Getting Fresh

This week’s balcony garden yield (?) included a negligible salad, early and utterly doomed squash blossoms, and initially unwelcome radish flowers — a bunch of quote-unquote mistakes I have been really thoroughly appreciating.

The salad just kind of happened when my daughter and I were outside on a sunny morning and “thinning lettuce” became the spring’s first harvest of “micro-greens.” Earthy, early season mache, arugula, and red ‘Merlot’ lettuce. Later, at lunch, that first forkful was just too pretty to eat right away. And then I did eat it, and it was crunchy and, just, important.

The flowers came from the same flat of early-sown stuff, namely from the failed radishes — which started bolting under the fluorescent lights of my new propagation shelf — and the accidental squash seedling planted in a very oh-what-the-Hell moment also involving my toddler daughter, and a February afternoon some ridiculous number of weeks before the last frost date. Happy accidents! Those little go-nowhere blossoms truly smelled like garden.

Depending on the weather — so, literally, from one moment to the next up here in New England — it can feel like early December or like late spring. Either like the tail end of a growing season, or like it’s so close to summer, I get the impossible urge to throw peas (seeds) every which way and grow them, damn it, before it’s too hot! This is because my goal as a relatively new gardener is to have an earlier harvest of something (really, of everything) each year. Logically, I know that’s impossible to keep up, but it is still so fun to try. I think that might be the definition of spring fever.

However, so far, I have actually practiced more restraint when getting this small space growing: no peas yet planted, because the new everbearing strawberry seedlings have priority of place and precious potting mix; no tomatoes started yet, either, because that feels like hurrying past spring right into summer. And I’m not actually ready for summer yet — I’m just starting to really enjoy spring.

Garden planning this year reminds me of a trying to recreate a really good meal through a boozy haze. I made something according (at least in part) to some recipe (source now lost), I remember enjoying it a lot, I probably snapped photos and talked about it loudly with friends — but, for the life of me, I can’t remember how, exactly, it all went down. Which is really what enjoying something is all about; in eating as in gardening, the best experiences are those spent “in the moment” that pretty much defy being written down afterward.

But see, now, months and months later, in the deep of winter, I am craving some very exact and detailed memories from the garden. Because I’m trying to make it all happen again, except even better.

As of this morning, that urge has mainly manifested itself in a totally unruly and, like, aggressively boring spreadsheet. Insert plant name, insert days to maturity, copy, paste, repeat. I almost want to forget it all for another couple months, until I can realistically use the outdoors as a growing area — but not quite. Because this year I have a tiny, shiny greenhouse on the balcony and a DIY propagation shelf in the laundry room. It’s not much, but it’s a lot more than I had at my disposal last spring, and so it feels like I have 100 acres of sheer potential to sow.

Now if I could just rope in that gardening enthusiasm for some fruitful (tedious, anal) garden planning. Stepping away from the merciless succession-planting spreadsheet for a sec, I need some more free-form reflection on went right last year in the balcony garden, and what went wrong.

The “right” category is topped, no contest, by peas, particularly since my in-ground peas were decimated by early furred pests. In the absence of a fenced plot, growing dwarf snap peas on the balcony is the only way to go for me. I guess peas don’t like being transplanted, but I actually had luck last year starting them in a paper bag in the cold frame and then carefully transferring the whole shebang, intact, to a larger pot once the weather warmed. Plan is, do a similar thing this year, but earlier, by starting the peas in homemade newspaper pots or the like, indoors and under the new fluorescent lights.

Last year’s second best discovery: ball carrots. I planted Tonda di Parigi from Fedco but have recently slobbered over “Parmex” from The Cook’s Garden. They’re small, ball-shaped, and win my heart for ease of use in the kitchen: no chopping! That’s why I’m going to persist in growing them again this year, because they weren’t easy; it was tough to hit the sweet-spot of regular moisture, fertilizing, and good growing temperature out on the balcony, which heats up to boiling very early in the summer. The only harvest to speak of came late last fall. For this year, the rough plan is: plant them in containers early, but not too early, and keep ‘em fed and watered so they’ll fill out quickly before the stifling heat hits.

The big fails last year? Bush beans that fizzled out early (I ate five, seven tops), the unintentional “bonsai garden” of stunted nasturtium, lavender, and marigold flowers, and, most regrettably, bush tomatoes felled by blight. I think I’ve given up growing Swiss chard in my balcony containers — they just need more soil than I’m willing to give ‘em, and get positively mummified in the heat out there. I’m on the fence about trying bush beans again — we love to eat them, but again, they’re relative space-hogs.

Greens, for instance, which I know I can grow better and which I find really rewarding, and more alpine strawberries. I won’t make the mistake of planting them too late again — “Mignonette” strawberries are already showing their first true leaves under lights. Aiming to transplant them today and start greens and flowers tomorrow (I’m like “?!” but the spreadsheet commands it!). Then, later this spring, I’ll start tomatoes indoors. Radishes will go in wherever there’s space and shade in a pot — my only ambition for radishes this year is to have a show-off crop late in the fall that we can eat in a festive Christmas salad.

Time to pot-up the strawberries and figure out where to put the peas, radishes, and spinach that have been “breaking in” the propagation shelf. Give them up as a failed experiment, eat them as “micro-greens”, or…something else entirely?

This is a first: a combined video-cast and written rundown…all this for the topic of storing seeds successfully. Watch and/or read more.

