357 Plant Cool Season Vegetables Now. What is a Crisis Nursery?

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357 TRANSCRIPT Cool season vegetable planting time. What is a Crisis Nursery?

Farmer Fred    

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Farmer Fred 

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener, or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

The days are getting shorter and sometimes a bit cooler, hopefully; but, the soil is still warm, perfect for getting new plant roots established. The change in the weather is your best opportunity for a new round of planting vegetables in your garden, the cool season crops: broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, garlic, kale, onions, peas, potatoes, shallots, and all those versatile, healthy greens: lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, Chinese cabbages, and so much more. But which varieties should you plant? How do you plant them? How do you harvest them? And, of course, how do you control the garden pests that love those cool season vegetables. We have the strategies today for a successful cool season garden.

Also, what is a crisis nursery? Is it the dumpster behind your favorite garden center? Is it an emergency hospital for houseplants? No, it’s much better than that. We’ll explain.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

IT’S COOL SEASON VEGETABLE PLANTING TIME (originally aired in Ep. 43)

Farmer Fred:

 Well, it's September. It's cool season vegetable time for much of the country. That would be USDA zones nine, eight, seven and six, if you feel real, real lucky. But let's just concentrate on the warmer areas, let's say south of the Mason-Dixon line, along with most of the West Coast and getting into Arizona and probably parts of Texas and Florida, of course. So let's talk to somebody who's very familiar with cool season vegetables. Nursery owner Don Shor owns Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis. And Don, it's cool season vegetable time, and there's a lot to choose from. And I hope people don't give up after their summer garden. Maybe they're already tired of tomatoes and squash. They've already started ripping it out. You can put in crops that will do well in the cooler weather ahead.

Don Shor:

It's a funny time of year here because our summer vegetables are still going along strong, but it's a good time to get started on broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, a lot of those things that we grow and harvest in the cool season, but they need a good lead in.

Farmer Fred:

 Well, the first thing people have to do is either plant from seed or pick out the plants. And one of the easier things to do is to pick out the plants, go to your favorite local independent nursery. Your local independent nursery is always a good place to shop for plants because they're going to carry the varieties that are known to do well in your particular area. Yeah. And for instance, here in Northern California, Don, what would you have in stock now in the way of cool season vegetables for people in Northern California?

Don Shor:

We've just started bringing in broccoli, cauliflower, Romanesco, the different types of cabbage, Napa cabbage, regular headed cabbages. And we have the very first of the leafy greens, lettuces, spinach, and we always have Swiss chard. There's things you can plant now all the way through November here in our area. And many of those are planted again in late winter, early spring, depending on where you're listening. But right now, early September is really the beginning of the planting season for a lot of these things, for most of the zones you talked about.

Farmer Fred:

And for those who may be wondering, what the heck is Romanesco?

Don Shor:

 Well, that's a little controversial, but it's usually described as a type of cauliflower. But to me, it looks more like broccoli. And it's a fascinating looking. Everyone should grow it once. It makes a huge plant two to three feet across. Makes this enormous head with a fractal pattern. You can look up Fibonacci patterns. This is great for those of you who are homeschooling kids right now. And it's a very tender broccoli-like flower head that sort of resembles cauliflower in texture, but broccoli in flavor.

Farmer Fred:

 And, it takes up a lot of room, it sounds like.

Don Shor:

 Yeah, it's a big plant and I think people need to know that. If you're limited for space, you'll get a lot more of your money out of just regular broccoli that re-sprouts, but it is a beautiful plant and very fascinating to grow at least once. Not difficult. It's very similar to broccoli.

Farmer Fred:

 What about  containerizing these plants? Do many of them take well to containers?

Don Shor:

 I do that. And I use large containers. I use anything from a 7 to a 15-gallon size. You want at least half a cubic foot of potting soil. A cubic foot's even better because these are plants with extensive root systems. And they don't want to get drought stress. It's very important with all the cole crops, things like that, that they have a good root volume. If you're limited and you have a smaller container, go with the leafy greens, lettuces, spinaches. You can crowd those those together, harvest leaf by leaf, and have them over a very long season.

Farmer Fred:

 What are the best-selling varieties that you've worked with over the years?

