Our fruit season has started rolling, which means there is almost always something tasty to grab and snack on without effort. Honey berries were plentiful on all four bushes, but we realized too late that Mother Robin taught her fledglings how to snatch them. They were all gone before they ripened fully. We’ll try to net the bushes next year so we can harvest a crop. We’ve been enjoying strawberries and the first of the white and red currants. Gooseberries and black currants will be next, followed by red and black raspberries and blackberries.

The woodchuck seems to have died of natural causes? Left on its own accord? How could we be so lucky? I think we did make it feel unwelcome by constantly filling in the holes it dug to access its apartment under the garden shed, but we hadn’t resorted to more extreme measures yet. We were sure we’d have to borrow the live traps that were offered to us. We haven’t seen it for about two weeks; let’s just hope its gone for good.

Harvesting & Preserving

We’ve been picking strawberries and red currants for fresh eating. I won’t have enough strawberries to preserve this year because we moved the bed and production is low this year.

For salads, we still have lettuces and an assortment of herbs. For cooking greens, we have kale, amaranth, sea beet, and broccoli.

I’ve learned that garlic scapes have a fairly narrow harvest window—maybe about two weeks—before they loose their tenderness. Of course this might also have to do with if/when there’s rain.

Pea shoots are an abundant delicacy when we harvest from the peas and oats cover crop beds. When I have time to harvest a lot, I grind them up in the food processor with other ingredients to make a pesto-like sauce that freezes well. This week it was pea shoots, garlic scapes, olive oil, salt, and a soft goat cheese. We enjoyed it on pasta and chickpeas and garnished with handfuls of pea flowers, which are so sweet tasting!

I’ve completed the first round of tea (chamomile, mint, anise hyssop, lemon balm, rose petals) and kitchen (oregano, parsley, savory, sage) herb drying. This is really best done in this early part of the summer before the herbs flower and get insect damaged and before I get into preserving the mid and late season vegetables and fruits.

Outdoor Planting

We pushed ourselves for a few days early in June to plant out all the basils, eggplants, tomatillos, okra, ground cherry, tomatoes, and peppers. These are among our usuals, but we also added fenugreek transplants in this round. Just recently, several hundred transplants came our way from a local greenhouse. I managed to squeeze in 70 extra pepper plants and re-homed the rest to community and home gardens in our network.

Our friend Lynn gave us a few sweet potato plants, which we’ve never grown. I’m not sure we have the right conditions or soil, but we will try anything and am looking forward to watching them.

We direct sowed cucumber, melon, bitter melon, summer squash, winter squash, seed pumpkin, zucchini, sesame, soybean, lettuce, carrots, beets, and peanuts. Peanuts in Wisconsin? Yes, “Argentinian White Valencia,” and it’s Oshkosh-grown seed from Chris Hoetschl, which is now part of the Oshkosh Seed Savers’s Collection. We had good germination and are really excited to see how this works. We do have the bed netted with light weight mesh, which keeps it a little warmer and keeps off the critters.

Outdoor Tending

Tomato Training
We’ve removed discolored lower branches of tomatoes to mitigate spread of soil-born disease, and we’ll get more aggressive in removing side shoots to maintain one or two central stems on the indeterminate plants. We prune and trellis indeterminate tomato plants with the “Florida weave method,” and at this point we have up the first lines about a foot off the ground. We’ll continually add lines as the plants grow. We don’t prune determinate plants, but they get one or two lines to support them.

Pepper Pinching
The pepper transplants looked so elegantly formed with small new leaves on top and larger ones at the bottom, and then shortly after we settled them in outdoors, we pinched off their heads. It seems wrong to take off new growth and it makes them look stupid for a week or ten days. However, the pinched tip branches sideways which reshapes the tall central stem. This results in bushier, sturdier plants which can more easily hold themselves up during wind, rain, and hail that sometimes comes our way in summer. It is a crying shame to see a pepper plant loaded with ripening fruit snapped off and laying in the path after a storm, and this is how we guard against that.

Potato Hilling
It’s kind of like a game. We cover up the plants with soil, and the plants grow taller. We do it again, and they grow taller still. We run out of soil in the beds and haul compost from the pile, and then grass clippings, and then some wood chips. Then we give up and the plants win. . . until we harvest all the potatoes we tricked them into providing us.

Fruit Thinning
We thinned apples and pears to remove those with obvious pest problems and to increase the size of the fruits that eventually ripen.

