A New Way of Thinking

Otherwise entitled ‘Why the Basil determines our season’

It’s October 24^th and by my calculations we’ve had 10 nights of freezing weather, not just frost, freeze.  We're also to a point where there are only a little over 10 short hours of sunlight a day. Monday I went out with the camera and snapped a few shots of what is still usable in the field.  You’ll have to excuse the fact that some of the photos are blurry, if you will remember – Monday was REALLY windy.  I promise – every photo on this page was taken Monday, October 22^nd 2012.

As you can see, the sage has taken on its winter color but all in all is still very usable.

The Thyme too is usable.  As I’ve written in our hints and tips before, Thyme is an evergreen and if you could find it under the snow in winter, you could still use it so it is not surprising that it’s still doing well.  It is a little short as we cut it way back in preparation for winter.  Next spring we want to be cutting fresh new growth from the Thyme and not having to pick out the woody older growth when we harvest so we cut it down to about an inch in the fall.

The Oregano’s and the Marjoram are showing a little red around the edge, signs that it has been cold, but they too are hanging in there just waiting for me to make spaghetti or gyro’s.

Greek Oregano

Italian Oregano

Marjoram

Fresh picked Rosemary went well in our venison steak sandwiches last night.

And this weekend when I am planning on having a guest in the house, I’m hoping to find a way to use some of this Cilantro.

A testiment to the fact that cilantro is a cold weather plant is below - this is a whole row of it next to a row of dill:

With the cold weather, there’s been a lot of soup being made at our house and the Parsley is always better fresh out of the field.  Chives go well in soup too and Winter Savory is my absolute favorite in potato soup!

Italian Flat Parsley

We mow down the Parsley each fall instead of pulling it out.  Then in the spring we just till it and the roots back into the soil.  It helps to add organic matter to the soil and Parsley is pretty disease and pest free so this is one kind of garden debris I don’t worry about leaving.  Although this year I did have Boy leave a couple standing for us to use.

Winter Savory

The Chives might be laying down on the job a little but still worthy of a good soup!

The stores already have Christmas items out and we’ve been having more hot chocolate at our house.  What goes good with holiday baking and hot chocolate?  Mint!  Our spearmint and peppermint are still green and full of flavor.

Spearmint

Our spearmint and Peppermint beds.

Don’t tell John at 10 North Main, but the Tarragon is still doing exceptionally well and looks wonderful!

 

Which leads me to the other title for this article.  This Tarragon looks spectacular (after more than 10 freezing nights) next to the very sad, very dead, rows of Genovese Basil we have yet to pull out to its left.  Basil loves loves loves the heat.  It begins to look sickly when nighttime temps go into the 40’s and one night in the 30’s practically makes it die right then and there.  Basil makes up the majority of our sales.  If we take Basil out of the equation, we may not make enough to cover costs of labor, transportation, packaging, etc.  Also, without the Basil, our grocery stores would rather go back to their ‘winter’ suppliers as ordering half of what they need from us and half from them is a hassle and quite frankly ticks off the other guys.  So, even though we still have a nice variety of herbs that look great, we just can’t continue to deliver to our customers once the Basil is done.

Also – now back to the real title – I post this topic to try and get people to understand that we CAN lengthen our season.  We are so trained to think that once that first killing frost has come, the garden is done for the year.  I think these photos prove it is not – and does not have to be.  I does require a change in eating habits and in gardening habits and a total revamping of thought.  What it takes is for us to switch from a ‘grow it’ mentality to a ‘harvest it’ mentality.

I wish the industry would quit calling it ‘fall planting’ as what it really is in our area is summer planting.  There will be some items that you need to plant in July or early August, still summer to me, to ensure they are large enough once the shorter days and cold weather hit.  The goal is to have them at just the right stage for picking before we begin to have temperatures too cold for them to grow and days so short they have very little sun.