Don Shor:

 On the broccoli, I'm a big fan of Di Cicco, which is an old heirloom variety. I like the newer ones like Green Magic, which is very similar. What I suggest home gardeners look for is broccoli that is listed as re-sprouting, side sprouts, lots of side shoots. Commercial growers want a very large head of broccoli. They want something six inches across, and they're just going to get one and done. They get one big head and that's it. You as a home gardener can plant a Di Cicco or Green Magic or Gypsy, some of these that have been around for a while and some newer hybrids. And you'll get one four-inch head and immediately new side shoots come up and you can be picking those all winter. So that's really better for the home gardener.

Farmer Fred:

 What is the spacing for broccoli? I know on some of the older varieties like Green Goliath, Green Duke and In Waltham 29, they recommended planting them 10 inches apart in 20-foot rows.

Don Shor:

 You can go closer with these re-sprouting types. That sounds about right. I usually go about a foot apart. I may crowd them. The more you crowd them, the smaller those initial heads will be, but you'll still get good results. And really, I think broccoli and its cousins, broccoli raab, things like that, are some of the easiest things for home gardeners to start with. Easy to grow from seed, easy to buy in plants, and they'll produce quickly.

Farmer Fred:

 All right. So much for broccoli. Let's move through the alphabet. What's next?

Don Shor:

 Brussels sprouts. You ever grown them, Fred?

Farmer Fred:

 Brussels sprouts are a challenge here because even though they're a cool season crop, if you want to plant them correctly here, you have to do it in the heat of July. 

Don Shor:

Right. They need to go in midsummer. They need a really long start to the growing season, and you're not going to harvest until March. And I guarantee you'll be battling aphids the whole time. So I would not rush into Brussels sprouts if you're a novice gardener. It can be fun to do, but I don't know how much you like Brussels sprouts. They're probably not the easiest. So maybe let's move down the alphabet to cabbage.

Farmer Fred:

Well, let's point out one more thing on Brussels sprouts, though, for people in other parts of the country. Maybe  Brussels sprouts are best treated as a spring planted crop.

Don Shor:

Yeah, and they're heavily grown in the coastal areas of California. Most of the production for many years was over along the coast, in the Bay Area. They need a long season, planting them early in the spring, cool, mild climate, they'd be harvesting them over a very long period. So it's a challenging one because it takes literally about six months from plant to harvest.

Farmer Fred:

 Wow. All right. Can we go to the letter C?

Don Shor:

 Now, remember, these are all related. These are all basically the same plant. They're Brassica oleracea. That's the botanical name of the ancestor of all of them. And from that, we got broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, kale, collards. I feel like I'm forgetting something. But they're all basically the same plant. And they like a mild climate to grow and expand and get their major initial start. And then we're harvesting different parts. We're harvesting the flower buds. We're harvesting the inflorescence. And in some cases, the weird stem, like on the kohlrabi. What they want is to have a long period of development and then initiate the flowering. And then we eat them before they get a chance to flower. 

Farmer Fred:

 Now, I'm fond of the Chinese cabbages, the bok choy and the pak choy.

Don Shor:

 Very easy to grow. And you can crowd them. They're a really good one for folks who like stir fry, have maybe one container to crowd a bunch of things in. Bok choy, pak choy, there's a bunch of different names and different styles of those. You can harvest a leaf at a time or the whole thing. And again, all they want is cool, mild conditions. They're okay with frost, light frost, okay down into the mid-20s Fahrenheit. So they're pretty easy to grow in almost all the climate zones you mentioned. And in coastal areas, the places where tomatoes don't do well, peppers don't do well, let's say Seattle or Corvallis, Oregon. Those are great choices. Those will do very well for you pretty much year round.

Farmer Fred:

 Cabbage varieties I'm familiar with are early Anna, Copenhagen Market, Savoy King, and the Burpee Hybrid. Are there others that you like?

Don Shor:

Green Acre, that's become one of the most popular because it will produce quickly. You'll look on the label, you'll see some cabbages listed as 60 to 70 days, others in the 90 day range. The faster ones are going to be better for some of the listeners who are in the colder USDA zones. They get them planted now, if they're listening in September, and we get frost in November, they'll be okay with that. They can get them out of the ground before a hard freeze sets in. In our climate, those tend to head up in the late winter, early spring. Here we can do all of them because we don't get that cold in the winter. But that Green Acre in particular is a fast producer.

Farmer Fred:

Well, let's talk about another relative of those then, cauliflower. 

