Problems and Failures

You have to be a pretty optimistic person to garden. Taking a tiny seed and expecting it to become a four pound cabbage takes a lot of faith in mother nature. Every time I plant, I believe in that miracle. I never lose the wonder when it does grow, but sometimes we have failures. They aren't uncommon. Either our own mistakes get us or nature deals the blow. This week I had a some of both. Nothing devastating like the year the earwigs ate all the silks off my corn (only once, and never before or since thank goodness). Or the year the groundhog ate all my winter squash. Ouch. But this week had quite a list of little problems.

Turnips under a good row cover

Turnips seem to be getting the brunt of it right now. You know how I was doing such a good job with my succession sowing? Well this week I totally forgot until Sunday. I'm supposed to plant every Monday. Whoops! Well one week missed is not the end of the world. But for the poor turnips that wasn't all.

Turnips elsewhere struggling

At my last house I had a lot of issues with flea beetles, but they have been pretty mild here. They exist but don't do a lot of damage. Until now. They are doing enough damage to kill some of my newly sprouted turnips.

I don't spray here (except soap when the aphids get bad on the kale and broccoli), so my only recourse is to try to catch them. I won't catch them all, but the hope is to get enough that the damage won't hurt the plants too much. I brush the plants trying to get them to hop in the soapy water. I'll leave some of these bowls near the damaged plants. Over time some will die. Every day I'll chase more in. Hopefully it will be good enough.

In the other half of the bed with the turnips are my parsnips. Not many parsnips. Half the bed barely germinated and the half that was better is by no means full. I no longer have time to resow parsnips. They just take too long. If I had seed I'd use half that section to sow in amaranth. I've never grown that before. I think next year I'll try it. I could do mizuna but those flea beetles would probably take them down too. Maybe I should inter sow carrots. They have plenty of time. I will have two other carrot beds in the fall though. Will that be too many carrots? Is there such a thing as too many carrots? The issue with carrots is their germination is just as problematic as parsnips. I usually use a doubled over row cover on the soil to keep it moist. I can't do that with the parsnips growing. I could use one layer, or maybe just try without and hope. I'd have to water a lot.

Basil was one of the worst failures. I planted in three spots to try to avoid the basil downy mildew. That worked last year. One section went down fast, but the other was mildew free for most of the year. All three spots got hit already. So they all got taken out. Sigh. I did get a small harvest from the last one out. It was enough to dry so I can make Italian seasonings for this coming year, but not enough for much else. I do still have time to start again. Do I want to?

Chard bed

I love chard. It is such a good grower. I'm always amazed at the harvests I get from a small patch every year. One plant got pulled as it looked like it was starting to get diseased. I grow Argentata and it seems to handle the diseases we have around here. But safer to pull the bad one that isn't resisting so it won't spread. Also one end was getting holes in the leaves. I have this trouble every year. The earwigs take up residence in the centers and eat holes out of the youngest leaves. They can take a plant down if they get too numerous, though they usually don't.

Earwigs freak me out a little, but in the garden they can be a help and an hindrance depending on the crop. They are omnivores so eat other insects but if they like the crop they also eat that. I just don't grow Napa cabbage anymore because of the damage they do to that. Michihili cabbage works better. Sometimes they get in, but not as much. For chard I go on a search and destroy mission with my knife. They hide where the leaf meets the stem. I poke the tip of the knife down in there to get them. I won't get them all the first time. I'll go out for the next few days to get the rest. Then keep vigilant for the rest of the season. I used to mulch the chard to keep the leaves clean, but I found the earwigs had too many places to hide then.

The last one is in the Michihili/kohlrabi bed. Luckily it wasn't earwigs this time. Nope they started to bolt on me. I picked one earlier in the week that had started to bolt. Well I didn't check them for a couple of days and the next one did. So I picked them all. I was kind of hoping I wouldn't have to until next week. I'd probably be able to tell if my sauerkraut was working for me by then.