By calling it ‘fall planted’ vegetables or a ‘fall planted’ garden, the industry does gardeners no favors either.  With those kinds of terms, most people wait until ‘fall’ to try and plant these things.  That might work in Tennessee but not in North Dakota.  So let’s all begin to think of it as late summer planting for early winter harvest.  We also have to stop thinking about it as ‘winter growing’, another term used by the industry.  Let’s not kid ourselves; the only things that grow in ND in the winter are the snow banks, men’s beards, and our eagerness for spring.  It’s not winter growing or winter gardening unless it is indoors.  It is winter harvesting, or fall harvesting.

To successfully have garden fresh items well after the first, second or even third killing frosts, you have to think of it as growing it earlier to harvest it later.  There are many things, including the herbs I’ve pictured here, spinach, mache’, kale, chard, carrots, rutabagas, beets, salsify and more that can take the frost and still be fine.  The key is to plant these items while there are plenty of warm days left.  Root crops can be left in the ground until the ground is frozen, this cooling and hardening off period actually makes them better tasting!  Some greens can literally freeze overnight, thaw with the sun and warmer temperatures of daytime and be ready to use again for lunch.

Carrots from our raised kitchen garden, just think – all these carrots from two six foot rows along the edges of our raised bed.  We like the little ones for fresh eating, the big ones for soup and the middle sized ones for salads.

So this year when the  seed catalogs arrive in our mailboxes, let’s start by making TWO lists.  One for seeds we will plant right away in the spring and the other list will be our ‘summer’ garden for ‘winter’ harvest!

Catching up

It's time to play catch up.  I know that I promised myself, and you, in May that I would write a blog post every week and I know that I haven't done that - not even close.  When you are trying to run an herb farm with wholesale deliveries, farmers markets to prepare for and sell at, CSA shareholders to tend to, weeding, watering, building in a new location AND another full time job on top of it - well,  let's just say it gets busy. 

So here's an update.  It has been Basil city - Basil CRAZY  - around here lately.  Poor Amber, our summer employee has thought she might never get out of the basil rows.  The first succession of Basil is getting tired.  It really didn't like those cool nights and heavy morning dews we had for a while and all of the picking has taken its toll.

Although it looks tall and wonderful - 24 inches tall now - a closer examination shows that there isn't a lot of the high quality stuff we sell left in there...

See the brown spots and the little holes - I call this ugly basil and I don't like picking it.

The second succession is looking good and although it didn't like the cold and dewey mornings either, we're still able to pick from it with success.  The third succession shown below went into a funk and didn't grow any when we had those really hot days - of course it would have helped if we had watered it a bit more, so it's not quite ready for picking.  We have begun to water it more and if Mother Nature holds off on sending in Jack Frost, hopefully we'll get to pick from it in a few weeks.

 

 

The Lemon Basil looks good - it always looks good.  It seems that 'Mrs. Burns' is a harder worker than 'Genovese' and takes the cool night weather better.  We could get by with just one planting of Lemon Basil but we always do at least two and that's more than plenty.

 

 

 

The first succession of Dill and Cilantro are also tired.  They've been pushed and pushed harder than any little plant should be.  You can see them starting to form seeds and flowers.  While we normally would just pull them out, we've had such a high amount of requests for pickling Dill, we've decided to let the Dill heads go and we'll try to fill some of those requests.

 

 

 



Barry has been pouring the water to our final succession of Dill and Cilantro trying to coax it into readiness. It seems reluctant but we're hoping by next week we'll have some fresh stuff for everyone.

Overall the whole field still looks pretty good.  With TDH's new toy, the PlotMaster, we've been able to keep all weeds in check and have less maintenance to do than we did in our last location - which only leaves more time to do other things, like pack for shareholders, contact new customers and work on completion of the wash/pack facility.  Which by the way, TDH put a window in there the other day - just my height - hooray!  The windows in our last wash/pack were too high for me to look out of!

That really tall stuff is the fennel - monstrous isn't it?

I'd like to say that I'll be better and next week I'll do a blog post again, but I hate to promise something I can't deliver.  Next week we're hoping to turn this...

Into this...