Don Shor:

 It's more challenging. The issue with cauliflower is that the heads are susceptible to cold damage and you'll get cosmetic damage on the head if it's open and we get, you know, open to the sky and we get 24, 25 degrees as we can do here in mid-December, early January, it'll damage it. So an old technique is to pull those leaves up, clamp them over the top and that protects the head. And with that colder weather, you get a sweeter flavor. It's a little more tricky though because they're more  susceptible to slug damage, aphids, and more challenging to manage that way. I would say, again, for a novice gardener, broccoli is going to be a lot easier. All right.

Farmer Fred:

 Well, cross cauliflower off the list.

Don Shor:

 No, try it once.

Farmer Fred:

 Okay. Yes, exactly. Try everything once. Yeah. One of my favorites to grow, and I won't say it's bulletproof, but if you have good deep soil, it's kind of hard to go wrong with carrots.

Don Shor:

 Yeah, as long as the soil drains well. And you can do them essentially any time of year. As long as the moisture is consistent. So in the summer here, they can be pretty challenging just because of how hot and dry we are. But almost anywhere someone's listening, unless the ground freezes over, they can do carrots right on into the winter. They can do them early in the spring, even later in the spring. I suggest for areas with denser soil, they use smaller types like little finger, hand dancers, half long. Try the round one, Orbit. Those are cool. And there's a lot of new carrots on the variety, a lot of new colorful ones. But I think you really can't go wrong with those first two I mentioned, in Littlefinger and Danvers Half Long. They develop quickly. You get three to four inch, very sweet carrots. And remember, the sweetness increases with a little frost.

Farmer Fred:

 I realize you're a nursery owner, but would you buy a six pack of carrots?

Don Shor:

 I would sell one. Would I buy one? No.

Farmer Fred:

You would plant from seed.

Don Shor:

 Absolutely. The thing to remember, though, is carrot seed germinates very slowly. There's an inhibitor in the seed coat. So first thing is to soak the seed overnight before you plant it to try and get some of that inhibitor out of there. Then it'll only take three to four weeks to germinate instead of five to six. And an old trick is to plant carrots and radishes together in the same bed. Now the radishes come them up right away. You're harvesting them in five or six weeks. Just as you're pulling them out, the carrots are beginning to sprout. So you're making maximum efficient use of your bed and you're not waiting and waiting and waiting for the carrots to sprout. You're getting something else out of that bed at the same time.

Farmer Fred:

 Another one of those slow to germinate ones I'm trying this year are parsnips. It could take three weeks for it to show its face above ground.

Don Shor:

 Anything in that family. They have an inhibitor in the seed coat and a simple trick is to soak the seed overnight. Parsley, well-known for five to six weeks to germinate. Put them in a bowl, pour hot water on them, let it sit overnight, drain that off, and that'll help somewhat. But you're still looking three to four weeks to germination. Yeah. And all the root vegetables, I would recommend planting direct in the ground if you can. Yes, people buy six packs.

Farmer Fred:

Yes. So root crops, we're talking carrots, we're talking about turnips.

Don Shor:

Yep.

Farmer Fred:

Parsnips.

Don Shor:

Yeah, you grow them? them uh this

Farmer Fred:

 Is the going to be the first year i'm growing them those are what you thought i said parsley i said parsnips as far as taking three weeks to germinate yeah.

Don Shor:

 They are storing a lot of starch and thing to remember with anything that stores starch is when we get cold the starch converts to sugar so even even the leaves of your kale uh you'll get better flavor when you get some chilling on them this is one of the reasons they're popular don't harvest your parsnips until Christmas.

Farmer Fred:

 I'll remember that. Okay. I'm going to write that down. Don't harvest parsnips until Christmas.

Don Shor:

 Christmas.

Farmer Fred:

 Okay. Got it. Now, that brings up onions and garlic. Now, around here, we're used to planting from starts or transplants, usually in October or so. November. The rest of the country, I'm not sure.

Don Shor:

 It's highly variable. Hot areas in the southern parts, they generally plant in the fall, and they harvest in the spring, much as we do. Here we plant November, harvest in May to June, a little later for Walla Wallas. And the colder tier states, they plant in the spring for summer harvest. So it's going to vary. And you'll have short day, long day, intermediate day types. We're very lucky. In the Sacramento Valley, we can grow all of those. We can grow any kind of onion we want. Wherever you're listening, you should find out what the suitable varieties are for your area. Because there are generally varieties that are better for you and varieties that aren't as suitable.

Farmer Fred:

 I love the Stockton red onion. and they're hard to find, but when you find them, get them. They're good.

