by Birgitt Evans, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not the holidays, silly. Seed season. All your seed catalogs have arrived, the nurseries are chock-full of seeds and it’s time to get out some Post-its and start making your choices.
This January, I have harvested broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, fennel, parsnips, carrots, parsley, cilantro, gai-lan, lettuce and celeriac. Yes, that’s right; in January. How did I accomplish that? Well last January, I sat down with my seed catalogs and with my garden plan and I worked out what I was going to want to grow, both for the warm season and for the cool season and I selected my seeds accordingly. What I forgot to buy, I could frequently get from ABG’s free Seed Libraries.
So I considered all of my warm season crops and also succession crops for my onions, garlic and potatoes which are harvested in the summer, leaving gaps in the garden. Some crops like celeriac (celery root) grow from tiny seeds which are planted at the same time as your tomatoes and peppers for harvest the following fall/winter. Parsnips and carrots are best started in spring when there is still water in the soil and they can be dug in the fall and winter after the summer vegetables have been eaten. Others like kohlrabi and leeks are great started in June as holes appear in the garden where the potatoes and onions were.
I am new to growing fennel and wasn’t really impressed by the plants last year, but – being lazy – didn’t remove the non-bulbing plants last year, leaving them for the swallowtail butterflies. And lo and behold, it loved all that fall rain and is now producing three or four new bulbs per plant.
Your standard fall crops – broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage – can be planted in late-summer for a fall harvest or in October or November, as the summer crops come out, for a winter harvest. This year, with the abundant rains, they have done well growing happily into the winter. And late planting avoids the cabbage worm caterpillars that can leave them in tatters in the warmer months.
And all of this is made possible, not by nursery 6-packs, which are frequently not available and looking good at the right time of the year, but by good old seeds. They give me the flexibility to grow so many crops that you never see in 6-packs and to grow crops exactly when I want them. I just get out my seeds, make some choices and start a flat of plants. Right now, on the porch, I have dill, cilantro, parsley, peas, bok choy, fennel, lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower for late winter transplant.
As for how to start plants from seeds, I have previously written about that in detail and you can read the article here.
If you want to see exactly how I do it, we recorded a video last January that will take you step by step through the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJvt5b0XDJA
So grab a cup of tea and your seed catalogs and settle into your sofa to dream some wonderful dreams of bountiful harvests to come!
