Doe Hill Peppers: Super sweet and super cute--and early, and high-yielding--these will be in next year's catalog.

• ENJOY THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOR. While some crops may have already petered out, and others may have suffered from pests or diseases, your garden is almost certainly full of good eating right now. The most important garden task of September is to enjoy this feeling of bounty, to be grateful, to savor your fresh and healthy foods.
• CONSIDER WINTER. Alas, September does not last forever, and within the next two months, much of the garden will be felled by frost and cold. Now is the time to put into place your winter plans: Where might the surplus root crops be stored? What can be transplanted into a cold frame to give fresh greens all winter? What should be canned, pickled, dehydrated, or frozen? A little attention now will yield delightful eating when the world is snowy and cold.
• FINAL SOWINGS. You can still plant a number of seeds for harvest in late fall and early winter. Try spinach, arugula, tatsoi, bok choy, mustard greens, lettuce, and radishes. Got a cold frame or hoop house? Plant these crops mid- to late-September for fresh young greens all winter long.
• LEARN YOUR LESSONS. By September, your season’s worth of garden lessons has become obvious. Note what crops have done well, and do your best to figure out what went wrong with those that struggled (hint: many of this season’s garden maladies had to do with the prolonged heat and drought, so inadequate irrigation may be to blame). Write it all down, and be prepared for next year. Becoming a proficient gardener takes several seasons of trial and error (and error, and error…). The failures can be a little rough, but when you sink your teeth into a fresh tomato, super sweet pepper, crunchy cuke, or heirloom melon, you know it’s all worth it.

Here on the farm Doug and I do practically everything by hand. Harvesting, weeding, threshing, and more. Sometimes there just aren’t enough hands to get everything done.

If you’d like to lend a hand we’re offering a seedy barter. Volunteers get a free 2011 Gift Membership and can come for free to our annual farm tour. We’ll also have a farm lunch and may send you home with some farm fresh food. Space is limited to a max of 4 people per date, you must RSVP to mail@seedlibrary.org. Thank you!

Our farm is located in Accord, NY. We are close to Stone Ridge/High Falls. Rosendale, Kingston, Ellenville, and New Paltz are all 20-30 minutes away. We are a 2 hour drive from the city. I will send directions to everyone who is signed up. As folks email me I will be adding names to the dates listed below.

Monday September 6: 9am- 12 pm
1. Marly B.
2. Paolo V.
3. Deb W.
4.
Saturday September 11: 9am - 12pm
1. Dan C.
2. Jennifer K.
3. Joy W.
4.
Monday September 13: 9am-12pm
1. Deb T.
2. Michelle M.
3. Veronica N.
4.
Saturday September 18: 9am - 12pm
1. Michelle H.
2.
3.
4.
Monday September 20 9am-12pm
1. Zach P.
2. Phil S.
3. Estyn H.
4. Samantha G.

Recently I posted a photo of a flower on our Facebook page. So far, only one person has guessed what it is.

That’s because we like to grow some unusual varieties for fun, to find the most ornamental edible and useful plants, and to continue to expand our palettes and the seed catalog. Some of our plants are unrecognizable, even to experienced gardeners and farmers, because a seed farm looks a little different than a farm where many plants are harvested for eating well before they flower or go to seed.  I thought it would be fun to post some more photos of what’s flowering on the farm to see who can guess their names.  Good luck, I’ll post answers next week.

The flower I posted on Facebook  is extremely familiar in our daily lives, but not in our gardens. Since there were already sixteen guesses (one right!) I’ll name this flower… cotton! See if you can guess the other 10 baffling blooms and flummoxed flowers.

If you’ve got a guess for an individual pic, click on the pic to make it larger and then leave a comment. Your guess will show up with the comments specific to that photo. If you want to try them all you can leave your list in the general comments field.

These boots were made for mucking.

Are you tired of seeing these old placeholder photos in our catalog? You can help weed them out, and win a free 2011 Seed Library membership. It’s free to enter the contest and you can send as many original pics or works of art related to any of the varieties in our catalog. We’ll be choosing one to two images for each variety. That’s all we have room for right now.

Here’s how.

Photos: The easiest way to enter is through our Facebook page. Just post your pic to the wall and make sure to tell us the variety name. We’ll review the posted pics in October and let you know if your photo was selected. If your pics gets used in the catalog we will give you credit and send you a free 2011 Gift Membership that you can use for yourself or give as a gift.

Artwork: You can send us an original image of something you have already created or make something new. The art must be your own. Send art images at 300dpi or less to our email. If we choose your painting, print, sculpture, etching, video, collage, or other work we’ll give you credit and send you the free membership.