Spraying
We are committed to organic practices for many reasons, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t control for pests. We spray brassicas with BT, a bacterium that is deadly to cabbage loopers but harmless to us. And, we use a holistic mix of clay, karanja oil, and kelp extract on the orchard trees.

Mulching, Again and still
This on going process is a major priority for us because it builds the organic material in the soil, discourages weeds, and holds in moisture. In the planted beds we use compost, half finished compost, cut cover crop (peas and oats), grass clippings, leaf litter, marsh hay, comfrey, and weeds or tall plants that can be trimmed and added to the garden beds directly. We use wood chips on the garden paths between beds.

Seed Saving

Rhubarb and chervil are the first seeds collected this year. There will be many more to come (about 50 varieties this year).

Up Next

We’ll be adding trellis lines to the tomatoes and watching carefully for any signs of disease. Weeding, and mulching will continue . . . and then more mulching so we don’t have as much weeding.

In other news, a damn woodchuck has taken up residence under the garden shed. Several gardeners in our local network have been reporting woodchuck activities in their gardens, crunching down rabbit fencing, climbing into fruit trees, and digging enormous holes. Just when we were feeling left out . . . here is ours, poking its head out of one of several holes leading under the shed. It has excavated a remarkable quantity of gravel and sand that used to be the shed’s foundation. It is kind of cute, but we know how destructive it will likely be in the garden once there is more out there to interest it. I’ve posted an eviction notice—that should work? Please send other ideas in case we need them.

Harvesting & Preserving

We’ve been munching lettuces, cress, herbs, spinach, and pea shoots from the cover crop, and cooking up Good King Henry and asparagus. I’ve pulled a few green garlics and green onions to use here and there.

We’ve started to harvest and dry the tea herbs, mainly mint and lemon balm. I prefer to do this early in the season when the tips are fresh and perfect.

The tulips, and now lilacs and earliest of the peonies have supplied us with lots of flower arranging material.

Indoor Seed Starting

Our last wave of seed starting will include annual flowers, okra, sesame, fenugreek, millet, and corn.

Seed for “Gaspe,” a diminutive flint corn variety from Quebec, is Oshkosh-grown seed from Chris Hoetschl, but it is a new grow out for us, which is exciting! It might surprise you that we start grain corn indoors, but if we were to direct sow it, we’d need to wait for the soil temperatures to warm up. Under lights indoors for just a couple of weeks, it germinates and grows really fast. This means when the soil is warm enough, we can put our plants instead of seed, which gives us a head start. Most grain corn in our area is machine planted, which usually means a later start time because of our usually wet and cool springs. Our earlier start increases our small-scale yield and puts our plants ahead of commercial fields for flowering time, reducing change of cross-pollination in our seed crop.

Outdoor Planting

At this point, we’ve hardened off and planted out all the allium, brassica, and celery seedlings. We also pushed some spring garlic and seed onions into the ground that had overwintered inside. Once the standing water subsided, we direct sowed peas, including “Sugar Magnolia” snap peas, another new-to-us but Oshkosh-grown variety from Chris Hoetschl. Three varieties of potatoes are in the ground and, most recently we planted lima beans, common beans, and long beans.

Outdoor Tending

All the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants look great and are in the process of hardening off, which of course means a lot of time shifting them outside and back inside every day, adjusting times according to weather which has been shifting widely from 80 degrees F one afternoon to frost at night.

We’ve shifted some infrastructure to allow for crop rotation and isolation distance for seed saving. Our bean trellises are all now in new locations, which has enabled us to move/renew the strawberry bed, which hasn’t happened in several years. We transplanted the youngest plants to a new location, and left behind the old ones. We’re trying to see if we can work around them long enough to harvest berries from them one last time.

Tonight, we’ll spray the orchard trees with clay and neem oil as an organic pest control method.

Weeding and mulching are seemingly endless tasks, but we try to be strategic in focusing on weeds that are in flower so that they don’t get to the seed stage.

Up Next

Next, we’ll terminate cover crops and plant our the rest of the transplants—all the nightshade plus basils and okra. We’ll direct seed the cucurbits (cucumber, melon, zucchini, bitter melon, achocha, and squashes) and soybean. This will unfold in the first week of June. Mulching and weeding will also be ongoing.

This week the sun came up and dried up the standing water. There are scattered signs of fava bean seedlings from seed that sat under water for a long time. We might at least get the seed back, which is important for the rare varieties. Although the cover crop is stunted from too much water, there is still reasonably good coverage where we planted peas and oats. On higher ground up near the house, native spring ephemerals (Trout Lilly and Bloodroot) show their bright faces amongst bold hyacinths and species tulips.