Chinese cabbage ready for the fridge

I stored most of them in the fridge. I wrap them in a damp flour cloth towel and just leave them in the main part. They are way too big to fit into anything. They are 20" long and have to go sideways in the fridge. They store pretty well. I can keep them fresh for about a month and a half to two months, but the problem is they take up so much space. And the other side of the bed is the kohlrabi. I think I have 15 or 16 of them in there. Some of them have sized up already and need to be picked soon. Winner doesn't get woody fast, but they are hard to cut when they get really large just because of their size.

And remember at the beginning of the month when I had the groundhog incursion? Well I shored up the defenses and it seems to be working. He hasn't come back. Most of the beans that he lopped off died, but four of them might make it. They have some tiny little green growth were the cotyledon leaves used to be. And the four seeds that I had left and replanted have come up and are growing pretty well. So I put up the strings to the trellis. The two plants that he didn't touch are growing strong and climbing the trellis supports. I think it was the trellis itself that saved them as they were behind the metal and harder to get to. So at least there is some good news there. My beans are recovering to an extent.

Fermenting

If you all remember this year I was going to learn to ferment/culture a few things. The first one was kefir. I've been doing it for months now and it is just too easy. Kefir has grains that when it is done you sieve out and use them to start the next batch. I've elected to just use a slotted spoon and transfer it to the next jar to make more. As you can see I don't make much every day. But about 3/4 of a cup per day is certainly enough for me. I go one farther though and add lactase into my jars. Goat milk kefir doesn't have a lot of lactose, but even a little upsets my system, so I make sure all that lactose is gone. Then it sits on the counter for the day to ripen and put in the fridge for another week before it is used. It takes about three minutes of my time each morning. Easy.

In addition I've started making cultured buttermilk. I LOVE the taste of buttermilk. Goat buttermilk is thinner than cow though. I tend to use it in my homemade salad dressings and in my baked goods. It too is cultured at room temperature, so very easy to make. I started with a powdered culture and mixed it in and just put the jar on the counter for a day. Then I used the lactase drops again and put in the fridge. It tastes better after abut a week in the fridge. So good. The company I bought it from says that you can keep the culture going about four times without trouble then you should probably start again with more powdered culture. To reuse the culture I use up the jar until it just has about a quarter of the amount in and then fill it back up and put it on the counter again. I've just started doing this. And so far so good. I've found that I like having two pint jars though instead of a single quart jar. I use one until it gets down to a quarter then take it out of the fridge and culture more. While that is happening I still have the other jar that I can use. And I rotate.

They look deceptively small but they are pretty large leaves

The third one had me out picking the Michihili cabbage. Aren't the leaves just beautiful? The heads aren't full sized yet. I debated with myself on and off yesterday until I finally convinced myself to start picking them. There is that little devil's voice in my head that tells me if I wait longer it will get bigger and I'll get more. But the reality is that I can't deal with six cabbages all at once. These things are tall and hard to fit in the fridge when they are full sized. Though I've kept them a couple months in the fridge, they just wouldn't fit.

Once it was picked the question was what to do with it. I still have bok choy that I'm eating at lunch every day. So I decided to make sauerkraut. I've never made this before and to me it is more daunting than the milk cultures. I'm not sure why. As a kid I saw my parents make both kefir and sauerkraut. They had a big crock for the job. I'm using a quart mason jar. I brought out my "The Art of Fermenting" and read over again how to do it. He said five pounds of cabbage for a gallon of kraut. I wanted a quart so I weighed out 1.25 pounds and 2.25 teaspoons of salt. It wasn't enough by far. I think I added another half pound to the mix. And more salt. He and others that I've read say to pound it down and let it sit for a couple hours and pound again. Keep doing it until the water covers the leaves. This can take 24 hours. Well Chinese cabbage seems to be wetter than European cabbage. I had no trouble making enough liquid before I put the lid on for the first time.

