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21.07.2023 - 22:24 / awaytogarden.com
OOPS! The lettuce that was succulent, sweet and gorgeous a week ago just stood up in bold protest, doubling in size and turning bitter, and the last spring spinach bolted. Out they go. My shorter snap and shelling peas are pooped. So what’s next—besides empty stretches of soil? What’s next is officially called succession sowing, and organic farmer Katie Spring shared her harvest-stretching tips for a fall bounty with me.We should be doing “successions,” or new sowings, all along during the growing season in our edible gardens, but it’s never more important than right now, especially up North where Katie and I garden. As summer comes on strong, we need to focus on continued vegetable and herb harvests through fall frost or even beyond. But what, and when?
Katie Spring and her husband, Edge Fuentes, make their living eking out every possible week of deliciousness and productivity–even in Zone 4 Northern Vermont. Katie also works part of the year with my friends at High Mowing Organic Seeds, as if she is not busy enough with CSA and wholesale clients, farm animals, and family at the couple’s GoodHeartFarmstead, 9 miles north of Montpelier (photo above of their seed house and part of the garden).Before we start on sowing: a little background on Good Heart Farmstead. Katie and Edge met at Calypso Farm in Alaska, a non-profit educational farm outside of Fairbanks. They eventually moved to Katie’s home state of Vermont, where they are now farming their own land (seen hoeing in midsummer last year in the top photo, before their son was born, and again below, with Waylon and a baby lamb). They raise heritage sheep, pigs, and chickens—and working toward a no-till style of land management.
Good Heart’s business structure is special,
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Tom Stearns is founder of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont, with more than 20 years specializing in breeding, selecting and marketing of organic varieties. From microgreens indoors to baby-leaf to mini-heads and up to full-sized heads in the garden, we talked about timing, spacing and making lettuce happy—even which types hold up best in the heat (and ways to help all lettuce do better when summer arrives).Read along as you listen to the Jan. 14, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).success with lettuce, with tom stearnsQ. Over the years on the show you and I have talked about tomato h
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR: Everybody’s got an Urgent Garden Question (or 20!). What better place to ask them than in person at one of my upcoming events? The car and I start another run starting tomorrow morning with an appearance at my favorite plant sale, Trade Secrets in Sharon, Connecticut, before we head north for Manchester Center, Vermont, for an evening lecture (whoosh)! And there many other stops in the weeks ahead, too—including a much-overdue one at the historic home of The Fabulous Beekman Boys and their adorable goats:Saturday, May 14, 9-11 AM: Garden Q&A’s and book signing at Trade Secrets, Sharon, CT.
CRAZY, BUT TRUE: I ALWAYS THOUGHT the quirky “voice” of the Fedco Seeds catalog, named C.R. Lawn—get it? Lawn?—was a fictitious character, the made-up but pervasive green spirit of the longtime seed cooperative’s brand. But he’s not make-believe. He’s the Maine-based Fedco’s founder, and an organic gardener, market grower and seedsman with more than 30 years’ experience, and he took the time to answer some of my questions on what to grow and how to grow it better. The result is a vegetable-gardening Q&A (from peas to potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, mineral dusts and more), with the very real C.R. Lawn—and the chance to win three $20 Fedco gift certificates I bought to share with you, and say thanks to him. Let’s jump right in:
BY LUMPING THE CROPS I SOW INDOORS in spring into three simple groups with similar time needs, I streamline my seed-starting. You’ll need to memorize only one fact to use my “lumped-together” countdown formula, and that’s your local date of average final frost (mine isn’t until close to June).The brassicas, like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kohlrabi, all have the same requirements: a month to six weeks indoors under lights before they go outside, which is safe about a month before final frost. This group therefore gets its start between March 15 and April 1 in my household. (Note with Brussels sprouts: many resources say sow them later, like May 1 or so, so they stand well into frost, when they achieve their best flavor. Today there are varieties requiring as few as 82ish days to maturity and as many as 100-plus, so take into consideration which you’re growing when you plan when to sow.)Tomatoes, peppers and eggplants make up my second group, each getting si
MY LATEST WEEKLY SHOW with NPR affiliate Robin Hood Radio, WHDD in Sharon, Connecticut, tackles the topic of replanting your vegetable garden for a harvest well into the fall. Stream it, or subscribe free on iTunes.Soil Too Hot and Dry for Germination?SOME SEEDS WON’T GERMINATE in baking soil, so a day or two before I sow things in high summer, I moisten and shade the bed-to-be. Cultivate at least lightly to prepare the seedbed, then water well and erect knitted shade fabric on hoops (over the area, or just lay it on the ground). With heat-sensitive crops like salad things and spinach, I leave the shade cloth up as the plants develop.But When Exactly to Sow What?IT DOESN’T ALL GO IN AT ONCE—each crop has its timing, thoug
A little about Michael:“That’s Michael Dodge,” I say, when I show people around the fall garden, as we pass a large group of show-offy, yellow-fruited Viburnum I enjoy all fall into winter. V. dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ is truly a standout plant.But the original Michael Dodge, the one that great shrub was named to honor, is a well-
Kate Spring, and her husband, Edge Fuentes, founded Good Heart Farmstead in Vermont in 2013, which serves up to 100 customers each season who subscribe to their CSA share program. Their farm is a hybrid business structure called an L3C, a low-profit, limited-liability company, where part of the mission is to support Vermonters in need of food access.Kate’s also a writer and the only person I know with her very own brand new yurt, which I couldn’t wait to hear about after having seen it be constructed on her Instagram.Read along as you listen to the December 14, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).mastering microgree
FEBRUARYMonday, February 13, 11:30 AM: lecture for Farmington Garden Club Founders’ Fund Celebration meeting, at Hill-Stead Museum Makeshift Theater, 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, CT; free admission.Saturday, February 25, 1 PM: lecture for Germantown Public Library, Germantown, NY, at 31 Palatine Park Road.MARCHThursday, March 1, 9:30 AM: lecture for Pleasantville Garden Club, in the social hall at Presbyterian Church, 400 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY.We
First, some background: Great Lakes Worm Watch is a citizen-science outreach organization, working to map the state of the earthworms—and the habitats they’re living in.“We want to know where earthworms are across the landscape,” says Ryan—and that means even beyond the Great Lakes area, where the project began. (There is a Canada Worm Watch, too, for those across the border; researchers at the University of Vermont, at the Cary Institute in Millbrook, New York, and elsewhere are likewise studying earthworm invasion.)Individuals, schools or garden groups can sign on help collect data on what worms are fou
As I told my six-friend panel, I have four such transport devices, each that has stood up to many years of rough use:one large and one medium Vermont Cart (wood, oversize spoked tires, removable end panel); one aluminum-frame Smart Cart with similar tires, aluminum frame, and removable high-density polyethylene tub that can be used as a soil-mixing vessel; one single-tire, 6-cubic-foot True Temper r
This is the 12th of our monthly Urgent Garden Question Q&A shows, and we thank you for your support—and for your questions most of all. You can keep them coming any time in comments or by email, using the contact form, or at Facebook.Read along as you listen to the Jan. 1, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).Plus: Enter to win a copy of Ken’s n