Harvesting

With only one or two jars of frozen greens left from last year, we’ve been delighted to start feasting on perennial cooking greens (Good King Henry and Turkish Rocket) straight from the garden. Since I’ve given up on the remainder of the storage onions from last year that have gone soft and are starting to grow, I can harvest perennial Welsh Onion and Walking Onion from the garden as needed. Asparagus is the best spring treat, though! I’m not thrilled with the amount that is coming up since enlarging the bed and planting more last year, but maybe they are still coming. Perennial herbs including chives, sorrel, chervil, lovage and parsley have all been fresh flavor enhancers in the kitchen. This weekend, I’ll pick some rhubarb for a pie.

Indoor Seed Starting

Although most brassicas could be directly sowed outdoors, slugs typically devour the newly emerged seedlings very quickly. So, we prefer to start cabbage, kale, and broccoli indoors late in March. The broccoli is a part of a landrace community seed saving project we are doing Oshkosh Seed Savers.

As usual, we started our eggplants, peppers in late March, followed by tomatoes, tomatillos, and ground cherries in early April.

Outdoor Planting

We planted some mustard greens and more lettuce in a raised bed, but the main planting areas have been too wet.

Outdoor Tending

One spring-time ritual involves excavating the fig trees that have been deeply mulched. Not even “Chicago Hardy” figs are reliable here, three hours north of Chicago; so, we must take some extraordinary measures to keep them alive through winter. They are planted on a south-facing wall of the garage, which is protected and comparatively warm. In the fall, we fold down the trunks and weigh down the branches with bricks so they can be mulched completely with burlap covered with a couple feet of dry leaves. We keep other varieties in pots all year, which overwinter in the basement and/or garage. They are all out now, basking in the sun.

We’ve been hardening off the allium, brassica, celery seedlings, which means putting them out in the sun and wind for a few hours at a time, gradually extending the time spent outdoors. We continue bring them indoors overnight, mostly to protect them from animals.

We’ve also been shifting around our 10-feet-tall bean trellises that have occupied the same planting bed for a few years. It’s time for nitrogen fixation to happen elsewhere, and we are separating them to allow for distance isolation required for seed saving.

Sea kale is new to us, and we got one plant to overwinter. We ate some green leaves raw, which were surprisingly sweet and crisp —a lot like an early cabbage. We’ve covered it with a pot for blanching, and are anxious to see how different the blanched leaves are.

Up Next

As soon as the planting areas aren’t mud, we can transplant out the alliums, brassicas. and celery. We’ll also plant out the remainder of our now-growing storage onion crop from last year; this season those bulbs will flower and produce seed for future use. The next round of indoor seed starting will be more herbs, annual flowers, and okra after that.

Indoor Seed Starting

There are lots of indoor seed starting methods, but we love soil blocks for their space efficiency, limited plastic use, air pruning of roots, and easy of potting up and transplanting out in the garden.

Our indoor seed starting begins with alliums and slow growing herbs. We had great germination on the Yellow Parma storage onion (our own seed) and Ed’s Red Shallot. This season’s leek variety is King Richard. We’re trying Ventura celery, a commonly grown variety but new to us.

Outdoor Planting

Outdoors we’ve planted spinach, lettuce, cress, radishes, Johnny jump ups, parsley, and fava bean.

Also, we’ve seeded peas and oats cover crop in the beds that won’t be used until June. We’ll terminate that in late May ahead of the main crop plantings.

Outdoor Tending

Over the last couple of months, we’ve pruned in the orchard (apples, pears, plums, cherries) and berry patches (black currants, red currants, red raspberries, black raspberries, and blackberries).

Noticing that the fall-planted garlic is starting to poke through heavy mulch, we took some of it off, and de-mulched the lavender too.

Up Next

Any day now we’ll start the peppers, eggplants, basil, and brassicas indoors. Tomatoes and ground cherry will be next!

Harvesting

• Arugula

• Beets

• Carrots

• Chicories

• Collards

• Fresh-shelled beans

• Kale

• Leeks

• Parsley

• Parsnips

• Sage

• Thyme

• Radicchio

Planting

• Garlic, planted and mulched

Seed Saving

• Processed more broccoli seed for storage

Tending

• Mulched the tender perennials (lavender and figs)

• Raked leaves (and gathered them from the neighbors) to use as mulch. All bare beds are covered to prevent weeds from growing in spring and to add organic material.

