Pulling the Cabbage Bed and Planting Carrots

Cabbages and kale under the row cover

Yesterday morning I noticed that my schedule says to plant my storage carrots on July 10th. Last year I did it on the 6th. You would think I would have plenty of time, but carrots won't size up here if not planted early enough. The neighboring trees and houses will shade the yard a lot in the fall. So I have to get them in early enough to start sizing up before fall hits. I can wait until November to pick them but I can't wait to plant.

But first I had to free up the bed which had kale, cabbages, and a few turnips.

It is good that I've pulled the cabbages as a couple had just started to split. No real damage had been done but there would have been if I waited much longer.

Cabbages always seem so wasteful. You grow all those wonderful leaves, but then you cut them off and just leave the inside leaves.

Well my compost is well fed. Too bad I don't have neighbor with chickens. I'm sure they would have loved those leaves.

I picked two Early Jersey cabbages and three Point One. Each kind had over 5 pounds. So these cabbages aren't huge, but that is a lot of cabbage to be eating. Luckily they keep well.

It turned out that the timing for the kale couldn't have been better either. Some aphids had started to take up residence. There weren't many of them. But as I picked them I tore off the infected parts. I suppose I could wash them off, but that was way too much work. Mostly they came in big clumps on small parts of the leaves. But with the arrival of the aphids, it means I'll have to start checking my broccoli plants. The one problem with growing them year round is that you can't avoid the aphids. So I'll be getting my soap sprayer out soon.

And in the afternoon I finally got the carrot seed planted. I hate planting in the afternoon, I much prefer to do my garden work in the morning. I don't mind sweating with hard work, but when I'm just sitting there in the sun it feels worse for some reason. And it takes a while to seed the whole bed. But it is done. I have one more bed that needs to be transitioned to fall crops. That is the carrot bed that will turn into brassicas. I think that will get done next week sometime as the transplants are almost big enough.

Broccoli, Cabbage, and Kale

The broccoli I seeded two weeks ago was doing well. I figured it was time for it to see the light of day. I didn't bother to harden them off. They were better off just going in the ground. Soil blocks don't need much hardening off and with even one sunny warm day the blocks can dry out if I forget about them. And I tend to. They were safer in the ground.

In the spring I plant 10 broccoli plants, 5 on each side of the bed. After I harvest the heads, one row gets pulled out.

Side shoots starting to form

The other side I leave for side shoots. That way I get the best of both worlds. I get some really nice heads, but I get a constant supply of broccoli over the summer too.

The huge leaves on the other side of the bed will die over time, or start to get mildewed. I tend to pull them off at the first sign of yellowing. The side shoots will put out more new leaves to feed the plant.

I also got under the kale cover to pick. I'll miss my kale harvests when it comes time to plant this bed up in carrots.

Golden Acre

Also under the same cover as the kale are my cabbages. This one had a leaf starting to crack. I was worried that it might bolt on me. I've never really gotten the hang of when you should pick cabbage. Someone mentioned when the head hardens up. But this head was tight pretty small. It would have been a tiny thing. It still isn't huge, but a couple of pounds is pretty good for cabbages in my garden. Some year I might learn how to grow them well.

Early Jersey

Despite my lack of cabbage expertise, this is turning out to be my best ever year for cabbage. Though I suppose that really isn't saying much. I might not get huge heads, but I love cabbage a lot and will enjoy eating them. Big or small.

When it rains

When it rains I tend to do my indoor chores. Several of them involved new recipe for my garden fruits and veggies.

The first was strawberry chutney. It was pretty good, but I didn't like the amount of cumin in it. Too much. Next time I'm going to cut it down by a quarter or maybe just get rid of it all together. This wasn't a recipe to can, but just one for the fridge so I could play with it and not worry if it was acidic enough. Which is nice as I like to play around with recipes. I rarely take a recipe and follow it. I'm more likely to read 10 recipes and take what I like from each one. Or add something else.

The second was some kohlrabi fermented pickles. Katz suggests a 5% brine for your first try. So that is what I did. For me that was 1.5 tablespoons of sea salt to two cups of water. I put some herbs and spices on the bottom. Some dill, garlic, mustard seed, and dill seed. I packed the jar as tightly as I could with kohlrabi spears about a quarter of an inch thick. Then poured over my brine. I capped the top with part of a kohlrabi leaf and put on my weight. I used an airlock. I'll taste them in about three days to see how they are.

