The three main garden beds,
looking north from the barn. Bed in foreground is beans and
tomatoes, middle bed is all potatoes, most distant bed is
cole crops, onions, and a three sisters planting (popcorn,
winter squash, pole beans).
We have several garden beds, which we manage using no-till
strategies, and we break up the beds into smaller beds we
plant in each year. For example, one bed has 8 rows of
potatoes in it this year; last year it was subdivided into
3 beds, for onions, cole crops, and the
beet-chard-kale-carrot grouping. Every fall we lay organic
matter on all the beds so the soil isn’t bare all winter.
We use whatever we have - one year we had giant wood chips,
another we used old hay, last year we had composted chicken
bedding. This helps prevent erosion and weathering of the
soil and protects the creatures living in the soil from
extreme cold, thereby allowing the soil structure to
develop rather than diminish each winter. The organic
matter also replenishes nutrients in the soil. Come spring,
we either rake off the covering, or plant right through it,
depending on the crop and the cover used. Ideally we would
keep the soil covered in the growing season too, but we
have too many escapee chickens most years to risk that.
Chickens LOVE to scratch in hay or other mulch material
searching for bugs and worms, often scratching out my
plants in the process. Yes, we have learned this the hard
way. You may notice the hay in the garden bed pictured
above looks well-mixed - some chickens scratch in it every
day. I think the poles the tomatoes are tied to have
protected the plants. We try to sneak in mulch when we can,
since it shelters the soil structure from compaction by
rain, retains moisture, and greatly reduces weed growth.
Here is a list of our current crops and varieties, with
their uses, more or less tracing back through the beds
pictured above:
Cranberry dry beans. These bush beans prove to be
quite easy to shell, seem to grow well here, and taste
good. I am aiming to grow a years worth, we’ll see if the
amount planted this year will work. The chickens dug up
some of the plants this spring so the number I carefully
determined would be good was reduced a bit. I got about 1/2
lb beans per plant last year.
Tomatoes, mostly Amish paste (for canning), Matt’s
wild cherry (for fresh eating and drying for winter), and a
selection of eating tomatoes, including Purple Prudens,
Cosmonaut Volkov, and Rose de Blanc. We aim to put up 40
quarts of tomato sauce each year, which turns out to be
about 35-40 plants in a good year.
Sugar snap peas, which I pick early for pea pods (I
hope to freeze some to try this winter), and I also shell
them for freezing. This is one of our main frozen
vegetables for winter. In the summer, I mostly like to
enjoy the pods, stir fried.
Northeaster pole beans for fresh green beans. These
are edible even pretty big and produce beans more gradually
than the bush beans I have grown. Since I want to eat them
fresh and not can or freeze, that more gradual harvest
suits my needs.
Potatoes include Kennebec, German butterball, and a
red (Sangre this year, I think). I can’t wait to have our
first potatoes, since we ran out of potatoes early this
past year. I like to have a selection of potatoes -
butterballs are creamy and delicious but don’t keep as well
as the Kennebecs, and the reds are wonderful as new
potatoes as well as for sauteeing - they hold their shape
well when cooked. We have had anywhere from 50-300 lbs of
potatoes, we plant about 20 lbs seed potatoes.
Cole crops include broccoli, brussels sprouts, and
red and green cabbage. We generally have great brussels
sprouts, broccoli varies each year, and usually poor
cabbage. I have tried to be on top of the cabbage worms
this year (we use either Bt or Spinosad, both organically
approved insecticides, sprayed directly down into the plant
so the use is very targeted). We have tried all kinds of
methods - row covers, hand picking - but nothing else
works. I am not growing kale this year due to the cabbage
worms, kale is harder to spray and gets harvested all
season so I don’t like to spray it. Too bad, since kale
grows a lot better than chard here.
Onions - we plant yellow onions for storage, red
onions predominantly for fresh use in salsa and salads
during the summer, and shallots, also for storage.
Corn - Popcorn, for a great snack all winter. We
also plant Calais flint corn for cornmeal, in another bed.
We plant the flint corn early since it has a short season,
then the popcorn a week or two later to prevent
cross-pollination. The flint corn seed is special to me
since we got it from my uncle, so I don’t want to cross it
with anything else. Thus, we do not grow sweet corn; we buy
sweet corn from a farm down the road for freezing and fresh
corn-on-the-cob.
Winter squash - this year we are growing Uncle
Dave’s Dakota Dessert squash and Butterbush. Uncle Dave’s
is probably my favorite variety, the flesh is deep orange,
not stringy, sweet on its own, and they keep well. We had
some Butterbush seeds left though and butternuts are easier
to peel, so its nice to have some of those too. Regular
butternut often doesn’t mature fully here. We also have
some jack-o-lantern pumpkins growing in a pile of compost.
Summer squash we grow one Costata Romanesca zucchini
plant which gives us plenty to eat and occasionally feed to
the chickens. No other summer squash compares with this
one, in my opinion.
Peppers. King of the North for fresh eating and
freezing, and Czech black for hot peppers. The Czech black
are gorgeous plants, and do well every year, even in years
when the other peppers hardly fruit. They are very mild
which suits my family’s gringo palate. This year we are
also growing paprika peppers, in the hopes that they will
turn red so we can dry and grind them. The peppers are
growing on the south side of the shop and house.
Cucumbers. I grow only pickling cukes, since I like
to eat them more than any other variety. We also pickle
them, of course. I have gotten carried away the last few
years, so may only ferment a small crock this year. I still
have canned ones I need to use up.
Yaya carrots are my current favorite variety. We
grow for fresh eating and storage, though storage has been
largely unsuccessful so far. Every year we try something
different.
Detroit beets are what I grow, as they are
dependable and look great pickled. We also roast them for
as long as they last in the fall, and they are wonderful
grated in salads in summer. I might try some chiogga beets
next year, since they are pretty in salads and I think
taste a little sweeter.
Perpetual spinach is a variety of chard with a mild,
spinach-like flavor that I like. The leaves are smaller
than most chard though. I like to freeze as many greens as
I can for winter. This is so time consuming I rarely freeze
as much as I would use.
Annual herbs include basil, dill, cilantro, and
parsley. Dill and cilantro self seed and come up in my
garden behind the house; usually when I plant that garden,
I have enough cilantro and dill to weed out that I can
freeze for the next year.
Lettuce we grow lettuce mixes, fairly halfheartedly.
I enjoy some lettuce early in the season, but it has gone
to seed and been pulled long before we have any other salad
fixings to eat. I am generally unsuccessful with mid-summer
lettuce, though it looks like we will have some in the fall
this year.
Garlic a hardneck variety I bought at a farmer’s
market years ago, we have been growing it (and selecting
big bulbs) for years now. This is such a satisfying crop,
since it takes no time in the spring, just occasional
weeding and mulching, and harvest and replanting is
satisfying and easy. Our garlic keeps so well we often are
using the previous year’s crop when the new garlic becomes
ready.