Don Shor:

 Stockton Red, Stockton Yellow, Walla Walla is a fun one to grow. We always get demand for the Red Torpedo. It's a little dicey here because it tends to bloom, honestly, and when it blooms, it's hollow and it doesn't keep as well. But yeah, the Stockton Red or the new Red Burger, which is an improvement on that. Onions in the Sacramento Valley arrive in November, and you plant them bare root. It's one of the easiest things in the world to do.

Farmer Fred

 Yeah, they usually come bundled, 50 to a bundle. So be happy with one bundle, folks.

Don Shor:

 I get people special ordering 200 to 500 at a time. And they call and call and call. I don't know what it is with these old guys and their onions. They're very concerned about them. But they want to get them in November when they can water them in, get some nitrogen on them early in the season. And then they're just as easy as can be from that point on. You just harvest in the early summer, late spring.

Farmer Fred:

 And that's part of the beauty of living where we live. In other areas of the country, it's more of a challenge. What's nice is that there are some mail order firms like Peaceful Valley. They won't even mail out their garlic and onions to a zip code until it's right for that area.

Don Shor:

 Right. There's a big onion grower down in Texas. I think the Dixondale Farms, they know everything there is to know about onions and they ship millions of them all over the country. And they tell you that they're going to ship them to you when it's appropriate for your region. Right.

Farmer Fred:

 I guess the most frost-sensitive plants would be those with water in their leaves, like the leafy greens.

Don Shor:

 Yeah, they're easy to grow, but of course, they're a little vulnerable to temperatures in the low 20s or below. So wherever people are listening, they need to take that into consideration. On the plus side, you can plant and harvest right away. You can start picking leaves immediately, especially the leaf lettuces and spinaches, and you can let them grow and form ahead and harvest the whole head if you like. Like this is probably where early novice gardeners go best is with the leafy greens in a barrel or some planter like that. Crown them in. Put in 30 plants. I mean, go overboard because you can thin them out and use them. And if something is used up, there's a space. Go buy a plant. Stick some more in or do some more seed. And we're talking about lettuce, spinach. You can do those stir fry greens like you were talking about earlier. You can do broccoli rabe, which is used for the stem and for stir frying. And you can even put some Swiss chard in there. Just be aware that it's ultimately going to outgrow all the other things we talked about. So keep them trimmed and pinched and use them all winter long. Here in the valley, in the Sacramento Valley of California, you'll be harvesting out of that barrel all the way into April. Perhaps in colder climates, you hear that you're going to hear 21, 20 degrees Fahrenheit. You might want to rush out and have a salad that night.

Farmer Fred:

 Some of my favorite loose leaf lettuce varieties are Ruby, Bibb, Salad Bowl, Green Ice. Head lettuce has always been more of a challenge here in the valley, but it's easy to grow if you live in a milder climate.

Don Shor:

 Sure. It has more risk of getting problems on the interior of the head, balling up and getting a rot. Look for the Salanova series. These are amazing. They're like Bibb style. They make a perfect little head. Even when they're only half grown, you can harvest them whole and they look absolutely great. They taste wonderful. Also, romaine. If some of you are listening in places where it's hotter, Romaine seems to be more heat tolerant. Lolarosa. And then an old standby for almost every region I can think of is the Black-seeded Simpson, which is tolerant of heat and cold. So it can take almost the whole range of the lettuce growing season.

Farmer Fred:

 And in the world of spinach, I've always loved the Bloomsdale Longstanding and the Melody Hybrid.

Don Shor:

Melody is in the sort of new class of spinach where there are smaller leaves that are thinner, so probably a little more vulnerable to cold, but they're tender. People like to use them in salads. The Bloomsdale is a cooking spinach, been around forever, tough, reliable, and said to be pretty tolerant of both cold and heat. So there's a whole range of spinach now, basically thick-leaf types and thin-leaf types.

Farmer Fred:

 And we touched on kale, and one thing I've learned about kale over the years is the plain green kale has a better taste to it than the ornamental kale, which is very colorful, but kind of bitter.

Don Shor:

Not really intended for eating, Fred. It's like the parsley on your plate at the restaurant, but it's a different plant. The kale is incredibly popular. It has become far and away the most popular of the cool season vegetables for most retailers. It's easy to grow. There's the dino kales, which have the thick kind of lumpy leaves. You've got all kinds of frilly leaf types. They're all very easy to grow, and they can go down to 19 or 20 degrees without much difficulty. And I'm told that the flavor improves. It gets sweeter when that happens. Yeah, they're really pretty ornamental ones. We get this question over and over through the winter. Are they edible? Sure, edible. Does that mean palatable, tasty? No. You want to eat it? I'd suggest buying Lacinato or dino kale or something like that. Red Russian, Winter Boar, a bunch of new hybrids. There's some really cool kale on the market now.