Up Next

We’ll prune fruit shrubs and trees while dormant this winter.

Here’s a strange thing about this season—we usually count on most of the legumes getting to the dry stage, but most were very late to start flowering and setting fruits this year. It seems we have a seed crop from them all but no dry beans for pantry storage. There will be “shellies”!

Harvesting

• Apples

• Beets

• Broccoli

• Carrots

• Collards

• Corn

• Cucumbers

• Eggplants

• Figs

• Kale

• Leeks

• Okra

• Pears

• Peppers

• Poppy seed

• Potatoes

• Radicchio

• Summer Squash

• Tomatoes

• Turmeric

• Winter Squash

• Zucchini

Seed Saving

Dry seed processing has included lettuce, chicory, broccoli, legumes, corn, okra, poppy. Wet seeds include tomato, eggplant, peppers, and summer squash. Most of this seed saving was done with the help of Oshkosh Seed Savers.

Preserving

• Peppers dried and roasted/frozen

• Tomatoes dried and juice canned

• Potatoes in basement storage

• Apples dried

• Apples, pears, quince, beets, carrots in cold storage

• Winter squashes curing before basement storage

• Fig leaves and passion flower leaves dried

• Turmeric frozen

• Curry leaves frozen

Up Next

No matter how much we harvest and preserve in the fall, we are always scrambling the night before a hard frost is predicted . . . not sure yet when “the end” will come!

There has been one major downer in the last month, which I mention only because I want to warn others who grow parsnips. Jason has had a terrible case of chemical burns and related blistering from the garden parsnips. Most people are aware that wild parsnip can cause this, but now we know, garden parsnip can cause a severe reaction as well. It never happened before in 20 years of growing it, but I guess there is a first time for everything.

Outdoor Tending

• Add mulch (grass clippings)

• Spray BT on brassicas every 10 daysHarvesting

• Prune off blighted leaves from tomatoes

• Prepare empty beds for cover crop planting

Harvesting

• Beets

• Broccoli

• Cabbage

• Carrots

• Collards

• Corn

• Cucumbers

• Eggplants

• Kale

• Leeks

• Long beans

• Nigerian Spinach

• Okra

• Peppers

• Plums

• Potatoes

• Safflower blossoms

• Summer Squash

• Tomatillos

• Tomatoes

• Zucchini

Seed Saving Activities

• Harvested seed fruits from peppers and eggplants

• Fermented and clean tomato seeds

• Cut lettuce seed stalks

• Cut onion seed heads

• Gathered mature and dry dill and cilantro seed

Preserving

• Canned tomatoes

• Dried tomatoes

• Canned cucumber pickles

• Roasted and frozen eggplant/zucchini/tomatoes/peppers

• Roasted and frozen tomatillos

Next Up

As soon as the winter squashes have hard skin, we’ll begin harvesting them. If it wasn’t for the constant risk of squirrel and other rodent damage, we’d leave them out until frost. Pears and apple harvest is coming up, but there won’t be a lot this year.

Outdoor Planting

• Cilantro seed

• Chervil seed

• Carrots seed

• Radicchio transplants

Outdoor Tending

• Tie up blackberry canes to enable picking

• Add mulch (grass clippings and comfrey)

• General weeding

• Continue to prune and trellis tomatoes

• Spray BT on brassicas every 10 days

Seed Saving Activities

• Harvest spinach plants and move under cover to dry—sparrows already ate much of the seed crop before we noticed

• Wrap up broccoli seed stalks because sparrows were getting it before it is mature enough to harvest

• Harvest Good King Henry seed, which the birds don’t eat!

• Harvest fenugreek seed

• Harvest breadseed poppy plants, move inside to dry completely

• Harvest African eggplant fruits for seed

• Remove tent from peppers and mark seed fruits that developed in isolation

• Remove eggplant bags and mark where fruit has set, continued to add bags to flower buds for more seed fruits

• Isolate and hand pollinate squash flowers for true-to-type seed formation

  Note: Since pollinators easily cross varieties of squashes within half a mile, one must isolate and hand pollinate individual flowers. We’ve written about the method for the Oshkosh Seed Savers’ website.