It’s late fall here — the bush beans finally dried a papery tan on the plants so that I could collect some for seed, and we’re really loving  “Carnival” acorn squash from the farmers’ market; With a freakishly beautiful, mottled skin of bright orange, olive green, and creamy white, they’re real lookers on the table, and, halved and stuffed with couscous and maple sausage from Hogwash Farm, they are now a critical component of my family’s favorite autumn meal.

All this good eating also means handfuls of acorn squash seeds, which I’m eager to save and try my hand at growing next summer, alongside the wildly prolific “Provider” bush green beans.

Other crops that have made the grade and will be saved for subsequent seasons: gorgeous burgundy-and-blond “Solar Flashback” calendula; seeds codged from our summer CSA, including butternut squash, mini pie pumpkin, and bell pepper; and every last tomato seed I could save from the pervasive blight — mostly “Glacier,” a small variety which fared the best during our strangely cool, rainy summer; some “Striped German;” and a precious few “Brandywine.” I had absolutely no luck harvesting “Black Krim” or “Super Bush” tomatoes this year, alas, and although we ate a lot of delicious “Costata Romanesco” zucchini the size of small zeppelins, these puppies really do not give up their seeds easily. I saved a teaspoonful, but suspect I’ll have to buy new seed, if I want any kind of crop next year.

Believe it or not, I’m still waiting on certain seeds: The last of the calendula, which are holding out despite hard frosts, and my favorite “Tonda di Parigi” carrots, which won’t actually produce seed until their second year. I’ll overwinter some in containers on my balcony, protected in my new mini-greenhouse, and hope for the best. A heirloom variety shaped like diminutive ping-pong balls, they’re tasty, sweet, and perfectly suited to my lazy-chef ways: I just wash them and pop them into stews whole.

I’ve found that seeds like tomato, pepper, and many flower seeds store well in small, sealed glass jars.  Baby food jars, thoroughly dishwashed, lid and all, are my favorite containers this year. To give these seeds additional moisture protection, try adding a small sachet of home-made “desiccant,” which I make from nothing more than a one-ply square of napkin and a scant spoonful of powdered milk — roll, bend, tie into a neat knot, and drop into your seed jar.

Winter squash seeds are easy to collect by the handful, but, I’ve found, tricky to preserve long-term — they will just fester in a sealed glass jar, and seem to need a good amount of airflow. So, after I’ve washed them and removed all flesh — which is a tedious task, at best, but I use a colander under running water for the best results — I spread them out on paper towels and allow them to dry for a couple days, just to be on the safe side of mold formation. Then, I simply fold them into a loose envelope of paper towels, a package that allows them to “breathe” better. I’m pretty confident that paper seed packets would work well, too.

Once they’re bundled, or coddled and sealed, respectively, these seeds need a dark place to spend the winter — mine are ultimately destined for our condo’s basement storage area.

Using the free demo of GardenCAD, this is the plan I drew for my main garden in 2009: A balcony full of greens (lettuce, chard, watercress, and spinach), vegetables, alpine strawberries, and herbs. My balcony faces westward into the condo development’s front yard, the de facto local dog park. Love dogs, but think it’s a good thing my edibles will be growing on the second level.

The balcony gets enough sun to be insufferably hot in the summertime, so the plan is to provide some shade by training nasturtiums up a folding-screen trellis. Have trellis, will grow peas, so I’m going to set some containers there, as well.

I’m afraid the plan’s not to scale, but I also don’t think it’s too far off. We’ll see how far optimism has led me astray this year: I’ll be taking photos of the real balcony set-up, once it develops beyond a small cold frame and a stinking batch of compost tea.

Have a garden plan of your own? I’d love to see it, and I’m sure the folks at GardenCAD would, too. I have only scratched the surface of the software’s capabilities and I can tell you, now that I’m getting used to its ways, I’ll be using it every year. Give it a go yourself and tell me what you think.

The selection of tomatoes available to the home gardener is vast and has just one thing in common: In a taste test, any could go head-to-head with a mass-produced, grocery store variety and come out the winner. Knowing that you’re ahead of the game from the start, what’s the best tomato plant for your small green garden?

In order to maximize a limited garden area, it’s wise to seek out determinate or “bush” tomato varieties. These grow more compactly than other (indeterminate, vining) varieties, which means a better usage of tight space. It’s harder to find this information than it should be — it’s not typically printed on seed packets, so if you planning on starting seeds indoors, look to a regional mail-order seed company that will tell you exactly what kind of ‘mato you’re dealing with. Alternatively, you can find young tomato plants — and all the knowledge that went into starting them — at a nursery or spring farmers’ market.

If you’ve got room for several plants, then you might be able to grow a couple different varieties that mature at different times. This is crucial for getting the most out of your harvest when you’ve got limited kitchen and/or freezer space: No one likes to see tomatoes curdling on the countertop, but this happens to the most resourceful of us when we’re dealing with armfuls of ripe tomatoes all at once (sounds like a dream, can be a nightmare). Early ripening varieties can produce fruits weeks earlier than their late-season counterparts. Most seed packets include “days to maturity” information that you can compare and contrast, but you can usually find early producers based on name alone: “Early Girl,” “Siberian,” “Glacier”…the colder the name, the sooner you’re likely to have ‘em.

Which is not to say that these beauts will tolerate anything but the sunniest spot on your porch; tomatoes love sun and heat from their earliest days, so give them pride of place in your kitchen garden!