If you are not on Facebook you can send images to our email. Just keep them small. If we need a higher res pic to put in the catalog we’ll let you know.

Thanks!

]]> http://www.seedlibrary.org/wp/?feed=rss2&p=1159 http://www.seedlibrary.org/wp/?p=1155 http://www.seedlibrary.org/wp/?p=1155#comments Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:12:00 +0000 ken http://www.seedlibrary.org/wp/?p=1155 Hello seedy city folks! I’m coming down to the city to talk with Brent of The Fabulous Beekman Boys (and some of you too) about Edible Heirlooms.  Here’s the info. Hope you can make it.

Dinokale. This is the palm tree method of growing kale. These mini trees look beautiful in an edible landscape.

When:    Tuesday, August 3, 2010, 5 – 6pm
Where:    the elixir lounge at abc kitchen,
floor 1 of abc home
888 broadway @ 19th street, nyc

a series of farm-to-table talks curated by Dr. Brent Ridge of The Fabulous Beekman Boys, a new show on Planet Green TV.

limited seating, rsvp required

about edible heirlooms:
learn the secrets of cultivating heirloom vegetables with Ken Greene of the ground-breaking Hudson Valley Seed Library, creating an accessible and affordable source of regionally-adapted seeds maintained by a community of caring gardeners.

Squash Blossom

Saving Seeds from Cucurbits

There used to be a certain moment during hands-on seed saving workshops when I would blush.  My cheeks would flush when discussing the intimacies of hand pollinating squash blossoms while taking a male flower and rubbing it around inside the female flower. These days, even with the giggles and gasps or silent wide eyes of virgin seed savers, I don’t even blink. I think of the act as being the bee, and more importantly, being the first bee to do the deed.

Successfully saving seeds from melons, cucumbers, or squash is extremely rewarding–the varieties are endless and intriguing. That said, it can be a bit tricky to accomplish. Follow the tips below to start out right.

Early Yellow Crookneck Summer Squash. Over-ripe and ready to seed saving.

PLAN

Cucurbits come in several distinct species.

Watermelon are Citrullus lanatus; all other melons are Cucumis melo; cucumbers are Cucumis sativus; and squash are one of several Cucrbita species, either maxima, mixta, moschata, and pepo. If working with squash, be sure to know the species of your plant from the start. Recommended isolation distance for seed-saving is ½ mile.  Since this is not possible for most home gardeners who enjoy growing multiple varieties, hand-pollination is the way to go.

Left to right: Open flower= too late. Mature unopened flower= perfect. Immature closed flower=too early.

HAND POLLINATE

By July, male and female flowers will dot your cucurbit plants. Identify male and  female flowers of crown fruit which are likely to open the next morning. Tape them shut and flag them. In the morning, cut the male flowers, leaving some stem. Un-tape and remove petals. Next, un-tape the female flower and brush on pollen from multiple male flowers. Re-tape female flower and flag. Take heart when you see the results of this labor wither on the vine: only 20% of hand-pollinated fruit will mature. Usually this is no problem, however, as cucurbits bear a tremendous number of seed per fruit.

Over-ripe squash can be a whole lot of fun.

HARVEST

Seeds of winter squash, melon, and watermelon fruit are ready to harvest when the fruit is ripe. Simply harvest, scoop out seeds (or spit out, for watermelon), and wash and dry the seeds before storing in an airtight container. For cucumbers and summer squash, the fruit should be over-ripe by about twenty days before harvesting for seed.

Close up of female cucumber flower. Note the tiny fruit forming at the base of the blossom.

A NOTE ON SQUASH CROSS-POLLINATION

If you grow only one type of squash from each species (examples below), and there are no other gardens within ½ mile of your yard, you don’t need to worry about hand pollinating. Let the bees do the work, and relax!

Maxima: Big Max, Buttercup, Galeaux d’Eysines, Hubbard, Marrow.
Mixta: Cushaw, some gourds.
Moschata: Butternut, Cheese. Pepo: Acorn, Field Pumpkin, Crookneck, Scallop, Zucchini.

The fall garden: cool, welcoming, and--with a little planning--highly productive.

The arrival of high summer is one of the turning points of the garden season. While we have enjoyed long, luxurious daylight for nearly two months, that will soon change–and fast! A month from now, our days will be a full two hours shorter, and the first hint of fall coolness will likely visit during a starry night or two.

This process of shrinking daylight will continue until December. Its primary effect on the garden is slowed plant growth. While in spring the lengthening daylight encourages faster and faster growth of young seedlings, the same cool-season crops grown for fall harvest require about two extra weeks to reach harvest size due to the steadily reducing sunlight.