Harvesting

• Beets

• Broccoli

• Cabbage

• Carrots

• Collards

• Cucumbers

• Eggplants

• Garlic

• Kale

• Okra

• Onions

• Sea beet

• Shallot

• Summer Squash

• Tomatoes

• Turnips

• Zucchini

Preserving

• Broccoli frozen

• Blackberries (frozen, jam, shrub syrup)

• Leafy greens (collards, kale, sea beet) frozen

• Pestos frozen

• Culinary herbs dried

Planning Ahead

We’ve not started preserving tomatoes and peppers yet, but that’s coming right up! Potatoes are almost ready to dig too.

Indoor Seed Starting

• Radicchio and chicory for fall

Outdoor Seed Starting

• Summer Squash (again, because the squirrels keep digging up seedlings)

• Cucumber (again, because we want more)

• Lettuce (again, because we want young lettuce to eat while the older plants go to seed)

Outdoor Tending

• Hill potatoes, for the last time

• Thin apples, pears, plums

• Add mulch (grass clippings and comfrey)

• General weeding

• Prune and trellis tomatoes

• Pinch tops off peppers to encourage branching

• Spray BT on brassicas every 10 days

• Cut off flowers where we don’t want seeding (chives, skirret, lovage, Turkish rocket)

Seed Saving

• Mark pepper flowers that developed under isolation tents for seed saving

• Bagged eggplant flowers for seed saving

  Note: We are saving seeds from multiple varieties of eggplants and peppers this year, which requires isolating some of the flowers to avoid cross-pollination because we want true-to-type seed. We use fine netting over several pepper plants together and small organza party favor bags around individual eggplant flowers. Pepper and eggplants are self-fertile, which means they don’t actually need pollinators, but do attract them. Once flowers fade and start to develop fruit, the netting/bags can come off. We mark those fruits that developed in isolation and collect seed only from those.

Harvesting

• Broccoli

• Cooking Greens: cabbage, collards, kale, sea beet

• Fava bean

• Lettuces

• Berries: red currants, black currants, strawberries, honey berries, black raspberries

• Garlic scapes

• Peas, edible pod and shelling

• Herbs and flowers: rose petals, calendula, borage flowers, tulsi, anise hyssop, mint

Preserving

• Broccoli frozen

• Currants, Red and Black (frozen, jelly, kombucha, shrub syrup)

• Herbs and flowers dried for tea

• Leafy greens (collards, kale, sea beet) frozen

• Strawberries (frozen, jam, kombucha, shrub syrup)

Planning Ahead

We are keeping an eye on the blackberries, but they are still green. The peas, turnips, and early cabbages are almost done; so we’ll flip that bed to radicchio, chicories, and more beets for the fall. We’ll continue to freeze greens and dry herbs while they have fresh new growth unaffected by insect pests. There is a bit of weeding to be done, but we’ll see if we get to it . . .

We have been managing to harvest daily and did get all the seedlings planted. We didn’t get the squashes and cucumbers sowed indoors; so we moved to “Plan B” and direct sowed them outdoors. When it comes to weeding, we focus on those flowering because we don’t want to allow them to go to seed.

Outdoor Sowing & Planting

• Plant out tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, eggplants

• Plant out annual flower and herb seedlings

• Direct sow pumpkins, winter squash, summer squash, zucchini

• Direct sow cucumbers and melon

• Direct sow beets and carrots

• Sow beans on the trellises and in the corn patch

• Planted outdoors Mediterranean and Topical plants that have wintered indoors (bananas, curry leaf, Meyer lemon, Caribbean lime, lemon verbena)

• Mulched brassicas which are now big enough to deal with slugs that come with mulching

Outdoor Tending

• Thin parsnip seedlings

• Hill the potatoes

• Water newly established plants

• Spray brassicas with BT (organic pest control for cabbage loopers)

• Spray fruit trees with holistic mix (organic pest control and fertilizer)

Harvesting

• Asparagus

• Chicories that reseeded themselves from last year

• Herbs: chives, cilantro, garlic chives, lovage, oregano, parsley

• Green garlic

• Kale

• Lettuces

• Rhubarb

• Rose petals

• Spinach

• Strawberries

Planning Ahead

Now that the seedlings and overwintered plants are all in the garden, we need to start stringing up twine for the tomatoes (Florida Weave method). We’ll be picking strawberries daily, and watching the honey berries and red currants. Maybe we’ll get to the weeding.

Normally we would have last year’s kale plants growing by now. We’d harvest the first new leaves before letting the plants flower and go to seed. We think the extreme cold of this past winter combined with lack of snow is to blame. Relatedly, we’ve spotted only one second year parsley plant. Like, kale, it is a biennial, and we expect to harvest seed from the cold hardy plants that survive winter after their first season of growth. To be sure, we will certainly collect the seed from that lone parsley survivor for the OSS Collection.

