Extending the Harvest with Covered Hoops

Last year I began experimenting with extending the growing season and harvesting fresh food through autumn. In fact, I was able to harvest backyard veggies for the last time on December 1st! After that we had an unseasonal cold snap and early snow (I live in the moderate pacific northwest where we are increasingly finishing winter with little to no snow). Luckily some of my cold resistant veggies bounced back enough by late winter that I could start harvesting them again in February and March.

But one of my faults as a backyard gardener is that I often forget to harvest the veggies before they bolt (go to seed) in the summer or freeze in the winter. I'm always disappointed that I didn't pick something when I thought of it instead of waiting just that one more day or week. Hardy plants like kale did well with limited frosts and bounced back quickly, but my turnips, carrots, and cabbage were turned to mush in the freezing temps and never rebounded.

Through the summer, after doing more reading about fall and winter gardening, and weighing the pros and cons of cold frames versus covered hoops (an excellent discussion here), I decided to try covered hoops this year. Sometimes plastic covered hoops made with flexible tubing are called low tunnels, and the taller variety are called poly tunnels. I guess mine are a hybrid (not low but not tall enough to walk in).

My wonderful neighbour (really, he's amazing) and built my covered hoops once I'd cleaned up the fall garden and mulched everything for warmth and moisture retention. Unfortunately we'd already had a frost, so there has been some damage to the lettuce and Asian greens, which I'd hoped to avoid.

With the sides down for full protection.

With the sides up for moisture in warmer temperatures.

So how well do the covered hoops work to protect my plants?


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Kitchen Scraps Garden Part Two: Carrot Seeds

Most kitchen gardeners grow carrots, and I am no exception. My daughters love eating them, and generally I find them easy to grow. While seeds are not overly expensive, I find I go through a great deal of them each year because of having to sow so many then thinning the seedlings to allow for adequate growth.

I have been experimenting with growing food from kitchen scraps, and I saw a post somewhere about planting the tops of carrots to produce seeds. As a novice gardener I am beginning to delve into seed saving, which has so many benefits. This seemed like a perfect fit.

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Sunflower Feast

I love sunflowers "just because."

They are bright and they make me happy. They have faces that smile as they look down on me.

But I also love sunflowers for all the critters they attract to my garden. I have had much joy taking photos of ladybugs, flies, bees, ants, sunflowers and beetles climbing over my sunflowers.

Lately my backyard garden has been looking all kinds of shaggy because we are in transition to the cooler months of the year. The sunflowers are drooping. The once bright yellow petals are turning brown and falling off.

But this brings a different kind of happiness. For one, the plants coming to the end of their cycle and producing seeds is it's own kind of gorgeousness. One of my favourite hashtags on Instagram is #lovelydeadcrap. The feed is filled with amazing photographs of decaying plants, which is often overlooked as a source of beauty.

For another, the seeds the plants produce are a source of food for critters like squirrels and birds.

This morning the sunflower stalks moved and swayed but not from the breeze. There are a dozen little birds feasting on the sunflower seeds that are exposed. We don't see as many little birds as we used to, so this is a welcome sight.

We have seen chickadees, finches and sparrows swooping in and dashing away. We don't need a bird feeder because we have nature's bird feeder. It makes me happy that I decided against pulling up most of the sunflowers to make room for my fall garden.

Image source

Gardening brings such joy year round.

If you are on Instagram, I'm crustyroll35. Let's connect!

Autumn Garden

Tomorrow will be the first day of autumn and I am looking forward to the official end of summer. I feel alive during the summer and I revel in all the outdoor activities we can easily do during the hot months, but like many people, autumn may be my favourite season. This year I have more reasons to say good bye to the summer than in previous years.

The leaves have begun to show their first blush of autumn. On the eve of what should have been the first day of school we spent time at my old alma mater, Simon Fraser University, and enjoyed the beautiful leaves. 

We are fortunate here in the pacific northwest because we can often have an extended summer in September and a long autumn with cool, crisp mornings and warm afternoons well into October. We make up for it in November with the famous Vancouver rain. 

While the intense growing season of the summer has all but ended, I like to extend the backyard harvests with colder season growing. In fact, last year I harvested various Asian greens and kale on December 1st. 

Bok choy, kale, sui choy, turnips, cabbage, marigolds and sunflowers.

I began planning and organizing my fall garden back in late July and early August when I started seeds in a mini shelf greenhouse unit in my backyard. I had to finally say goodbye to the summer and yank up some plants to make room for the new ones, which was hard. 

Beans and tomatoes in the mini greenhouse in the spring.

At the moment my garden beds are looking a little shaggy as I wait for the remaining sunflowers and cucumbers (which as still producing).

Things are looking a little sad with the squash gone and droopy sunflowers.

