Planting for a four season harvest, Part 1
My great aunt Ruth
Tirrell wrote for Organic Gardening and for the New York Times during
the '60s and '70s, and I've inherited my Egyptian onions (and perhaps
my green thumb) from her. I got permission from Organic
Gardening Magazine to reprint some of my Aunt Ruth's articles here in
my blog.
Stay tuned Monday through Friday for the next two weeks for sections
from her article "Planting for a 4-Season Harvest." For those of
you who enjoyed Daddy's posts this past week, don't despair --- he'll
return in a few weeks with another series. Enjoy!
Planting
for a 4-Season Harvest
Planting time in suburban
Boston begins in the house in late
February. That's when I sow eggplant, lettuce, and the first
tomatoes in a small flat, to be set out early under protection. A
few weeks later, I start cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower along with
peppers and the main tomato crop, Big Boy. Once in a while I sow
leeks inside, but there's no real need.
Leeks are hardy, and can be
sown outside as soon as the ground can be
worked. Though they take a long time to mature, they're not
intended to be harvested until the next fall. If space is not
limited inside, I start basil (ornamental Dark Opal, but the
green-leaved kinds are just as suitable) to have little plants to set
out simultaneously in the garden with the young tomatoes as a
pest-repellent. Basil doesn't take as long to grow as tomato, can
be sown outside and will catch up. But wait until soil and air
are warm.
I make no elaborate
preparations for starting seeds, but try to be
careful. Soil is ordinary clay loam, lightened with
compost. I dig it up in a January thaw, so that it is "alive" as
possible, and sift it. Until seeds sprout, flats are kept in a
warm, dark place, covered with dampened newspaper.
To be continued....
Tirrell, R. 1966, February. Planting for a 4-Season
Harvest. Organic Gardening and
Farming.
Reprinted by permission of Organic Gardening magazine. Copyright
Rodale, Inc., U.S.A. All rights reserved.
www.organicgardening.com.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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