Brining the cabbage

The kohlrabi was easy, but I wanted to try making kimchi. It is a bit more daunting. I read up on it a bit to try to get an idea of what I wanted. Kimchi involves brining vegetables for 3 hours to a couple days depending on the salt content of the brine. Then you rinse it off once the vegetables are salty enough. You make a paste with rice flour cooked in water. You add seasonings to the paste. You massage the paste into the vegetables. Then you ferment it for a few days. That is so much more involved than something like a pickle or sauerkraut.

The recipe I'm giving is the one I used, though it is my own mix of things that I thought sounded good. I have no clue how it will turn out. But my hands smell really good right now, so I'm hoping it turns out well. I didn't use a whole cabbage. I didn't want to do that for my first try. So I used two pounds, which is about half a cabbage. I don't have diakon radishes, much less the Korean radishes, so I used my turnips instead. Also I can't eat peppers, so mine is not spicy and it won't have that pretty red color. I thought about using some of the last of my other radishes up to give it a pink color instead, but opted not to.

My weirdness in this recipe is dried cherries. I've never seen a kimchi with them. I have seen one with raisins so I figured it can't be too crazy. I would have loved to put an Asian pear into it instead of honey, but I didn't have one. I did have an apple but it has been sitting around my fridge for a while. I figured fruit that has seen better days is better for cooking than for fermenting.

Daphne's First Try Kimchee

• 2 lbs Chinese cabbage sliced in 1/2" strips
• 4 oz Japanese turnips julienned
• 1 carrot julienned
• 3 T salt

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• 1 T sweet rice flour
• 1/2 c water
• 1/4 c white parts of green onions
• 1" length of ginger grated
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 c cilantro
• 1/2 T fish sauce
• 2 t salt
• 2 T honey

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• 1/2 c green onions (green part) cut into 1 1/2" length then quartered the other direction
• 1/4 c dried cherries, chopped

Mix the first four ingredients together. I put it in a 2 quart mason jar but any non reactive container is fine. Cover with water and weight it down. Let it sit for six hours.

To make the paste dissolve the rice flour in the water and cook until it becomes gelatinous. Let it cool. Mix all the rest of the ingredients in that group (through the honey) and put it in a small food processor and process until smooth.

Mix everything together in a bowl. Then tamp down into a quart jar until the liquid comes to the top and over the vegetables (if it doesn't let it sit a couple hours and try again). Put a cabbage (or in my case a kohlrabi) leaf over the top to hold things down and weight. Cap the jar with an airlock. Let sit for three days then move to the fridge and enjoy.

I had about a cup leftover from this. The recipe would probably be more accurate for a quart jar with about 1 1/2 lbs of cabbage. But the extra cup won't go to waste. I put that in a half pint jar and put a lid on it. It wasn't an airlock. Currently I only have wide mouth lids with holes for airlocks. I might have to get a few for smaller jars. I could see doing a pint of turnips some day. Or maybe carrots.

Now they sit decorating my dining room. They are right next to my jars of seeds. Mustard seed, fennel, and dill. I'm going to test the sauerkraut again on Thursday I think. I just hope I like it. It was kind of salty the first time I tried and not nearly sour enough for my tastes. Oh I hope I like these. It is an easy way to preserve a lot of cabbage.

Weeds and the Kale Bed

I've been doing a lot of weeding over the last couple of days. Mainly because we had one coolish day. Yesterday I didn't need to rush to open all my windows early in the morning to cool down the house, then watch the weather and when it started to heat up, close all those windows and the blinds to keep the cool air in. I could keep the windows open all day long and listen to the birds sing. And be in the garden without overheating.

This morning I had a different kind of weeding. My neighbors have a tree that neither of us like particularly. I've been invited over in the past to cut it down when I asked. But it is persistent. I forgot last fall, so this year it is pretty big. I cut off all the branches that were overhanging my fence. Which really is good enough for now.

The straightest sticks of a decent diameter (not too large, not too small), I kept for stakes. They aren't perfectly straight like my bamboo, but not bad.

This morning I pulled off the row cover to my kale and cabbage bed so I could pick the kale. While I was under there I checked out the rest of the bed.

I'm trialing three early cabbages side by side this year. Point One is supposedly a very quick cabbage from Pinetree. I didn't give them as much space as the others. They are supposed to be small and quick. This and the others were planted 46 days ago. They say it is ready in 48. I'm not buying it. But they have started heading up. As you can see it is a pointed head type of cabbage. As is the next one. I have four of these and they are all at the exact same stage. They are a very pretty blue green.