Growing in Two Raised Beds:

four varieties of kale 

bok choy

sui choy (Chinese cabbage)

leafy lettuce

spinach

turnips

chard

cauliflower and cabbage (for the spring)

garlic (to be planted in October)

parsnips (very hard to germinate; out of two dozen seeds I have three seedlings so far. I don't have high hopes that they will survive)

* This is my first year not growing Brussels sprouts. In the past I have harvested some for Thanksgiving dinner and the rest for Christmas dinner, and now I am regretting not growing them.

Lettuce, spinach, chard, bok choy, sui choy, parsnips, cauliflower

I have plans to build hoops and cover two of my beds with plastic when we have regular frost. I was able to harvest through mid fall frosts last year because we had a warm season and the frosts were intermittent. However, once winter hit we had to wait until late January before the kale was defrosted and edible again. I am hoping to have kale through to the spring with covered beds, as well as cauliflower next spring. 

Late Fall Garden

This year I expanded my fall garden to include more greens that we enjoyed in the summer (mustard, kale, chard), as well as some new ones to try growing (gai lan and pak choy). I also did some carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and turnip. The last item into my garden was garlic. My fall garden is somewhat limited because it is in a north facing backyard with very little direct sunlight.

The broccoli, cauliflower and gai lan are not faring very well. Maybe when the warm weather returns in the spring the broccoli and cauliflower will give me a nice early harvest. Fingers crossed. I hope whatever ate my gai lan enjoyed it.

Although I am not going out into the backyard frequently enough, I am pleased with how things are going. The kale and chard from the summer are still going strong and we use these whenever we remember to go out before dark. With the early evening in the northern hemisphere in November, I had to go out with a flashlight this past week to get some greens for my pasta sauce.

I planted red mustard in the early fall and it is doing well. I am pleasantly surprised to see that the green mustard that I let go to seed in the summer reseeded on it's own as well. 

The Brussels sprouts are filling out and getting big and round. I harvested some for our Thanksgiving dinner in October but made sure to leave the stalks growing so I can harvest the rest for our Christmas evening dinner with the family. It always makes me proud to have homegrown food for such a special family dinner.

My turnips and pak choy are the surprise hits of the fall garden this year! I shouldn't be amazed, yet I am delighted at the difference fresh pak choy tastes compared to the store bought variety. It tastes perfect sautéed in some oil, garlic and ginger. And oh the turnips! I realize that they aren't to everyone's taste, but they have so much flavour when served garden to table. I was raised with them either boiled or steamed, then mashed with cooked carrots, but I want to try roasting them, as an Instagram friend suggested.

Next year I want to remember to add cabbage to my fall garden.

I regularly post in-process photos of my garden and its results on Pinterest, as crustyroll35.

Garlic Planting Time

A sure sign of fall is planting bulbs in the garden. I have a bunch of daffodils and tulips I need to get into containers, and some new bulbs that I bought from my daughter's preschool fundraiser that I am excited to try. My big bulb project, however, is planting my garlic.

This is my second year planting garlic so I am still a newbie who has much to learn, and I hope to apply what I learned from my experience over the past year for next year's garlic.

Last fall I planted five rows of hardneck garlic in one of my raised beds, with about 5 bulbs in each. I added some of my own compost to the bed, but no other fertilizer. A few weeks after planting, when I was cleaning up my yard and raking leaves I added some dried leaves to the pile for mulch (to protect the bed from frosting, to keep weeds down, and to retain moisture because raised beds drain easily).

I was both pleased with and disappointed by my garlic this summer.

As the garlic began sprouting above the soil in the spring I noticed that many of the plants were being smothered by the leaves, which I had not mulched into small enough pieces. By the time I took all the leaves off the bed it was too late for some. Others that sprouted did not thrive, and I have to wonder if I didn't do enough to prepare the soil in the fall. Garlic is a heavy feeder and I planted them in a bed where I previously grew summer squash, which are also heavy feeders. I was worried that I wouldn't have any useable garlic at all!

I planted garlic from two different sources - West Coast Seeds and The Sharing Farm. Initially I thought the garlic from The Sharing Farm was doing better (was thriving more), but in the end the garlic from West Coast Seeds had a higher success rate when I harvested them. I was thrilled with the garlic scapes that I harvested in late June / early July, and for I while I was thinking hat this was all I was going to get out of my garlic. I made scape pesto and sautéed the scapes in stir fries as I would with garlic cloves. So fresh and summery!

In the end I pulled about fifteen bulbs out of the ground, but after drying only about eight or nine were edible. I could have saved all my precious garlic bulbs for myself, but what fun would that be? I shared with garlic loving family members and they all reported that the garlic was pungent and delicious.

So this year I did things slightly differently.

I didn't have any of my own compost ready so I bought organic manure and added it to the beds. Turning the soil and taking out all the left over plants and weeds was a back breaking job because I had some volunteer grape tomatoes in my squash this summer. There were so many little green and rotting tomatoes that I had to pick out because I don't want my bed to be overrun by them next year, as much as I want to encourage tomatoes in my garden.