Indoor Seed Starting

• Safflower

• Mexican Marigolds

• Okra (another batch)

• Dent corn
  Note: Starting corn indoors is unusual, but as committed organic gardeners who grow and save our own seed, we don’t use fungicide-treated seed. Corn seedlings do fine this time of year in the garden, but untreated seed can rot in cool soil. We could just wait until later in the season to plant the seed directly out, but giving them a head start indoors enables an earlier outdoor planting. This timeline increases our yield of grain corn and it enables our corn to tassel earlier than field corn on the edge of town, which reduces chance of unwanted cross pollination.

Outdoor Sowing & Planting

• Plant out Allium seedlings

• Plant out Brassica seedlings

• Plant potatoes in shallow trenches to be mulched as they grow

• Plant out dent corn after just one week of growing indoors

• Start new asparagus bed with new plants

• Sow carrots and beets

• Sow parsnips

Outdoor Tending

• Harden off transplants

• Pot up seedlings

• Water newly transplanted seedlings

• Thin spinach plants

• Dig perennials to share with neighbors

• Move fig trees outdoors and uncover the cold-hardy ones that were mulched heavily for winter

  Note: Figs are not winter hardy in Wisconsin, but we have two methods that yield us ripe figs by the end of summer. Most varieties are in pots that over winter during dormancy in the house basement. A few “Chicago Hardy” trees stay in the ground in a protected area against a south-facing wall of a garage. These are completely covered by wood chip mulch for the winter.

Harvesting

• Asparagus

• Perennial greens: Good King Henry and Turkish Rocket

• French Sorrel

• Herbs: chives, garlic chives, oregano, lovage

• Rhubarb

• Radish

• Spinach

Planning Ahead

At the end of May, we’ll be starting melon, cucumber and squash plants indoors. By early June, all the transplants started indoors can be finally planted into the garden—almost there.

Indoor Seed Starting

• Brassicas: Broccoli for the OSS Collaboration with Going to Seed, Cabbages, Collards, Kale

  Note: These brassicas that we start indoors could actually be directly sown outdoors, but slugs, who have a voracious appetite this time of year, have in the past devoured entire seedlings over night. By starting indoors, we can transplant larger plants, and we mitigate slug damage with copper collars (slugs won’t crawl over copper) and yeasty slug traps. For more complete discussion of organic pest control, see OSS’s Guide to Organic Pest Control

• Nightshade family: peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, tomatillos, ground cherry

  Note: We start the peppers and eggplants about two weeks ahead of the other nightshades because they grow more slowly.

• Herbs: Basil, Thyme, Quilquina, Epazote

Outdoor Sowing

• Peas (edible pod and shelling)

• Turnips

• Parsnips

• Breadseed poppy

Outdoor Tending

• Begin “hardening off” the indoor seedlings that will be transplanted to the garden first (alliums and brassicas)

• Build up elevated planting ridges with compost in the low areas that flooded last year

• Move mulch off the tender perennials

• Finish pruning of raspberry, blackberry and currant

• Trim up dead growth on perennials from last year

Harvesting

• Parsnip (last year’s crop that overwintered in the ground

• Skirret (a perennial root crop)

• Chives

Planning Ahead

Hardening off will become a daily activity, shifting trays of seedlings outdoors for short spells and eventually to stay in the cold frame overnight. Alliums will be the first seedlings to be planted outdoors, and the brassicas soon after, depending on weather. At the end of April or early May, we’ll plant out seed potatoes. In early May, we’ll start fenugreek, corn, and annual flowers indoors. The last of the indoors seed starting happens in mid-May and includes cucurbits (melon, cucumber, zucchini, summer squash, winter squash). Except for melon, these could be directly sown outdoors but we give them a running start, with about two weeks indoors.

We are always impatient for spring to arrive. So, we bring branches of buds indoors, where they warm and open faster than they will outside. Early in March we cut Pussy Willows. Next is forsythia, usually by mid-March. And fruit tree (cherry, plum, crab apple, etc) branches come in later in March. If we have a lot, we leave some in buckets of water in the garage or garden shed and then bring them indoors gradually to extend the “forced” blooming season. Forcing sounds so aggressive though; I’d rather call it “coaxing.”