I had bought some airlocks and lids off of Etsy. And some glass jar weights. I'm supposed to keep all the cabbage off the surface, but how the heck do you keep those little tiny floating ones off? My next issue is when do I decide to try it? Some people think it tastes best after three days. Some go for a week. Some a couple weeks. And then there are those that say four weeks is best if you want to have all those good bacteria. If I keep it closed, the mold won't grow (or so I'm told). If I open it to test it at various times I might have more contamination. And then there is the issue of taste. Will I like it? I hated sauerkraut as a kid. But then I hated zucchini as a kid too and I'm growing three zucchini plants. I even bought some zucchini from the store this spring when I ran out of my preserved (it isn't nearly as good as what I grow). Maybe I'll love it. Maybe I'll hate it. Maybe I'll like a sweet kimchi style better. I've got a lot of experimenting to do this summer. Both with the Chinese cabbage and our typical ones.

This and That

We have had some really nice fall days recently. Perfect for being in the garden. Not that there is a lot to do there. I'm half done with screening my compost and am now bored with it so I'm avoiding the rest. I should finish, but instead I took a bike ride. This morning though I did get a few things done in the garden.

When I planted up my front planter, I didn't use an ornamental sweet potato. I used a real one - Garnet. I had bought a chrysanthemum to replace it, so it was time for the potatoes to come out. One pretty Garnet plant gave me 3lbs 14oz. Not bad for an ornamental plant. It makes me think I should put sweet potatoes in more spots that need a trailing plant. Like the rock wall garden in front of the zinnias. Decorate and eat at the same time. Sadly the chrysanthemum is a bit small for that pot. And I knocked off a huge branch. Oh well.

The spinach germinated a bit patchily. Usually I just don't worry about it. But since I had some that were too thick I decided to transplant. Usually I won't do this as transplanted spinach doesn't do as well. But it won't hurt. If they die I didn't lose anything. Just spinach plants I would have thinned out anyway.

I had to take out some plants in the cabbage patch. The Napa cabbage is not doing well. It has NEVER done well here. Well one spring, but that is it. I will not grow it again and just grow the Michihili cabbage that does do well. This fall it seems infected with something. One seem fine, but the other two were pretty bad off so I had to take most of the leaves off. I decided I'd take what I could and blanch and freeze it. I'm not sure it would last in the fridge. The one good one I'll use fresh over the next week. I also had to take out two kohlrabi that were getting too big. I'm hoping they aren't woody. I'll find out when I eat them. They at least will last. I've weighed them and put them in the tally, but I may have to remove them later if they aren't edible, or only party edible.

One of my doctors thinks all my health issues (of which I have a ton) are because of a leaky gut. I'm inclined to agree. So now I'm not just nightshade, legume, and mushroom free. I also am not eating gluten and casein (though the trace amounts in butter I'm deeming acceptable however mostly I'll use ghee). And no sugar, just small bits of honey or maple syrup for things like salad dressings. Sigh. The quiche above is a gluten free, milk free, cheese free quiche. I made it with some homemade turkey sausage, kale, green onions, and zucchini. I thought I'd miss the cheese a lot, but I didn't. It was very tasty. But it was way too rich. I used coconut milk instead of regular milk and the fat content of even low fat coconut milk is too much for me - well at least with pie crust. Next time I'm going to use part coconut milk and part almond milk and see how that works.

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.

Celebrating Chinese Cabbage

I noticed on Thursday that two Michihili cabbages were bolting pretty badly. How did I miss this? So I waited until Friday morning to pick them. Greens are always better picked after watering and in the morning.

The Napa cabbage (short ones) weren't destroyed by the earwigs for the first time in years. Was it the cold? Or was it the biochar (very ashy and probably repelled the insects early on)? They were just starting to get in though. I had to peel back a bit of the heads to get rid of them.

I had a question posed to me, weirdly on another blog, about harvesting Chinese cabbage that hasn't headed. Sometimes a head won't form before it bolts (like two of the three Michihilis this spring). I find it common for Michihilis to not form heads in the spring. Their heads are much more reliable in the fall. Occasionally Napas won't, but they are better than Michihilis and again, it is easier in the fall. But you don't need a head to have the cabbage edible. It is nice and sweet if it was blanched at all and even the dark green more prickly parts are good in soups. I'm guessing they are even better for you than the blanched parts. All edible and all tasty.

