Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Left Overs
Saturday, November 25, 2017
Pie for breakfast feeds gardeners best; surely pumpkin and apple pies are food groups. We keep our strength up. Our equilibrium is harmonious, a quiet venture into the potato patch, rake away newer mulches into year old wood chips and tasty spuds. Fill a basket, tuck in smaller potatoes, replace mulch, tote to the outdoor faucet, and wash down basket and spuds, indoors to peel. Snip lots of parsley and chives, select the choicest leaves at the table. Chop, peel, boil. Pie for breakfast? Yes. Cold mashed potatoes? Later, hot for lunch.
Potatoes rich legacy is accessible to all gardeners. Root crops have always sustained the humble. Diplomacy calls for hidden crops, those out of sight. Fortunately for us, root vegetables offer large yields within small spaces. They warehouse vitamins, carbohydrates and minerals. Often, the foliage is delectable. Best of all, root crops do best during the shoulder seasons, long cool springs and similar autumns. Colder weather brings out their hearty flavors.
Let’s start with soil. Root crops do best in sandy well drained soil. Gravel and stones thwart more elegant shapes if one presumes beauty lurks among carrots and beets. Well mulched garden plots develop loose tilth. Friability is gauged by the handful. Reach into soil and squeeze a baseball size lump. Hard and keeps its form? Tough on all roots. We can change that. Loose and fails to clump? Good drainage for sure, may need watering. Dig at least 2 spade depths down, any ledges, pavement; boulders? Remove or consider building upwards into raised beds or containers. Our goal is offer the most nutrients and best space for swollen roots and tubers. Shape does count, consider peeling.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTCarrots are tough and hardy plants. Introduced to New England by English Puritans in the 17Th century they quickly naturalized. The ubiquitous roadside Queen Anne’s lace is our legacy today. It’s a long way however from roadside wild flower to baby carrots. Harvest and dry Queen Anne’s lace in late summer. The aromatic seeds and flowers are the crop. The roots, unlike our garden varieties indicate the distance gardeners have taken wild plants into domestication. The slender wild tap root hints at the astounding variety grown. Peruse seed catalogs and remove produce counter mandates. Soil is important here, new beds or those with heavy soils are better planted into short, stubby types. Loose soils support deeper and less inhibited growth. Consider different colors. Red, purple, and white carrots pack lots of nutrition and eye appeal together.
Carrots do as well planted into squares or round shapes as in long rows. Dense plantings have many pluses. Fine carrot seeds are easy to overplant. Save space and consider a cross hatch planting a few inches apart. The seedlings will need thinning. Eat the fresh greens and be ruthless, remove any prone to spindle or languish. Repeat. Mulch as needed once the plants are firmly established. Segregate varieties in separate groups. Space between plants foils predatory insects. Different spaces allows trial for appropriate soil, sunshine, drainage and identification. Rotating species from place to place inhibits soil borne disease or parasites populations. Ultimately, a garden space becomes ideal for any root crop to thrive. Most of us have to earn this privilege.
Thin, thin carrots. Conversely, plant, plant carrots. Have fun and push the envelope. Carrots will grow under rampant cucumbers and other trellised crops. Like the Puritans, we’ll overlook a carrot that’s gone to seed. Save carrot seeds. Return to varieties that grow well in your garden, do explore other types as soil conditions or daylight change in the garden. Carrots will endure in the garden, however gardeners hanker for the sweetest and most tender roots. So called “Baby Carrots” have led to a national resurgence in carrot consumption, they are mechanically tailored carrots for visual appeal and easy consumption. Grow subsequent plantings and savor the real thing.
Put in garlic each fall. Separate store bought garlic cloves and plant in any sunny garden space. Be strategic. Small clumps are ideal companions for most garden plants. Garlic’s formidable antiseptic properties begin early. Surrounding soil and plants are far less prone to rampant outbursts of disease or infestation when garlic is grown nearby. The long cycle to maturity frustrates more eager gardeners. Numbers count here, plant many garlics, and pull at any growth stage for culinary or healthful consumption. Explore the garlic world, plumb flavors and size.
Garlic chives give gardeners a chance to incorporate easy to reach pungent leaves and stems along with great flavor and color. Keep an eye on the garlic chives. Late each summer garlic chives burst into lovely white flowers. All mature into multitudes of seed heads. Harvest the seeds or remove. Garlic chives are venturesome and will colonize.
Beets are garden back bones. They are more tolerant of soil and drainage. Beet foliage, either from the root bearing types or their cousins, Swiss Chard, is delectable. Beets thrive in cool spring and fall, the more frequent rains in my region encourage their growth as the rest of the garden tames down. Bright green Swiss chard accent the fall garden, their tightly bunched leaves are on brittle white, red or yellow stalks. Harvest larger outsize leafs inwards. The large beet seed is a plus for those with assisted vision and makes for easier planting.
Gardener’s harvest root crops in jackets or sweatshirts. We pull away mulch and gently feel for rewards. Take away what you need for the moment, potatoes keep very well in the garden. Later, gather up peelings of every sort. Onion skins, carrot scrapings, potato peels are best returned to the soil. Bury peelings into the soil. Save for the compost. Or participate in collective compost schemes at home or the office. Let’s express our satisfaction by returning to the soil the gifts of the soil. Enjoy a pie for breakfast. A gardener’s life is good.
Leonard Moorehead is a life- long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence, RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit tree.
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