How To Grow Your Own Garlic (and How To Not Get Any Planted): Garden Journal 1/1/13

Save your biggest cloves for planting next year's garlic crop.

Realization of the Day:

December is a bad time for me to plan on planting my garlic.

Of course I knew this already. The best time to plant garlic is a month or two before the ground freezes. Here in Missouri that means October. In warmer regions, you can plant after the first frost date through early winter. Ideally you want to get good root growth but no top growth before winter, although I've had sprouts shoot up before it got really cold, and they survived just fine.

If you're gardening by the moon, you want to put your garlic in the ground on a fertile day during the third or fourth quarter. (If you're interested in learning more about minding the moonsigns, Astrological Gardening: The Ancient Wisdom of Successful Planting & Harvesting by the Stars by Louise Riotte is a great book.)

The kitchen garden on Saturday, December 29th.

Miraculously, I did actually manage to get my garlic in the ground in October in both 2011 and 2010, but this year my planting plans were waylaid. Then I missed November. And on Saturday, which was my scheduled December planting day, the ground was frozen and there were three inches of snow on it. Yesterday and today are good planting days as well, except for the old snow and the new sleet. But that's okay.

Lots more below. . .

Garden Journal 1/12/12: Crazy Winter Weather

Southern half of the raised bed kitchen garden, as seen this afternoon from the second floor of the new house!

Yesterday it was sunny and in the 50s. I ditched my massive indoor afternoon To Do list in favor of digging chicken manure into a couple of garden beds and working on a compost pile—in January.

Today it's blustery, snowing, and, at last check, 22 degrees. When I looked at the online weather page this morning it said it was 18 degrees but felt like four. Tonight we'll probably see single digit temps, and on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday it's supposed to be 50.

Welcome to winter in Missouri!

So is it snowing or growing in your January garden? Any big planting plans for this year?

© FarmgirlFare.com, where it's definitely time to cozy up under a vintage quilt and finish the rest of that seed order. Weather ups and downs or not, planting time will be here all too soon.

Quick Winter Tip from My Favorite Vegetable Gardening Book: How To Help Protect Plants in Below Freezing Weather

Greek Oregano in the Greenhouse Ready for this Greek Slow Roasted Lamb Recipe

I love books. I love them so much that when I moved from northern California to Missouri 15 years ago, I chose to sell most of my beautiful Art Deco furniture in order to have more space in the moving truck for vintage collectibles (like some of the treasured contents of my potting cabinet) and books.

I especially love cookbooks, and while I admit to hardly ever (or never) using many of the ones I own, I rationalize their purchase like this: if I discover just one fantastic recipe in a cookbook, that to me is worth the entire cost of the book. The rest of the pages are simply a bonus.

I don't have nearly as many gardening books as I do cookbooks, but if I applied that same rule to them, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith would probably be worth about two thousand dollars. This book, which is all about Ed's high-yield W-O-R-D system: Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds, Deep soil, is packed with smart and helpful tips, and after 9 years of owning it, I still learn something new (or relearn something I've forgotten) pretty much every time I pick it up—which is a lot.

Having the Internet at your fingertips when searching for gardening help is great, but having one really reliable book you can turn to first is often even better, and for me it's The Vegetable Gardener's Bible. If what I'm looking for isn't in it, something else always is—like this little sidebar tidbit titled But They'll Freeze! about keeping plants in a greenhouse alive during even the coldest winter nights:

In December, January, and February, night temperatures in our greenhouse dip well below 0°F (-17°C), and all the plants therein freeze solid. If we pick them while they're frozen, the result more closely resembles mush than salad. But if we wait until the sun has warmed the soil and thawed the leaves, we have a salad that has even more depth of taste than any the summer can produce. The secret to this success is that you not water the plants during the coldest times of the winter. If there's too much moisture in the cells, they burst, and the plant will not recover. We stop watering in mid-December and don't start again until mid-March.

He's right about the frozen solid plants. More than once I've gone out to the garden on a really cold morning, sure that everything was history. Now I realize it's better not to look. I simply wait until the sun warms up the plants and brings them back to life before I check on anything—and it's amazing how well they can recover.

I'd actually forgotten the part about not watering at all during winter until rereading But It'll Freeze! just now. I do water my plants in the greenhouse sparingly this time of year—especially the ones in pots—but if I know we're in for a real cold snap, I make sure the soil is dry. And it really does work.

