Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Cabbage — Your choice between a green or red ‘savoy’ cabbage.
- Rutabaga — They’re ugly on the outside, but smooth and tasty on the inside. Peel coarsely to remove any discolored or tough skin; chop and add to stews, soups, or roasted vegetable dishes.
- Carrots
- Parsnips
- German Butterball potatoes
- Sunchokes
- Leeks — Our storage onion crop was lower yields than expected last year, so from here until late spring, we’ll be enjoying the other tasty winter ‘alliums.’ If you still haven’t discovered the range of leeks’ versatility, keep trying. We’re enjoying them in place of onions in all sorts of dishes. Our favorite this week was the leek and quinoa recipe from a few weeks back.
- Shallot
Here at the farm, Casey and Jeff have been busy sowing, sowing, sowing for spring: broccoli, onions, lettuce, leeks, cabbage, bok choy, and so much more. Some of the spring crops have been sown in the fields (during the period of delightful warm weather we had a few weeks back), but for now most of our seeds are being sown into flats, to be transplanted this spring when the fields dry out.
You too may have begun sowing seeds for your garden. We’ve always been proud of how many proficient home gardeners are also members of our CSA — we think it’s the best vote of confidence we can receive! We understand why it’s a good fit too — even the best home gardener can be challenged with keeping up with all the successions of lettuce it would take to get through an entire summer. Even if one has time, rarely does one have enough room to feed an entire family from a city lot.
So, it seems like a good match for home gardeners to team up with us, letting our farm provide a continuous flow of diverse seasonal vegetables, while the home garden produces favorite items to grow or eat.
For the benefit of such folks, early each spring, I like to give you some tips on what home garden crops might be a good complement to your CSA experience. Certainly you don’t want to just replicate what we’re doing in our fields — having all the same crops from us and your own garden could be both overwhelming and boring!
We know many of you are experienced home gardeners who just want to know how to fill in around your share. But, some of you may never have had a garden before but would like to try it out this year (who needs a lawn? Till it in!).
Whatever your situation, here are some ideas and inspiration for making your garden work alongside your CSA shares:
Plant your favorites!
Since we try to balance the vegetables in each week’s share so as to not overload with any one thing, it is always a good idea to plant the crops that you could eat over and over without tiring. Whatever you love best, plant in profusion!
Plant fun new or heirloom varieties
Even though we try to grow a wide variety of different things, there are always more fun varieties in the catalogs than we could ever grow on our farm. So perhaps try some of the more unusual varieties in the catalog — giant heirloom winter squashes, spicy basil, purple carrots, speckled lettuces, etc. Often these unique and heirloom varieties have lower yields or other cultural challenges that make them harder to grow consistently in large volumes, but they’re fun to grow at home when there is less pressure to have a perfect head of lettuce or broccoli.
Plant ‘pick and come again’ crops
If you are limited on space, we recommend planting crops that you can harvest multiple times over the season (we call them ‘pick and come again’ vegetables). Kale and chard top my list of ‘must plant’ pick and come again crops — if healthy, both types of greens can produce literally all season long. You may want to plant them again in the fall, just to keep it going. Kale will also over-winter and produce edible shoots in the spring.
In order to get the most out of your kale and chard, give them plenty of space. It might seem like squishing things together will get you more out of a small space, but it isn’t so — there is only so much fertility, water, and sun in any given square foot of your garden. Give each kale and chard plant at least a 1×1’ area to fill in. If you can’t picture this amount of space, I’d recommend literally bringing a measuring tape into the garden and making sure there is at least this much room (we give our kale and chard a 2×1.5’ area in the fields).
If you transplant your kale and chard, providing enough space is easy to do at that time. If you direct sow, sow extra and then thin to a more generous spacing once the plants are a few inches tall (weed at the same time!). For the longest picking season, be sure to let the plants mature before you start picking any leaves, and then just pick the larger lower leaves — let the inner small leaves stay to grow into bigger leaves.
Other good ‘pick and come again’ crops are summer squash/zucchini (again, give these plants lots of room to produce!), tomatoes, cutting lettuce, herbs, beans, and peas. If you like the flavor of celery in soups, try growing cutting celery.
In contrast, crops such as broccoli, cabbage, and winter squash take up a lot of space and only produce once. Other crops don’t take up much room but still only produce once: carrots, onions, beets, leeks, garlic, radishes, head lettuce, etc. Some of these crops have the advantage that you can plant them multiple times in one season, but if you’re short on time and space, stick with ‘pick and come again’ crops.
Plant ‘putting up’ crops
Our goal as CSA farmers is to provide you with fresh vegetables for immediate eating. Occasionally we offer some crops in bulk quantities for purchase, but if you want large volumes of beans, tomatoes, or other ‘putting up’ crops, we recommend planting them in your garden.
Tomatoes are an especially useful ‘putting up’ crop because they can produce a lot of fruit at once in a small area (especially if you plant bush or ‘determinate’ type tomatoes, which tend to ripen earlier and mostly all at once). Tomatoes are easy to ‘put up,’ either by freezing whole (so easy!), drying, or canning. We also do not grow pickling cucumbers or hot peppers, so if you want to make pickles or salsa this year, grow your own!
Plant kid-friendly crops
If you have a family, perhaps your garden could be a place of fun and play, as well as food production. Some crops are consistently favorites for kids to plant, harvest, and eat. Usually these are crops that have some sort of interesting growth form (either because they are naturally tall or grow on a trellis or cage) and are sweet to eat.
Cherry tomatoes are a clear winner in this category (plus, they have the bonus of ripening earliest of all tomatoes). Remember to provide a cage for your cherry tomatoes, since they are a vine type of plant.
Pole beans are also fun for kids. Procure bamboo or other type of wooden stakes and make bean ‘teepees’ in the garden. Plant one or two beans at the base of each stake and watch them vine! If the teepee is large enough, a child can even find shade there on a hot day. Peas have a similar appeal but will do better in spring than summer and don’t climb quite as well (a net trellis works better than poles for peas).
Kids also love sunflowers, which can also be planted in a way to later provide a shelter or hide-a-way. Corn is similar in its height (plus, who doesn’t love eating sweet corn?). And, of course, kids love watching pumpkins and winter squash vine all over and then ripen. (But these are space hog crops!) For fun alternatives to these classics, try planting amaranth (a grain/flower that gets enormous!) or “broom” corn.
Plant flowers or perennials
Or, if the CSA satisfies all your annual vegetable needs, perhaps you want to dedicate your garden space to something completely different — perhaps a cutting flower garden or edible perennials (berries, fruit trees, asparagus, rhubarb, etc.)?
Recommended seed & plant sources
So, you know what you want to plant — where to find it? There are many local plant sales in the spring that sometimes sell vegetable starts. You can also find vegetable starts at the farmers markets when they open in the spring. Local nursery stores also stock veggie starts in the spring.
Sometimes these sources don’t provide as much info about the varieties being sold. So, if you go these routes, I recommend familiarizing yourself with the basic types and varieties of vegetables so that you know what to choose. Ask the sellers about ‘days to maturity’ and type (for example, is the tomato a bush or vine type?).
Territorial Seed Company is an Oregon-based company that sells Northwest-adapted seeds and starts. It’s a great catalog for Northwest-specific cultural information and shorter season varieties. They are very up-front about what varieties are sure to succeed in our cooler climate.
Today — when it is dark gray, wet, and cold — warm season crops like tomatoes and zucchini seem like they exist in a different universe! But soon enough we’ll be transplanting, days will lengthen, and we will all be harvesting from summer’s abundance. Happy gardening! Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