For this reason, it’s important to start crops for fall harvest well before it actually feels like fall. They just won’t grow fast enough otherwise.

Not sure what to plant for fall–or when? Here are a few specific examples.

• Cukes and Zukes and Green Beans. This is the last chance to sow some more green beans, cucumbers, and summer squash; seeds sown now will mature from mid-September into October. The quality of these crops in fall is much better from July sowings than from older plantings, so don’t hesitate–sow today!
• Fall Peas. Growing peas in the fall is trickier than growing them in the spring–primarily because the young plants love cool temperatures. They need to be sown by the end of July for a decent harvest, which means they need irrigation and–if possible–shading to pull through the heat of high summer. Once cooler weather sets in, though, they thrive, and you can achieve a harvest that, though always less than the spring peas, is still a great bounty.
• Lettuce. Lettuce sown from now until early September will achieve full size before deep freeze conditions set in. The later you sow lettuce, the more you should focus on dense sowings of baby-leaf mixes rather than going for big heads. Fall sown lettuce (late September and early October) will overwinter with a little mulch for your earliest April and May eating (or earlier if grown under row cover).
• Turnips. Sow in early- to mid-August for harvest in late October. So sweet and delicious in fall, you’ll want to grow them every year.
• Asian Greens. Sow bok choy, tatsoi, and other Asian Greens in the Mustard family from now until late August–or even later. Many of these crops hang on tenaciously through cold spells; fall crops will delight you with their sweet flavor and (relative) lack of damage from flea beetles.
• Kale and Collards. Start as soon as possible in order to get as large leaves as possible before the plants “shut down” as day length diminishes in November. These crops can be harvested until the new year, even when covered in snow. Well worth the effort–and so much sweeter and appealing in the fall than in the summer.
• Radishes. Sow in late August or early September, depending on variety; daikons can be sown earlier. Do a few sowings in succession for smallest, best-flavored roots into November. Roots get bigger in the fall and do not bolt, so be prepared to roast some if they swell before you get the chance to harvest them.

Rose de Berne Tomatoes

Our hot and fairly dry summer has had many effects on the garden, the most welcome of which is the imminent and seemingly strong tomato crop. What a marvelous counterpoint to last year’s collective tomato sadness!

Many growers and gardeners have already started to harvest their earliest outdoor-grown fruits (those with hoophouses began a month ago–even a small greenhouse can achieve these early, delectable fruits!). Leading the pack are the ultra-early varieties and the cherry tomatoes. Soon, the early main season crops will ripen, and swiftly (knock on wood) we will all find ourselves afloat in a sea of tomato bounty.

Here are five thoughts on handling and extending the tomato harvest.

1. Once the first fruits start to ripen, be sure to check your plants at least every two days. During exceptional hot and dry weather, a daily checkup is even better, but in general a once-per-two-days check-in will guarantee you don’t lose fruit to rots and fruit drop seen on over-ripened fruits.
2. Once harvested, set your fruit in a single layer, on a counter or windowsill, until you have time to eat them or preserve them. With lighter-weight varieties, you can often get away with a well-spaced double layer, but never any higher! Piled tomatoes lead to rot, waste, and fruit flies.
3. If you have more tomatoes than you know what to do with, preserve them. The easiest preservation methods are freezing and drying. Most people freeze just-boiled sliced tomatoes in freezer bags, but frozen raw tomatoes–though they take up slightly more space–are just as good for cooking in winter meals and require zero time in the busy harvest months. To dry tomatoes, chop into 1/4″ slices and arrange on a screen (NOT a window screen!) or on cookie sheets. Drying can take place in a sun-warmed car with cracked windows or a solar or electric dehydrator.
4. To encourage your indeterminate plants to continue producing, stay on top of the harvest and do your best to clean up the lower leaves of the plants, which will likely become blighted and crispy as the season moves on. Keep the soil surface clean and air circulating: the plants will appreciate these extra measures as the season turns cooler in the fall.
5. If a fall frost threatens, cover your plants with sheets or scrap plastic (or even Christmas lights). The day before the deep freeze arrives (forecasted lows below 28 degrees), harvest as many green fruits as you can: they really are delicious batter-fried or made into a piquant salsa. The half-ripe ones will continue to ripen on your windowsill.

Kale with his pack of kale seeds. (Freeman photo by Tania Barricklo)

I love it so much that I named my dog after it. It’s turned out to be his favorite snack as well. I’m not making that up! I actually trained him not to chase our chickens by tempting him with “kale bones”. That’s what we call the woody stem part of the leaf, but to Kale (the dog) those are crunchy kale bones.