Minus the snow built up on the outside, TDH's large coat and of course with the solid end walls installed again.  That means busy, busy, busy.  Right now, I have to head out and pick Lemon Basil and Parsley for tomorrow's farmers market and Tarragon, Sage, and Mint for our shareholders.  All the while I'll be dreaming of the day when I can again say I have a clean house and a stocked pantry.
Chow!

The Value of a Man that Knows Dirt

Over the years I've always known that 'Tall, Dark, and Handsome' was a good catch.  There has never been a doubt, but this weekend TD&H (Tall, Dark, and Handsome) really proved his worth.

I've put the poor man through a lot over our 29 years.  I've asked him to do a lot of things in the name of 'making me happy'.  I've pushed his envelope and he has always done so without complaint.

He's built sheds and buildings and meeting rooms - when he had never built anything before in his life.

He's cut sod for labyrinths when he didn't even know what a labyrinth was or why in the heck we would want one.

He's built restrooms for guests when I told him that nice little old ladies do not prefer to use porta potties.

He has dug out, refurbished, reclaimed, recreated and re-installed century old fences just because I said "Honey wouldn't it be nice if...".

He's been a good sport and helped to make lefse at the local bar - even though his Welsh/Scottish heritage vocabulary does not include the words lefse or lutefisk.

He's serenaded me for my birthday - with a little help from Bob Brossart and the Karaoke machine.

He's even participated in a little kick back time with Boy to enjoy his niece's wedding after helping me arrange all the flowers for the wedding.

But this weekend, yes THIS past weekend, the one with the gorgeous weather minus the wind...

He truly proved his worth.  You see, TD&H let me move dirt.

First, let me explain that in 29 years, we have brought home 'dirt' from every trip or vacation we've ever been on.  Sometimes, the 'dirt' was in the pots of plants that we purchased at the greenhouses along the way.  Sometimes the 'dirt' was attached to the bottom of wildflowers dug from a relatives pasture or flower garden.  There have even been times that the dirt was actually in a bag!  I can't pass up a sale on potting soil.  We've even brought home dirt that was attached to the bottom of little trees and raspberry plants dug from the woods around his cousins house in Wisconsin.  So you see, TD&H is quite used to moving dirt around.

But this time is a little different.  We're trying really hard to move our business from Churchs Ferry to our  new Esmond location.  We're moving only what we really need as there will be soooo many things that I would LIKE to bring with.  Since it is too early to get some of the plants out of the ground and having no help lined up to move the greenhouse, we focused our attention on the therapy gardens which at our new place I had my heart set on becoming my kitchen garden.  Sounds good doesn't it, almost romantic - a kitchen garden.  Sounds like something a fine chef on the Food Network - or an herb gardener - would have....

hhhmmm, anyway - enough dreaming...

We set out to move the heavy 4 foot by 8 foot raised

planted made of very solid 4X4 posts and 2X12 walls.  Yes, it's heavy.  Built to last. 

This wasn't just DIRT we were talking about.  It wasn't the dirt we had become accustomed to in Churchs Ferry - which was mostly back fill from when houses were removed during the buy out.  The dirt that needed to be 'amended with truck load after truck load of bison manure....

Oh No!  This planter box was filled with the good stuff!

I didn't really have the heart and wasn't sure how to approach it, but somewhere in the planning stages the night before I happened to drop in that I sure would like to bring the compost that filled this behemoth along with.  "It's not just dirt you know.  It's black gold.  It's the best and richest compost that we ever made.  It took us three years to make that compost from rhubarb leaves, grass clippings and the end of season basil."  He shrugged, rolled his eyes and gave me no comment.

Lo and Behold!  The next day on the trailer, ready to go and retrieve my new 'kitchen garden' was the large tarp tote and the scoop shovel! 

Because the compost is mostly organic matter, it was very light and easier to move than even I had imagined.  We got it and the planters home and I now have my new kitchen garden in place, just waiting to be filled with beans on the obelisks, tomatoes in the big trough, peppers in the round pots and cucumbers in the big red planter (that is actually a threshing motor/belt stand tipped upside down).

So TD&H, go relax.  You've made me a very happy person, in so many ways, over so many years.  You've earned it.