You can apply this theory to some extent with plants growing out in the open, although rain or snow can put a damper (ha) on things. Heavy clear plastic sheeting, either draped directly over beds or on top of some sort of simple structure such as these mini greenhouses, can help protect plants as well as keep them dry.

I've raved about The Vegetable Gardener's Bible before (you can read my full review here), and over the years I've heard from many of you who purchased it on my suggestion and like it as much as I do. I still highly recommend this book for both beginning and seasoned gardeners.

Do you have a favorite gardening book or winter gardening tip?

© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the defrosted and still edible foodie farm blog where the early bird may get the worm, but the late gardener saves herself a lot of despair on icy mornings.

Why I Love Growing Vegetables in Raised Garden Beds: Reason #1

All's Quiet on the Winter Front

I've been wanting to write about raised beds since I started this blog back in 2006. I decided to start growing in raised beds when I moved in with my hunky (and handy!) farmguy Joe nine years ago and had the chance to create another new garden from scratch. I'm so glad I did, and unless I decide to plant an acre of something someday, I doubt I'll ever go back to gardening any other way. I even have raised beds in the greenhouse.

There are many reasons why I love my raised beds, and many of you have been asking me to tell you more about them. But because it's obvious that I'm never going to get around to writing one giant raised bed blog post, I decided I should tackle the reasons one by one instead.

So here goes. This first reason was inspired by the weather we've been having and is all about form and has nothing to do with function, but when you think about it, so does a lot of gardening:

They look beautiful when they're covered with snow.

I'm also looking forward to sharing tips about creating and using raised beds in the upcoming months. Are you a raised bed gardener? Feel free to jump into this new ongoing discussion anytime! And if you've written about raised beds on your own blog, you're welcome to leave a link to the post(s) in a comment below.

More posts about the winter garden:
1/5/07: Things Are Looking Up in the Broccoli Department
2/4/07: Yearning For Yellow & Your Seed Favorites and Failures
9/26/07: How To Grow Your Own Swiss Chard (a wonderful winter vegetable) and Why You Should
3/9/08: Tips For Growing & Using Rosemary Year Round

© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the foodie farm blog where the other nice thing about snow on raised beds is that it even makes all the fall cleanup you never got around to doing look good—and it takes away the guilt, because how can you be expected to go out there and pull up dead weeds when you can't even see the ground? Winter can be so handy that way. Of course I probably won't be thinking that when I'm scrambling to get these beds ready for planting lettuce and beets (and hopefully a bunch of other stuff) in March.

Let's Trade: Your Purple Kohlrabi Growing Tips For My Best Kohlrabi Recipe Ever

Pathetic purple kohlrabi direct seeded sometime last summer


Realization Of The Day:
I'm giving up on the kohlrabi - again. (But I'll still eat the leaves.)


There's nothing like a couple of zero degree mornings to put things into perspective. It's time to let last year's garden go. This is actually a relief because there comes a point, usually around mid-December, when covering and uncovering half a dozen raised beds with floating row covers, old bedsheets, raggedy quilts, sheets of thick clear plastic, tarps, and whatever else is cheap and handy starts to feel like a real pain in the butt—especially when you uncover the tiny Swiss chard plants you've been coddling along for months in one of the mini greenhouse beds only to find that they've been munched down to nothing but pathetic little stems by. . . well, I have no idea what ate them, only that they had to have been really persistent (and really hungry) to reach them.





As for this row of kohlrabi plants I direct seeded sometime around last June, it's actually doing pretty well considering it's been covered with nothing but two floating row covers and an old sheet during these record-breaking bitter cold temperatures, more of which are expected tonight. Kohlrabi is one cold-hardy little vegetable, but my problem seems to with the other end of the thermometer. Once again the plants have refused to form bulbs, and I think it may have to do with the heat.


Early last spring (unfortunately I didn't write down exactly when) I direct seeded a couple of rows of purple kohlrabi, and only a few of the plants ever formed bulbs. They didn't get too cold, were planted in rich organic soil, had plenty of sunshine, were watered regularly, and weren't overcrowded. But they just kept growing straight up instead of out.


Not a single one of the plants in my second planting (again I forgot to make a note of exactly when I started the seeds, but I think it was June) formed bulbs, and I made sure they were thinned out so that none of the plants were even touching each other just in case that was the problem, though I didn't think it was.


Apparently most gardeners don't have any trouble growing kohlrabi, because my search through books, blogs, seed catalogs, gardening forums, and various other online sources for help about my no-bulb problem came up with zilch.


