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| Salsify aka Oyster root. Picture taken June 17, 2021 |
The essays about subsistence gardening seem to generate a lot of reader engagement. I take that as a sign that it is a topic that resonates given the possibility of hyper-inflation.
I am NOT a gardening expert. I have readers (Howard in Alaska and Milton in Indiana and M.R. Tumnus to mention just a few) who leave me in the dust. I can share what I think I know and then others can chime in.
The other point to keep in mind is that good advice for Michigan or Washington state will be laughably stupid in Texas or Alaska. Find somebody selling at your local farmer's market who has dirt beneath their fingernails and ask the for advice.
When is it too late to start a garden?
My father planted most of his gardens the second week of June because of business commitments that prevented him from planting one earlier. For the sake of this essay, let's assume that meant an average planting date of June 10.
The selection of tomato plants at the greenhouse were very picked over. He planted Rutgers and Bonnie Bess tomatoes, Red Pontiac potatoes, butternut squash and Iochief sweetcorn. I cannot remember a crop "failure".
The first frost that leveled "soft" crops like tomatoes and melons was usually mid-September. The first hard freeze that finished the job was usually two weeks later. We canned hundreds of quarts of tomatoes picked from vines that were frost-blasted but the tomatoes continued to ripen.
That pencils out to an "effective" growing season of 97 days for tomatoes and 112 for "harder" crops.
By contrast, I shoot to plant my potatoes May 1, my corn May 15, tomatoes May 25ish and melons/beans/cukes June 1.
Biennials
Picture in your head a plant that flips your preconceptions of the natural order a plant's life-cycle on its head.
Suppose it evolved in a region subject to intense summer droughts. Maybe lands like Italy, Greece, the eastern-Mediterranean and the Tigris-Euphrates region, the Indus river valley...most of the regions where agriculture developed.
Those seeds would sprout in the late-summer rains. The plants would store up resources and hunker-down for the winter. Then, with the return of the sun in spring it would make a sprint to produce flowers and seeds before the next drought.
Biennials don't live for two years except in the sense that their life-cycle spans two calendar years.
Nearly all garden crops that we store in a root cellar are biennials: Carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, beets, onions, garlic, cabbage. It also includes many exotic vegetables: Salsify, burdock, daikon, chicory, scorzonera and greens like spinach and kale.
They store up reserves in roots or fleshy leaves and stems during the shortening days of autumn and then flower-and-set-seeds in the lengthening days of late spring.
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| Territorial Seed is based in western Oregon |
So, after dancing around...when is it too late?
If you have the seeds and the time, I would consider it to be worth your while to plant turnips, spinach and a few other crops as late as September 1st or even a bit later in southcentral Michigan. Wheat and rye and garlic could be planted as late as October 15 for harvest early the next summer.
Your mileage will vary.
I have planted garlic in the fall right up until the ground freezes, usually November here. Garlic shout not be planted in the spring.
ReplyDeleteSome years ago I saw a lot of “survival seed” packages advertised and laughter. Varieties that are good for Texas mostly won’t be very useful in the north. Probably the best way to choose varieties and planting times for your area is to talk to cooperative extension or a local Master Gardener. For us a lot of crops like tomato’s, beans, squash or peppers, hoop houses or green houses are the best answer. We tried corn in the hoop house with no luck, just a waste of space. Some years you could get a few tomatoes outside with row covers but the green house is consistent. We transplant provider beans into the hoop house and can thirty or forty pints plus fresh eating out of a three by twenty foot bed. We should have cabbage to eat in a couple weeks in the hoop house. It was a real late spring here so potatoes went in a week to ten days ago because the ground was too wet and cold to work. We have done fine in similar years partly because it’s light most of the night right now with the sun up something like eighteen hours. More carrots and beets going in now. Up here I have found that it is better to extend the season into late April for some crops instead of into October because we have the light early. This may work further south to some degree. Just some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the question lingering in some people's mind is "did the bus leave the station for this year?"
DeleteI was planting pole beans (Blauhilde and Carminat) earlier this week and it seemed really late to me. It got me to thinking about perspective or how to frame the question: When is it too late.
Well down there it certainly is not too late to plant succession crops like lettuce, turnips, radishes etc. You would likely be fine that are shorter season like carrots, plant 56 day variety instead of 75 day sugar snacks. You could get some cole crops if you could get a deal on leftover plants from the big box store. When I lived in New York years ago, said if you get it in by the Fourth of July in general you should be ok since things start to grow faster because of the warm soil and warm to hot temps as long as you have enough water!
DeleteAs a transplant from VT to Florida my learning curve has been steep. My cruciferous vegetables are now a winter crop, and I grow okra when it is hot in summer. Tomatoes and peppers run spring and fall. Not much luck with beans except shell peas and yard long. Learning is life-long, yes? Oh, and pineapples! I can grow pineapples! Never would have thought.
ReplyDelete