Tools for Tight Spaces

by Jessica Walliser

Don’t put your trowel back into the shed just yet. Even though it may feel like planting time has come and gone, late summer brings a renaissance of sorts, ushering in another heyday for home-grown vegetables.

Keeping your garden chugging along and producing well beyond the first frost is as easy as 1-2-3.

1. Choose the right crops
2. Site them well
3. Protect them from the impending cold weather

Do all this right and you’ll be filling the fridge with fresh produce for months to come.

Making Smart Choices

Successful late-season planting is tied intimately to the varieties you choose. Crops that thrive in the cooler temperatures of autumn and have shorter growing seasons are the ones you should be planting right now. They’ll germinate, take root and produce before the harsh weather of winter sets in.

These cool-season crops can do this partly because the soil is still retaining a bit of summer’s heat but also because they’re genetically predisposed to thrive in chilly weather. Plus, cooler air and shorter days mean a reduced chance of bolting for many autumn-planted crops.

And, if you play your cards right, some of them will overwinter in the garden, producing an early crop of veggies in the spring and perhaps even allowing for harvests through the winter.

Leaf Vegetables

iStock photo The magenta color of certain kinds of kale, such as the Red Chidori kale, actually intensifies in cold weather.

Leaf vegetables are prime choices for late-season planting. Lettuce, spinach, kale, mustard greens and collards have maturation rates between 40 and 60 days, making plantings in July, August and September prime for picking when late autumn rolls around. Plus, these veggies are notoriously sweeter after a few light frosts.

Selecting cultivars with a noted preference for fall planting is a good idea since some varieties are bred for bolt resistance (a good quality for spring plantings), while others are bred for frost tolerance (an obvious must for fall sowings). Winterbor, a finely curled, thick kale, is one of the hardiest winter kales, perfect for planting right now, as is Red Chidori, whose magenta color intensifies in cold weather.

Collard varieties you might want to try include Flash, known for its dependable harvest and rapid regrowth, and Top Bunch, with slightly crinkled leaves. Almost all lettuce and spinach varieties do excellent when planted in the autumn, and all of these plants can be started by directly seeding them into the garden.

Lynne Gelston of Dream Thyme Farm in Mercer, Penn., also suggests sowing arugula in the fall. “We love the spicy, peppery taste of arugula. We do all heirloom varieties here, and they’re just terrific.”

Brassicas 

Other crops that relish growing in cooler temperatures are cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage. Since these veggies have a longer growing season than leaf vegetables (between 60 and 85 days on average), they’re often planted as transplants rather than seeded directly into the garden.

Seeds should be started indoors in mid- to late June and then transplanted into the garden when they have three or four sets of leaves. Since it’s too late in the season to start your own broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage from seed for late-season planting, you may want to shop at a local nursery for ready-to-plant transplants.

Katie Bjorkman, owner of Earth Harvest Farm in Lake Geneva, Wis., says “Brassicas are huge fall crops on our farm because they can tolerate cold nights and frosts. We love Packman broccoli for its side-shoots, but Blue Wind had great frost tolerance last year. I also left red and green storage-type cabbage in the field all the way until Thanksgiving, and while it wasn’t the most beautiful head of cabbage around, it was still delicious after peeling the outer layers off and letting it thaw. For us, Brussels sprouts can also stay in the ground until around Thanksgiving.” 

Alliums

Several members of the onion (or allium) family are also good bets for fall planting. Scallions, or bunching onions, are sown from seed late in the season for winter harvests. If left in the ground under a layer of light mulch, they’ll produce one of spring’s earliest crops.

Evergreen Hardy White is the most winter-hardy bunching onion with a mild onion taste. Deep Purple is a red bunching onion good for both spring and late-summer sowings. Egyptian walking onions, also called topset onions, are hardy perennial onions that are very fun to grow. They form bunches of edible bulbs underground but also develop little bulblets at the top of each stem. At the end of the season, the stems topple, planting the bulblets and creating the “walking” effect.

