclimate.  Free from the wind and driving rain, with their feet dry but leaves moist inside the dome, and with plenty of sunlight, winter plants have what they need to thrive.