Plant Extra and Select for Vigor
Depending on expected germination rate, we start 3-4 seeds for every one seedling we want. Starting in small soil blocks saves growing medium and space under the lights. Besides anticipating that germination will not be perfect, we also want to be able to select the strongest seedlings to cultivate into garden plants. When the strongest tiny seedlings start to out grow their very small block, we make the first cut, choosing the most vigorous for the next stage. The keepers get placed into larger soil blocks molded with an indentation matching the size and shape of the smaller block. This is very quick and no roots get disturbed.

Potting-up
Some crops can stay in soil blocks until they get planted outdoors, but those that spend a lot of time indoors because they are sensitive cold will need to be shifted into still larger blocks or potted up at least one more time (for a total of three shifts in size). In our area, the nightshade family plants spend the longest time indoors and will need to be moved into bigger pots as they grow.

Hardening-off
When we reach about two or three weeks from transplanting time, seedlings need to be gradually introduced to outdoor direct sunlight and wind. We’ll set them out for just a couple hours the first day, then a few hours the next, and then half a day. After that, they can stay outside all day, but we’ll use the cold frame to protect them from night temperatures still below freezing and animals like squirrels who’ll mess with them.

Indoor Seed Starting

Our first round of indoor seed starting includes the crops that can be planted outdoors first (Alliums) and the very slow growing (Celery and Rosemary). These days we use the soil blocking method for most of our seed starting.

Outdoor Sowing

As soon as the surface of soil has thawed enough to scratch into, we are eager to plant some cold weather crops outside—those that germinate in cool temperatures and can tolerate frost after germination. The raised beds are the first to warm, and we use glass cloches and windows to expedite the process. Depending on the weather in the coming weeks, seeds might germinate only to get killed off, but we think it’s worth the risk. And, to hedge our bets, we never plant out all the seed at once. So far, we’ve planted some seed for the following:

• Arugula

• Cress

• Fava bean

• Kale for the OSS Cold-Hardy Kale Project

• Lettuces for the OSS Landrace Lettuce Project

• Mâche/corn salad

• Mixed greens for the chickens

• Mizuna

• Peas

• Radishes

• Scallion

• Spinach

• Spring garlic

Planning Ahead

Brassicas will be the next seeds to start indoors, and we’ll direct sow beets and parsnips outdoors. We’ll be watching for asparagus, rhubarb, and perennial/biennial herbs to appear.

What are soil blocks?
This is an alternative to walled cells or pots for initial seed starting. These are cubes of molded seed starting medium separated by about 1/4-inch of air in a tray. Blocks of growing medium have a dimple in the top for the seed.

Why use soil blocks instead of small pots?
Seedlings grown in blocks tend to be stronger and healthier because they don’t get pot-bound. When roots reach the air space, they stop rather than circle around; sometimes this is called “air pruning".”

What supplies are needed?
This method reduces plastic use, but we do use, and reuse, plastic trays without drainage holes. Some growers make their own with wood. One must have the spring-loaded soil blocker. They come in different sizes, and we use the 1.5 inch most often. The seed starting medium needs to be mixed according to a formula suitable for this method because you want the blocks to hold their shape. Here’s our formula: 4 quarts fine coir, 1 quart worm castings, 1/4 cup general purpose granular fertilizer, and enough water to thoroughly moisten.

How to plant and care for seedlings in blocks?
Once you have rows of blocks arranged with air space between them in the waterproof trays, place seeds in the dimples on top of the soil block and cover with sand or soil. We like sand because it keeps the seed moist but seedlings easily push through it at germination. For many plants, supplemental heat will speed germination. Place the trays of seeded soil blocks on a heating mat that is regulated by a thermostat. Cover the trays to keep humidity inside until germination, but once the seeds have sprouted, take off the cover. Water the trays by gently pouring into the corner of the tray and letting blocks soak up moisture from the bottom.

If you have multiple seedlings growing in the same block but want only one plant, select the most vigorous one and remove the others. Rather than pulling them out, cut them off at block level so you maintain your block shape and limit root disturbance of the seedling you are keeping. For some plants (e.g., onion), it may be desirable to grow multiple plants in each block. Seedlings that can’t be transplanted outdoors until temperatures are reliably warm (like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant) will likely need to be placed into larger soil blocks or potted up.

The normal time to plant garlic in cold climates like Wisconsin is in the fall after the first frosts but before the ground freezes solid. We plant individual cloves about 3 inches deep and mulch with dry leaves or some other plant material. Then, it overwinters in the ground and starts to grow very early in the spring. We harvest scapes early in summer and bulbs in mid summer. With the hard neck varieties we plant, we get very good harvests of large bulbs with this timeline.