Egyptian walking onions can be harvested either by digging up the strong-flavored bulbs or by using the greens much like chives in early spring. Leeks are another winter-tolerant member of the allium family. While they’re planted in the spring, leeks can be harvested all winter long and have a mild flavor that many gardeners enjoy both raw and cooked.

And then, of course, there’s garlic. Planted each autumn, gardeners can enjoy three different garlic harvests. First, cut a few of the young greens emerging in early spring to top salads and soups, then use the curled scapes (or flower buds) to make pesto or in sautés, and finally dig up the newly formed garlic “heads” in July when the tops have browned completely. 

Root Vegetables

iStock photo Radishes, such as the Easter Egg variety, produce mild, tender roots during cold- weather growth.

And let’s not forget about those root crops. The humble turnip will be rendered a family favorite with fall harvests. (Yes, I did say “favorite” when referring to a turnip!) Much like a tomato, store-bought turnips don’t hold a candle to homegrown.

Purple Top White Globe, Golden Globe and Petrowski turnips mature in a mere 40 to 50 days. Seeds sown in late August are ready to pick when autumn’s first frost arrives. Radish, another fast-maturing root crop (they take about a month from seed), produce mild, tender roots in cooler weather. Look for bright purple Amethyst and multi-colored Easter Egg radishes to become choice varieties in your garden.

Beets—grown for either their roots or their greens—should be planted in the garden about 6 to 8 weeks before regular heavy frosts are expected. Most beet varieties perform well in the cool of autumn but Chioggia and Touchstone Gold are personal favorites for their unusual color and super-sweet taste.

Carrots, too, will tolerate the cooler temperatures of fall, but since they are slow to germinate, plan on sowing seeds about 10 weeks before your first expected frost date. Napoli carrot is noted by many growers to be the best selection for fall and winter harvests, and Merida is a selection that’s particularly successful at overwintering in the garden. Sow seeds of Merida as late as early September in most climes, cover them with 6 inches of straw, and harvest the following May.

Location, Location, Location …

Where you site your late-season crops matters more than you might think—for several reasons.

First, sowing these plants in soil that has already hosted a crop this season means you’ll have to refuel your soil by adding more nutrients. This type of succession planting is a great use of space, but it does make good soil management a necessity. Before you plant any new crop, work several inches of finished compost or well-aged manure into the planting area.

“At Dream Thyme Farm, we amend our soil with two-year-old manure from our llamas, horses, rabbits and other animals. It’s the only thing we use on our gardens, and because it’s so broken-down, it makes a great mulch for weed control too,” says Gelston.

If you have neither manure nor finished compost, use a balanced, organic granular fertilizer to replenish your soil. Bjorkman suggests adding a cup of worm castings to individual planting holes for transplants to add a little boost. Don’t go overboard, though; nutrients that don’t get used this fall may leach away during the winter months. 

Secondly, location matters because the protection provided by garden microclimates may make the difference between harvesting in six weeks versus eight weeks; when pending winter temperatures and heavy frosts are involved, two weeks is an eternity.

This means that more sheltered garden sites are ideal for fall-planted crops—perhaps against a retaining wall or fence, or under the “skirts” of your tomato plants. These are areas that provide a bit of extra protection from winds and frosts and may lengthen the season by a few weeks. Farm topography can determine the presence of microclimates, too.

Gelston notes that her farm sits in a valley where frost readily settles. “We tend to get earlier frosts than surrounding growers since we sit so low.” 

And finally, location matters for harvesting purposes. Why plan for late-season harvests when you can’t get to them? Since some of these crops may stay in the ground for months to come, access is important. Plant them near a walking path, close to the garden gate or kitchen door, or put some stepping stones nearby to guide your feet away from plant tops.    

For more What to Plant Now, go to page 2   

More of my favorite Italian vegetables are starting to produce nicely in the garden these days. 

The most spectacular vegetables have to be the trombette squash.  I grow these squash on overhead trellises so that the young squash can hang down as they grow.  This produces straighter fruits because if the young squash encounter any resistance while they are growing, they grow in a twisted curve.  My wife and my mother-in-law both prefer straight trombette, so I try to accommodate them.