Nice blanched Napa cabbage on left. Unblanched Michihili leaves on right. Both frozen for the winter.

So you can eat more of that head than is traditional. I do tend to toss out the outermost leaves. But on the Michihili head above you can see I kept some of the dark green parts there. And I cut some off in the middle as the bottom was blanched and the top not so much. I also kept a lot of the larger more outer leaves which you see above. They were blanched (the boiling type of blanching this time) and frozen for winter soups. They will be perfect for that. And will have lots of flavor. That wonderful mustard flavor really tends to come out when a cabbage is bolting. If you are like me, that is a good thing. So I never regret my bolting Chinese cabbages. I celebrate them.

Though just to be clear I am keeping those nice heads too. Those are great because they store so long. I've wrapped them in towels in plastic bags in the fridge. Chinese cabbage can last up to about two months in the fridge. I've had some last longer. But better to eat them faster.

One of the bolting Michihili cabbages had a whole bunch of nice little flower shoots. These make good eating. The other was too destroyed by earwigs. I'd never had earwigs in the Michihili this bad before. The seed for the undestroyed head was from old seed from Mac years ago. I wish I knew what variety this was and where I could buy more. The Green Rocket sold by Pinetree doesn't grow as big and the earwigs love it like they do the Napa. So I'm still on a Michihili search.

After pulling (I left one Napa in and now I'm regretting it), I have a partially empty bed. My plan says to grow pole beans and bush beans, but I'm not going to grow many beans because I don't even know if I can eat them now. So instead I seeded some of it in carrots. As more of the bed gets harvested, I'll seed more carrots. I might put a few beans in later, but I'm not sure yet.

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.

What do you do with an eight pound cabbage?

The night before last we had a freeze which finally killed our beans. The freeze was a wake up call to start picking what needed to be picked in the garden. The first thing I wanted to deal with was the Michihili Chinese cabbages. The problem with them is that they are BIG cabbages. They get over two feet tall. They just don't fit in the fridge well. Sometimes I cut them in half so they will fit but the best way to deal with them is to use them when you pick them. I picked just one and one is a lot to deal with. The cabbage was eight pounds. That is a lot of cabbage.

First up was Peking Raviolis. My daughter had eaten most of them up before. She would take a packet of pork ravs and a packet of vegetable ravs and have them for lunch. So this time I elected to make a mix. I made enough mix for about 120 ravs. It takes me about an hour to make 60 (which is how many dumpling wrappers come in a packet). So I turned on the TV and got to it. I did half of them yesterday and hope to get the other half done today. Once they are formed I freeze them. If I have the energy for it, I'll do it again with the next cabbage next week. Sadly they don't take all that much cabbage. How much is 4 cups of chopped cabbage. A pound maybe?

The second meal to make was cabbage soup. This is so much easier to make. And I recruited my townhouse mate to help. So we multiplied the recipe by four and used up three pounds of cabbage.

Rav filling on the left, soup on the right.

After having a nice lunch of soup we packed up the rest. I had five pint containers filled for future lunches. And I still had a huge cabbage to eat. Sigh. Eight pounds of cabbage is a huge amount to go through. And I had run out of ground pork in my fridge. It seems all the cabbage recipes that I freeze use pork.

So I tried something new. I took a pound of cabbage and made pickled cabbage. But I'm not a fan. The recipe was way too sweet and way too puckery. Next time I'll tone it down.

Sadly at the end of the day I still had the above left to stick into the fridge. The size is a bit deceptive as it is 18" long. I found how it grew interesting. I love the spiral in the leaves, but it sure made it more of a pain to chop. Today I have other things to do as my MIL is visiting, but I did have time to make some coleslaw dressing so I'll chop some of that cabbage up and call it salad. That ought to get rid of another pound or so.