Everybody did say that kohlrabi matures quickly, likes cool weather, should be grown in the spring and/or fall, tastes even better after a frost, and is extremely easy to grow. For them, maybe.


I did find an excellent online article about growing kohlrabi from Mother Earth News called "Cool Kohlrabi" that said if you let the bulbs form during warm weather they can become woody. I also read somewhere that if you let the bulbs get too large they can become woody, but nobody mentions what you're doing wrong if the bulbs don't form at all.


It's iffy growing spring and fall crops in Missouri, which is why I almost never get any decent broccoli. Or cabbage. Or spinach. Or rapini. Or cauliflower, which I fortunately quit trying to grow years ago because I recently learned that it is incredibly finicky.


Our winters are harsh (relatively speaking), spring heats up very quickly (we almost always have April days in the 90s), and by the time the ridiculously hot and humid summers have cooled down enough to start seeds for fall, it's well into September, and there isn't usually enough growing time left before winter really sets in.


That's what happened this year with a lot of my fall plantings. I direct seeded all sorts of things on September 15th, and while I did enjoy some gorgeous spinach, a fine crop of kale, a few Oriental greens, and even a double cutting of mizuna, the turnips, five kinds of beets, and several varieties of Swiss chard I had high hopes for unfortunately never amounted to anything. (The chard I definitely should have started earlier, as it is extremely heat tolerant.)


On the other hand, the four types of bush beans I planted in late March (and was so happy I was getting them in the ground early!) froze to death.



This is just wrong—and depressing.


I'm not giving up on my purple kohlrabi, though. I love it way too much. In fact, I probably love it even more because I hardly ever get to eat it.


Kohlrabi, from the German words kohl (cabbage) and rabi (turnip), is not actually a cabbage or a turnip. Cultivated in Europe since at least the mid 1500's, this cold loving member of the brassica (cabbage) family is low in calories, high in fiber, and a good source of several vitamins and minerals. Although kohlrabi has been grown the U.S. since at least the early 1800's, it still has yet to become very popular.


Sweet and mildly flavored, kohlrabi can be braised, boiled, stuffed, sliced, scalloped, steamed, julienned, roasted, and sautéed. You can grate it into slaw, toss it into salads, slip it into soups and stews, snack on it raw with dip, and stir-fry it. You can even wrap it in foil and grill it.


I've seen recipes where kohlrabi was covered in cream, sautéed with anchovies, stuffed into empanadas, fried into cakes, served with hollandaise sauce, and turned into a cinnamon brunch bake. This vegetable is versatile.


Unfortunately all of these cooks are wasting their time - and their kohlrabi. For the only thing you should ever be doing with kohlrabi is turning it into purée. Trust me. You'll find my favorite recipe in this post on Farmgirl Fare, What To Do With Kohlrabi? Purée it! What's really nice about this recipe (besides the fact that it tastes divine) is that it makes use of both the kohlrabi leaves and the bulbs. By the way, the cute little baby leaves make wonderful additions to salads.



Now that's kohlrabi! (This photo was taken in my kitchen garden on 7/16/07, so I know I can really do it - or it can really do it.)


Okay, so now that you have my recipe, I'm hoping you'll give me some kohlrabi growing tips. What do you think I'm doing wrong? I know kohlrabi can be successfully grown here, as I've had bumper crops in the (very distant) past, and even last spring's planting gave me enough harvestable plants, like the beautiful one above (which I supposedly let get too large but didn't taste woody at all), to make one batch of perfect purée. Any help is greatly appreciated!


In the meantime, I'm tempted to start some kohlrabi seeds in the greenhouse right now, but even in winter it can quickly shoot up to 90+ degrees in there on a sunny day, and if the heat actually is my problem I'd be wasting my time.


Instead I think I'll start a few containers of seeds indoors (which is how I used to start almost everything, but I've been direct seeding more and more as the years go by) then set out the seedlings as soon as they're a couple inches high since I know they can handle the cold.


Wish me luck. I'm really hoping that 2008 will be The Year Of The Humongous Kohlrabi Harvest. I know that someday I'll have so much kohlrabi I'll actually get tired of devouring it puréed, so I'd love to know your favorite ways to eat it, too.


Never give up for good in the garden.


© FarmgirlFare.com, the purple passioned foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

What's Growin' On 11/26/07:The Mailbox Says It's Spring Planning Season!

Tempting, Oh So Tempting. . .

Realization Of The Day:
The seed catalogs are already piling up!