Next I dug five troughs lenth-wise in my bed, rather than 5 width-wise as I decided to increase the amount planted. Then I added a commercial organic fertilizer liberally to the troughs before adding the cloves.

Before planting, I separated all the bulbs into individual cloves, selecting only the healthiest and largest cloves from each.

Into each trough I planted about a dozen cloves, making sure to plant the cloves the correct way with the pointed end up and the rooting end down. Two thirds of my garlic bed is hard neck garlic again because I love the bonus of scapes before the bulbs are ready. The remaining third is some soft neck varieties because I want to experiment with braiding the garlic.

After covering each of the troughs, I covered the entire bed with glacial rock dust just to be sure that I'm adding back essential minerals to the soil.

The last step was to mulch the garlic bed. This time I decided to use good old fashioned straw, just like all the books and websites recommend. The straw will not smother the seedlings but it will retain moisture. I bought some at our local pumpkin patch and I am using the remainder of the bale as part of our Autumn / Hallowe'en display in the front yard.


To summarize the steps I followed this year:

• prepare the soil by removing weeds, plants and adding in compost and fertilizer
• dig troughs or holes approximately a few inches deep
• separate the garlic bulbs into individual cloves
• add additional fertilizer to each hole
• plant the cloves root end down and pointed end up
• cover holes
• add any additional fertilizer or glacial rock dust 
• cover garlic bed with mulch, preferably straw, although leaves could work if they are mulched into small enough pieces. 
• cross fingers and wait patiently for next spring to see the results

I have recently learned about people planting their garlic on the full moon for increased production! Too late to try that this year - already something to add to the list for next year's garlic planting.

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Disclosure: I did not receive compensation for any of the products shown in this post. I purchased them myself and included them because I like them.

Fall Garden

Autumn is upon us in great force here on the Wet Coast. I am sitting here listening to a storm passing by, with rain bouncing off the ground and wind whipping the trees. I have been hoping for a few more sunny days to do some much needed garden clean up, taking out some more summer plants, weeding and preparing one of my gardens for garlic planting. I had to use the one sunny non-work day this week to cut the lawn which has recovered from our summer drought like gangbusters! The continuing fall clean up will have to wait for the next sunny day

There are still some summer crops growing, like my cucumbers and tomatoes. I don't think that the smaller cukes will grow with the reduced sunlight, and I have brought in some green tomatoes to ripen inside (in a paper bag with an apple). Unfortunately many of the unripe tomatoes are beginning to rot.

My Banana Girl planted seeds from my cilantro in mid August and now we have delicious, fragrant cilantro for my salads and sautés. Yum!

The everbearing strawberries are at it again. After a lull in August due to the heat, they have produced berries again. 

The mini garden that my daughters planted mid summer is doing very well, and we have been harvesting lettuce and carrots for some time, and their kale is ready to start using now. Given how shallow their raised bed is and how crowded it is, I'm not sure how well their beets will do, but the carrots have grown so perhaps the beets will be fine. I am interested to see how their broccoli does, as the ones I planted in a container are not looking as good. They also have chard in the mix. 

Speaking of kale, I planted two different kinds in the spring and they are both going strong, which is a good thing as my girls love kale chips. I hope to have these plants last all winter. I learned an interesting fact recently while researching perennial plants for veggie gardens - kale is a perennial that we usually grow as an annual! I can see that because I overwintered my kale last year and it was still going strong in the spring. I took it out, though, because it was getting woody unruly. 

In September I planted a couple of Asian greens, pac choi and gai lan, which I have never grown before. The first batch I planted were completely eaten by something. I suspect snails and slugs so the next time I planted them I sprinkled crushed egg shells to repel them from the seedlings. While there are still bite marks on the leaves it seems to be keeping the plants alive. 

Cauliflower is another new plant for me so I have no idea of what to expect. I am watching this one with great interest. I think I planted them too close to the turnips, which are taking over, however. 

Mustard greens were the hit of our summer garden so I decided to try a different variety in our fall garden. Red mustard is supposed to have a spicier zip, and these are ready to start picking so we will find out soon enough. 

Look at these turnips! Wowzers! I'm excited because I love stews and soups in the cold months and turnips are a must. I've also discovered that I like turnips in my homemade fried rice. I wish I had planted more.

The pride and joy of my fall garden is my Brussels sprouts! It is a tradition for me to grow these and harvest some for our Thanksgiving dinner and the rest for our Christmas dinner. I don't know why I didn't realize this before, but I just learned that the leaves can be used much like cabbage leaves. I've been using the more tender looking leaves sparingly. The sprouts seem smaller this year, although there is still a couple of growing weeks to go before Thanksgiving. 

Next up is preparing my beds for garlic as soon as we have a dry day for me to get outside.