Farmer Fred:

 Well, one solution around the bitterness of maybe kale or chard or even spinach is to do it in a stir fry, and that helps it out.

Don Shor:

Anything that's bitter, this is true, if you add salt, that masks the bitterness. So the soy sauce takes care of that in your stir fry.

Farmer Fred

 Thank you. That's good to know.

Farmer Fred:

 All right. So most people, if you're a first time gardener and you're going to start a cool season garden for the first time, if you really want success, start with transplants, not from seed, because growing from seed is a much longer process. And frankly, we're running out of time here. So if people are going to the nursery, what do they look for at the nursery?

Don Shor:

 Buy younger plants. I'm really concerned when I see overgrown, root-bound, six-packs. All these cold crops we just talked about, if their roots are bound up, the plant's going to get off to a slow start. So transplant it if you have to. If it's not ready to go into the garden bed, move it up to a four-inch pot into some nice soil. Look for a healthy green, deep green, not purple discolored ones, and not super root-bound in the container. I think that's It's real important for these winter vegetables.

Farmer Fred:

 And then when you take it home, what should you do with it if you don't plan on planting it that weekend?

Don Shor:

 Well, just this morning, I took some six packs of Napa cabbage that were fully rooted in and I didn't want to put them in the ground yet. So I shifted them up into four inch pots just so they get them up to another little stage, two to four weeks of growth before they go in the ground. Keep them growing. Keep them moving. Don't don't let them sit around in those packs and get root bound. So go ahead and do that extra step, putting them in a reasonable quality potting soil in a four inch pot. The plants will be growing and vigorous when you put them in the ground.

Farmer Fred:

 I was chatting recently with Brad Gates. You know him from Wild Boar Farms. He's famous for his tomato varieties. And he came up with a rather ingenious way to keep lettuce coming throughout our hot summers. Every week or so during the hot months, he plants a nursery flat (16”x16”) with lettuce seed. He takes a nursery flat, he puts a sheet of newspaper on the bottom, fills it with soil, and then scatters lettuce seed or spinach seed, or chard seed, into the surface of the soil, keeps it watered, it pops up, and within a month, they're using their scissors, cutting it off and serving it in a meal. You could do that in the wintertime, too, and you could do it indoors.

Don Shor:

 A lot of places people are listening, you could do it in a sheltered front porch, something like that. I mean, look for those microclimates. We're not talking about  places where there's snow on the ground, but places where it's maybe in the low 20s, they could be a few degrees warmer up close to the house. He's growing microgreens, and that's really easy to do. You're clipping them and  you're never trying to grow them to their full potential. You're just using them as little greens. I know people who do that with cilantro just to have a steady crop of it as well. The other group of plants that we should mention for some listeners are the peas and the beans. Not green beans, but fava beans. These are two cool season vegetables that we grow here for different purposes. Peas, of course, for shelling, stir fry, depending on the different type. The Sugar Snaps have just dominated the market now for 30 years ever since they came on because you can eat them whole. Then fava beans are great for building the soil, even if you don't happen to eat them. So they're very popular as a cover crop. And those are both planted going into the winter in this climate. Now, this is something where you're going to have to find out locally. In a colder climate, perhaps USDA zone 7, 6, I'm guessing those are planted in the early spring. But here we plant them for the wintertime. And we have the benefit of the fava beans all through the winter, suppressing weeds, building the soil, adding nitrogen, and then people harvest and eat of the beans as well.

Farmer Fred:

 From what I've been reading about USDA Zone 7, which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. Those cool weather vegetables can usually be planted outdoors in early February.

Don Shor:

 Sure. And people do that here. And it's a race against time to see whether they'll develop before we hit our first 90 degree temperatures. So we're doing the same thing. But our preferred season is September, October, November for best results.

Farmer Fred:

And as we've talked about in previous shows in discussing cool season vegetables, if you live in a colder climate, nothing beats a cold frame or a greenhouse. There you go.

Don Shor:

Root cellar.

Farmer Fred:

 There you go. Exactly. Don Shores with Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California. Some great cool season vegetable recommendations. Don, thank you so much.

Don Shor:

 Great to be here, Fred. Thanks.

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