Last Thursday I, along with zillions of other Americans, consciously thought about the many things I'm thankful for. When it comes to the garden, I am of course thankful for the glorious, year-round bounty my endless toiling it provides me: all the amazingly flavorful (and beautiful!) lettuce and spinach and peppers and tomatoes and potatoes and turnips and cucumbers and beans and greens and beets and kale and Swiss chard and arugula and garlic and herbs and flowers and especially the broccoli that I only very rarely manage to successfully grow.

But I'm even more thankful for something else from the garden, and it isn't even edible: it's the annual ability to completely forget every single disaster and disappointment of the year and start excitedly planning next spring's garden before winter has even begun.

The seed companies know all too well that we gardeners come down with this strange, yet oh-so-convenient affliction. In fact they bank on it. Yes, just moments after the most pitiful tomato harvest in a decade has faded to a hazy memory, the seed catalogs quietly begin to arrive. Next year will be different, we tell ourselves as we begin casually flipping through the first one, eyes glazing over, brain whirring a million miles an hour as we mentally (and effortlessly!) expand the garden to ten times its current size and fill non-existent pantry shelves with 3,000 jars of neatly preserved bounty.

Next year there will be no squash bugs! Next year the blister beetles will spend the summer somewhere else! Next year there will be more tomatoes than I know what to do with! Next year it will be 62 degrees and partly cloudy for 199 days in a row! Next year absolutely everything in the garden will be picture perfect!

Oh, how happy the seed companies will be when they see our largest, most ambitious orders yet!

We can't help it. And really, why should we? For just a few dollars (okay, for some of us it's more than just a few), our seed orders buy us endless winter hours spent happily planting and plotting and harvesting more than we could ever possibly eat. In our dream gardens there exists nothing but pure, unbugbitten success. Sometimes I think December and January are actually the most productive months in my garden.

You may have noticed that these are 2007 seed catalogs in the photo. That's because I'd planned to write this post a year ago. I guess I got carried away drooling over poring through them all instead. I was so proud of myself when I faxed in a seed order on New Year's Eve--the earliest I'd ever placed one. I figured it was a sign of things to come--this would be the year I did everything on time, or even early! Instead I found myself frantically behind in more ways than I ever thought possible from January through September, even for me. I actually bought tomato plants.

But that's all over now. And there's nothing but a whole new gardening year ahead.

There are certain varieties of seeds I faithfully order year in and year out, and of course I save lots of my own seeds, too. But I always like to grow a certain number of new things each year as well. I'm especially drawn to old and rare heirlooms, which my beloved Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds here in Missouri specializes in. Their 2008 catalog hasn't arrived yet, but the one from my other tried and true supplier, Pinetree Garden Seeds in Maine, has.

A brief look through it already has me eyeing some new offerings, including Cosmonaut Volkov tomatoes ("It's like one of those urban legends--we've been hearing about it for years. . . attractive, crack resistant, uniform fruit provide just the right balance of both sweet and tart flavors."), Midnight Ruffles lettuce ("This new variety from an Oregon breeder is the darkest red lettuce we've seen, almost black in color."), and Welsh onions ("This perennial is used like chives but the flavor is substantially stronger.")

I hope to write about some of my favorite varieties of veggies in the upcoming weeks, along with some of the ones that won't be making second appearances in my garden. In the meantime, what are your favorites and--perhaps more importantly--your least favorites? Or are you buried under a pile of seed catalogs?

Copyright © 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote acres.

How To Grow Your Own Swiss Chard From Seed & Why You Should

Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard in the homemade greenhouse last November.

Looking for Swiss chard recipes? Here are some of my favorites:
What To Do With Swiss Chard—Hot Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip Recipe & Other Ways To Cook & Enjoy My Favorite Leafy Green
Healthy Swiss Chard Tuna Salad with Scallions & Kalamata Olives
Swiss Chard Cabbage Salad with Garbanzo Beans & Cottage Cheese
Swiss Chard and Artichoke Soup
Swiss Chard and Artichoke 'White' Pizza

The year I turned 30, I had two friends who turned 60, and I took full advantage of the situation. "Save me some trouble," I said, "and tell me the most valuable thing you've learned in the last 30 years."

The first one offered up a piece of advice I've tried to abide by ever since. He said, "Be happy, not resentful or envious, when good things happen to other people." But it was seven words of wisdom from the second friend that truly changed my life: "Always plant Swiss chard in the garden."