Trombette are eaten like zucchini, and the most desirable fruits are the young ones. The fruits grow quickly, and it takes only two days to go from the flower opening to the fruit being ready to harvest. 

Trombette also can be used as a winter squash, in which case the fruits are allowed to grow to full size, which is about four feet long.  I always harvest most of the fruits when they are young, and two or three trombette to grow to maturity.  The first photo shows a young fruit ready to harvest on the left and a mature fruit on the right. 
 
Every region of Italy has their own particular squash favorites, so as nifty as trombette squash are, they are still mostly grown in Liguria.  The vegetable markets in Milan or Rome are much less likely to offer trombette but here in Rapallo almost every vendor offers them.

Another local Ligurian favorite are the small round eggplants, aka melanzane.  These fruits shown in the second photo are an ancient Genovese variety, and are mentioned in records from six hundred years ago. 

These small eggplants can be steamed or used in soups or gazpacho mixes and can in a pinch be used for eggplant parmesan.  But the classic Genovese recipe is to stuff them with a mildly cheesy filling.  After cooking the little eggplants are about the size of a flattened ping pong ball, but they are delicious. 

They are sort of a bother to prepare, but there are more than a dozen places in Rapallo where pre-cooked Genovese stuffed melanzane are sold alongside several other types of stuffed vegetables.  There’s a pretty active market in these re-heatable stuffed vegetables, and they function sort of like TV dinners do for Americans.

One of the things I like about growing melanzane is that even though they are tomato cousins, they don’t seem to be nearly as susceptible to disease problems here. 

Some years the plants produce less abundantly than others, but so far I’ve not had a single notable pest problem.  Sometimes the fruits don’t become dark purple, but instead remain a sort of violet grey, but even the grey fruits are tasty.  In any case, the small purple eggplant flowers are always attractive.

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This is the season full of local festivals where the locals gather and all eat together under big tents. 

Usually there are only five or six hundred people at the smaller affairs, but the really big events, like La Sagra delle Pesce (Fish) ten minutes up the coast in Camogli, where they fry fish in a huge frying pan fifteen feet in diameter, can draw many thousands of attendees. 

We, of course, wouldn’t be caught dead at one of these big touristy festivals, and favor instead the little uncrowded festivals in the distant interior valleys where time seems to have stood still for the last few hundred years.

Sometimes the festivals involve carrying crosses or holy sculptures from the local church on a tour of the town, and sometimes the festival is dedicated to a particular food item, in which case it is called a sagra, like La Sagra delle Castagne (Chestnuts). 

We’ll probably attend the Sagra della Trota (Trout) up in the mountains next weekend.  Until their recent collapse, one of the minor Italian political parties threw an annual week-long festival in Rapallo that featured zero politics, but lots of great food, with the menu changing every night.  This particular festival was a favorite with lots of people we know, and some years we’d eat at the same festival three or four nights in a row, with different friends each night.

These photos are from La Festa della Agricoltura that was held Saturday evening in one of the interior valleys.  The star food item at this festival was the ancient peasant recipe called testaieu, (test-eye-you-uh) which is a pancake sort of affair with basil pesto spread on top.  

It’s pretty tasty, but the way they make it is spectacular.  First they build a big bonfire and then they throw a bunch of rough clay dishes into the roaring fire.  (Okay, actually the cooks at this festival used a small fire on a grill.) When the dishes are red hot, they use long steel tongs to pull them out of the fire. 

A dough mixture is poured into the first hot dish and then another dish is placed on top of it and filled, and so on until the stack is eight or nine plates tall.  The heat from the dishes cooks the dough in a minute or so, after which the testaieu are scooped onto the serving plates and covered with pesto.

I hear that this recipe was invented by the Ligurian hill people a thousand years ago, apparently before frying pans were available.  Obviously, nobody makes this recipe at home anymore.  Except…they do sell the clay dishes as souvenirs sometimes and I buy a few every once in a while. 

When I’ve collected enough of the dishes, we’ll build a bonfire up at my friends Richard and Juliet’s farm and have our own Sagra delle Testiaeu! 

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