Early Jersey Wakefield is listed at at 63 days. Like the previous cabbage, it has barely started to head up. I planted three of this variety and they are all exactly alike.

The last one is the only round cabbage in the bunch. It is Golden Acre. It is listed at 62 days. This one looks like it is the farthest ahead of all the cabbages. True to its name it is a slightly yellowish cabbage and looks really pretty.

The problem is of the three Golden Acre that I planted, two look like this. This is damage from cutworms. If they can't cut something off at the soil level, they will climb the plants. They like to get into the center and eat that as it is the most tender. I'm not sure if the two plants can recover.

I intercrop turnips in my cabbages. If the cutworms are there, they usually go after the turnips as the turnips are so tender. They leave the cabbages alone. Sadly they really like the Golden Acre. To be fair to the cabbage though it has been the worst cutworm season ever in this garden. I used to have really bad cutworms all the time at my last house, but here they don't seem to be as prevalent. Except this year. I might have to start planting in cutworm collars again.

Carrots and Cabbages

Friday I went gleaning in the morning. I told myself before I left that I had to water my brassica seedlings. The weather has been hot and sunny and they needed the water. So what did I do? Yes I forgot. I came back and they were all wilted. I wasn't sure if they were going to live or not. Luckily they bounced back. A bit of some of the leaves died, but nothing major. If they had died I still would have had time to replant. Well all except the kale as I've used up my kale seed.

But because of that I decided they really needed to get in the ground. The carrots were as big as they were going to get and I needed that garden space.

So out they came. I decided to wash them off fairly well before bringing them into the kitchen as they were very dirty.

These carrots are all Mokums and Yayas. The Mokums are longer and thinner and the Yaya shorter and fatter. They both did pretty well.

Even though they both had nematodes. I did get a fair share of split and stumpy carrots from that, but all in all they grew through the problem well. There was a bit of carrot fly damage but just on a few carrots. The row cover worked out well.

I was too hot to want to plant up that day and wanted to give the poor cabbages a chance to recover from their ordeal. So I just tossed the row cover back to keep the cats out.

This morning I finally got to putting them into the ground. I have three Michihili cabbages, 4 Napa cabbages, 9 kohlrabis, and 8 Early Jersey cabbages. I picked the plants that had the least damage to their leaves. I'm hoping they will be fine. Such stress can cause plants to bolt. I hope they won't. If you notice I had the hoops up for the row cover already.

I have three tall row covers. And all three were being used, but the one on the fresh eating carrots didn't have to be tall. Most of the cabbages were out already, with just one left that is still sizing up. So I took the tall row cover off of here and moved it over. Now this patch has a short row cover. And I have a lot of those. I think my garden is a row cover jigsaw. Not only do I plan where to put my crops, but in that design I also plan what row covers to use.

Do you see the weird hump in the front of the row cover? Well my brick paths are pretty and all, but they need a foundation. The first foot into the beds is packed hard and not something you would want to grow in. The big hoops won't go in far enough to hold up. So I've been using my little wire hoops to hold it out at the ends. Those can penetrate a bit more and don't need as much support.

The broccoli have one of the other tall row covers. I removed one row of the broccoli as I harvested it. The other half will give me side shoots this summer. But the empty spot got five more broccoli plants. Half are Fiesta and half Arcadia. I'm not sure which one has one more as I didn't pay attention, but it doesn't really matter. I'm sure they will all grow well. To make sure the older plants don't shade these out before they get started, I broke off the lower leaves. I do this anyway at this time as the lower leaves start to die. If I leave them on they will spread a black mildew disease around the whole patch. So I keep the older leaves off before they die off and rot.

I now have much of the fall garden planted up but there is a lot to do still. I still need to get the next succession of lettuce planted. I need to sow the next succession of turnips and beets. I wish I could plant the kale, but it will go in after the onions, so I need to pot up the transplants I have. I think potting up once will be enough. The onions ought to be out in a few weeks. A little later in the season I'll be direct seeding (probably) my baby Asian greens and the fall spinach.

Trellises and Pests

Yesterday I put the strings on my trellises. The fava beans get a grid pattern to hold them upright in the wind. As they grow I'll put more layers onto the grid. Eventually I'll have three. The peas have one that is two dimensional. Just lines of string between the T-posts. I'll have to force them on it though. They would really rather climb up the carrot row cover than up the trellis.