But what if we planted garlic it in the early spring? We wondered one year when we realized that we had stored too much for kitchen use, and it was starting to grow anyway. The hard neck variety, “Georgian Crystal” that we favor, worked well as spring garlic, but we won’t shift entirely away from the fall planting.

As expected, the end result for the spring-planted garlic was bulb size a little smaller than the fall-planted crop. However, it proceeded through all the usual stages of green garlic, scapes, and then die back before bulb harvest. The spring-planted garlic hit these stages about a month later than the fall-planted crop. And we enjoyed extending the harvest times for all these garlic stages. Since we use green garlic, scapes, fresh bulbs, and stored bulbs in the kitchen, a staggered planting extends the season for all of these unique garlic stages.

Tending

• Mulched tender perennials such as lavender, and butterfly bush (buddleia) with wood chips

• Spread compost onto garden beds that will be planted in spring

• Mulched un-dug root crops, asparagus, and strawberry patch with tree leaves

• Organized seed collections and took inventory

• Kept the pantry and freezer of preserved foods organized

Harvesting

• Evergreen and red osier dogwood for decorating

• Juniper berries for flavoring drinks

Next Up

We’ll prune in the orchard while apple and pear are dormant. We’ll continue planning next year’s garden.

Planting

• Planted Garlic

• Ornamental bulbs for spring flowering

Planting Garlic: In our area it is best to plant garlic in the late fall, after frost but before the ground is frozen. One can buy seed garlic for planting or you can save some from your own harvest, as we do. We maintain a hard-neck variety called “Georgian Crystal.” Simply break up the bulbs into individual cloves, plant them about 2 inches deep (pointy side up) at least 6 inches apart. Then we mulch heavily with fallen tree leaves or whatever plant materials we have. If the mulch is still thick in the spring, we may remove some to facilitate the emergence of fresh green garlic shoots, which will be among the first signs of life in the early spring garden.

Tending

• Pruned old canes out of raspberries and blackberries

• Dug some propagated currant bushes to share

Berry cane pruning: Since we have floricane-fruiting varieties of raspberries and blackberries, we cut out the canes that produced fruit this year because they will not produce again. The new canes that started growing this last season will bear next year’s fruit. So, we do not cut back those at this point.

Harvesting

• arugula

• beets

• carrots

• herbs

• kale

• leeks

• parsnips

• radicchio

• spinach

Next Up

During dormancy, we prune the apple and pear trees. We’ll gradually continue harvesting root vegetables and cold-hardy greens as we eat them.

Tending

• Pruned the peach tree

• Dug and moved the tropicals indoors

• Thinned out old kale leaves to limit powdery mildew spread

Harvesting

• Apples

• Beets

• Broccoli

• Cabbage

• Carrots

• Celery

• Chard

• Eggplants

• Figs

• Ginger

• Ground Cherries

• Herbs

• Kale

• Legumes: fresh shelled and dry

• Peppers

• Plums

• Radicchio

• Summer Squashes

• Tomatillos

• Tomatoes

• Turmeric

• Winter Squashes: Delicata, Sweet dumpling, & Butternut

Preserving

• Canned tomatillo salsa

• Canned apple sauce

• Dried apples and plums

• Dried sweet peppers

• Shelled and jarred dry beans for storage

• Blanched and froze fresh-shelled legumes

• Froze hot peppers for a sauce to be made later

• Froze turmeric and ginger tubers

Seed Saving

This is a busy time of the year for seed saving. The dry seeds we’ve been collecting and cleaning gradually include: parsley, dill, calendula, skirret, marigold, kale, collards, lettuce, and all manner of legumes. With the help of Oshkosh Seed Savers, we cleaned up a lot of seed for a Japanese cucumber, which was a project to aid the Experimental Farm Network.

Next Up

The next and last tree fruit to harvest is medlar, and then they will be left to finish ripening (“bletting”) indoors. Root crops are all still out there. Carrots and beets can take a light frost, but they’ll be the next to pull. We’ll continue to harvest spinach, kale, and broccoli as we want them to eat, but the major preserving of those is done. We’ll eventually cut the Brussels sprouts, but they can take light frosts without problem. After a few hard frosts, but before the ground is frozen, we’ll dig parsnips and skirret. We need to plant and mulch the garlic and some ornamental allium. And, finally, the dahlia tubers and gladiolus bulbs need to be dug and stored indoors.