Kale (the leafy green) is easy to grow, produces for a long season, is ornamental, edible, and incredibly nutritious, but I’m hearing from gardeners that it often winds up rotting in the garden or wilting in the fridge. Why? Because of people’s kale conundrums. What to do with all that leafy goodness?

First off, harvest leaves by picking them from the outside in. Always leave new growth in the center of the plant. You can pick the leaves at any size. In general, the younger leaves are more tender and the stems get tougher as they age.

Here are some of the many ways’ we eat kale. Please add you favorite way to eat, prepare, or store kale. Thanks!

If you’re like Kale (the dog) you’ll eat it raw. Raw baby kale leaves are great in a salad mix. I didn’t used to like the larger fronds raw until Sarah Snow (who designed the shape of our seed packs and is in the midst of doing the layouts for next year’s Art Packs) made me a kale smoothie. Just add fresh kale to your regular summer smoothie and you get all the benefits of raw kale in a refreshing drink. You can make kale chips in a solar dehydrator, oven, or electric dehydrator. Just brush the leaves with a little oil and let them dry out on low temp. They will turn crispy and make a great snack. One of my favorite things to do with the flatter kale leaves is remove the kale bone, (save them for Kale), roll the leaves together and make thin slices. This creates long noodle like green strips which I braise with sesame oil and sesame seeds. I add a little tamari at the end and serve it as a warm side salad.

What do you do with kale?

From front to back: flowering Parsnip, Mikola lettuce, Cress, Radish, Arugula, Peas, Hoophouse

Summer is undoubtedly here. Unlike last year, when it remained ambiguously cool from the summer solstice until the autumnal equinox, the summer of 2010 is shaping up to be the real deal: hot, sunny, and dry. While this makes for terrific beach and vacation weather, it poses some challenges to the garden. Many of the cool-loving crops are petering out earlier this year: the peas are drying on the vine a good week or two before they did last year, and even crops that normally survive the summer just fine may be looking ragged.

It’s important to irrigate your garden–especially if the dry weather continues much longer. Our normally moist silty soil is drying out more than we’ve seen in our three years on the site, and we are now spending large amounts of time dragging sprinklers from spot to spot. The beneficial effects of the water are quickly apparent: small seedlings grow quickly, and wilting older plants revive.

It’s also time to begin sowing for the fall garden. The fall garden is one of the most satisfying endeavors a gardener can undertake. Many of the plants that we all rush to start in spring suffer and disappear as the weather moves headlong into summer. Those same crops, when sown at the proper time for fall harvest, will last for weeks–even months–in the fall garden, all with less weed pressure, fewer pests to deal with, and no scorching sun and requisite watering. Plant some Piracicaba Broccoli now and have fresh picking for most of October and November. Plant snap peas–and keep them well-watered or even shaded for the next six weeks–and you’ll have crunchy peas to munch on while you behold the fall colors. Plant zucchini and cucumbers, and you’ll have good, young, healthy crops until frost. While enthusiasm may wane for gardening in the heat of summertime, be diligent now and you’ll be rewarded with endless delicacies during the cooler months to come.

What are we up to on the farm?

• Isolating peppers. Peppers cross-pollinate readily; in order to harvest seeds that produce crops that are true to the variety, they must be isolated from other varieties. We do this with bent 1/2″ EMT conduit and row cover.
• Harvesting our first flush of seed crops. We’ve harvested mache and chervil seed,  a small batch of chive seed, and garlic. Over the next week we anticipate harvesting winter wheat (Arapahoe variety), parsnip seeds, and various peas. Seed of radishes, arugula, garden cress, Chinese Cabbage, and lots more is soon to come.
• Starting our fall crops. We’ve started plenty of fall cabbages for our own eating and are starting all remaining brassicas this evening (except tatsoi and bok choy, both of which grow so quickly they are best started a little later–a sowing today would give great results, but more in the late summer than the fall, so we’ll probably re-sow in late July or early August).
• Stringing up tomatoes. Tomatoes love this dry heat, and the results are apparent in the suddenly very robust plants most of us are seeing. We have found a little early blight in our fields already–on the most mature plants, generally–but this is a type of alternaria seen nearly every year and is a far less destructive disease than last year’s late blight (which is caused by a different fungi: phytophthora infestans). So far, we’ve seen few reports of late blight in the northeast, and the hot, dry weather makes a serious outbreak more and more unlikely every day. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that this good luck continues, and soon enough we’ll be awash in tomatoes like we are most years.

Hope everyone is enjoying the summer and the steady stream of good eating coming in the from the garden these days. Remember: it’s important to keep on sowing in order to have your garden be healthy and productive into the fall. So brave the heat, ignore the weeds if necessary, and get those seeds planted to keep you in fresh food from now until the winter solstice.