While I was weeding the carrots I noticed a couple of spots that had plants like this. It is a classic sign of the cutworm. Cutworms hide just under the soil near where they pull in their stolen leaves. So I rooted around in the soil until I found them and then squished them. They really took down a lot of the carrots, but I wasn't paying enough attention. I should be more careful.

I'm also noticing some root maggot damage in the cabbage patch. I cover to keep those flies out, but obviously I wasn't 100% successful. The two plants that are wilting might live but I doubt it. Sadly such things are all too normal and I'm sure they won't be the last plants to bite the dust this year.

Today I was out weeding just to be outside and decided the lettuce was big enough to plant. This is my third secession so far this year. I hope I keep it up, but the odds are I'll forget about it at some point and then the lettuce will be over. Maybe tomorrow I'll get the next succession started.

Welcome Rain

I was very happy to see the rain come in last night. The last rain we had was on the 10th and we have seen some hot weather for May. We had three days in the 80Fs (over 27C). The plants were feeling the stress. I hand watered some of the beds, but not enough and not all of them.

It is amazing what rain will do for a garden. My lettuce grew by leaps and bounds overnight. I swear the Fun Jen doubled in size. It was struggling before. I wasn't worried about it as it has gone out of favor in my kitchen. Plants come into and out of favor at the drop of a hat. One year it was my favorite. Now I wonder if my townhouse mates will eat it. Sometimes I'm fickle that way.

The spinach that just wasn't growing has sped up overnight. The soil is warm. The weather is wet. Maybe it will produce this year after all.

Yesterday my onions were looking a little yellow. But they are all green again. They look so healthy now.

The cabbage bed is looking a lot healthier too. Sadly my little choy sum along the end of the bed died from lack of water. I didn't even notice them or I would have watered them. I did get two nice stalks out of the plants before they died.

And the early planted Asian greens look so lush right now. They are in their prime. I picked one of those bok choys for lunch today.

And the rubarita was pretty good last night as I listened to the rain start. Right now the rain is starting to clear out and the weekend looks lovely.

Planting the Cabbages

Last fall I sifted through my compost and prepared as many beds as I could. Sadly six of the beds didn't get covered in compost. I just didn't have enough. i will have to buy some more this year. But I decided to try something else too. I'm experimenting with biochar which I got through the Northeast Organic Farmers Association bulk buy that they have every year. Biochar does a lot of what compost does. It help prevent leeching of nutrients and helps retain water in the soil. It also makes the soil more alkaline. Which here in the northeast with our acidic soils, is a good thing. Hopefully I'm not raising the pH too much. I tried to look up application rates and people are all over the board on how much you ought to apply.

Interestingly enough I've used a kind of biochar in the past (and still do). I don't use regular bone meal. I use bone char. It is a slower source of phosphate than most fertilizers and doesn't leach out as much as most phosphate fertilizers do. When I tested my soil when the garden was first put in, it was very low in phosphates. I wanted to be able to put something on the garden that would last and not leach out to contaminate our local water sources. But I wanted the plants to have plenty of phosphorus. Bone char fills both needs.

I usually don't turn the soil over much, but I wanted to incorporate the char into the top 6" of soil. So I mixed it up pretty well. In addition I added a little high nitrogen fertilizer as cabbages are heavy feeders.

Every year I remake my measuring stick. I put in marks at 4" and 6". The stick is 3' long. Since I keep it outside in the garden the marks fade every year and have to be reapplied. I measured out the sections that I was going to plant.

And then planted them all. I planted three michihili Chinese cabbages (2 Green Rockets and one from old seed from Mac). These each got a section that was 2'x3'. The plants are huge. I wish I could find a slightly smaller michihili cabbage, but they all just seem to grow big. I planted three Optiko Napa Chinese cabbage, five Early Jersey cabbage, and five winner kohlrabi. I swore last year I'd grow more kohlrabi, but somehow that didn't happen. The row of choy sum in the foreground was an afterthought. I had the seedlings and didn't have a space to put them. I think they will produce before the big michihilis will need the space.

Then I put on my row cover. I noticed the first cabbage butterfly out yesterday. I hope it didn't lay any eggs on my plants. I had them just sitting out uncovered while they were getting hardened off.