Kohlrabi: a versatile cole crop

The weird stem enlargement is about the size of an apple...

Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea var. gongylodes) is one of the many cole crops (cabbage, kale, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and more), which have all been bred from just one plant species. Kohl is the German word for cabbage—hence they are the "cole crops" and why cabbage salad is called cole slaw. The word kohlrabi means cabbage apple in German, which makes a lot of sense because of the size of its stem enlargement and its sweet taste and crispy texture.

Because kohlrabi is easy-to-grow and has few pests in an organic garden, helps to explain its recently gained popularity with farmers markets and local food groups. It has been grown as a crop in Europe for centuries. Grown for its weird Sputnik-shaped enlarged stem-bulb with leaves sticking out at odd angles. You can consume both the enlarged stem and its leaves.

Be sure to leave enough room when you plant the kohlrabi
so they can expand to their full size. 

Planting kohlrabi

Plant seeds directly in the garden or start in flats in the fall and periodically throughout the winter until mid-February in Florida. Plant seeds or plants at 6 to 8 inches apart so they have enough room to develop. If too many seeds come up together, transplant them early so they get a good start. Amend soil well with compost and composted manure for the best growth.

Planting locations should be in full sun or slight shade with more shade for the later plantings. Mulch around stems with pine needles to keep weeds at bay and to hold in moisture. Irrigate regularly, but deeply. 

Cut the stem-bulb when it's two to three inches in diameter. Larger bulbs become tough and woody and definitely harvest before hot weather arrives. There may be some regrowth after harvesting, but usually only the leaves.

Sliced about 1/8 to 1/4-inch thin, pan-fried in olive oil, and
garnished with grated Parmesan cheese.

Preparation

There are many ways to prepare kohlrabi:
1) cook it like a turnip and all its ways (roasted, mashed, or in a soup), especially if it's 5 inches in diameter or larger.
2) grate the enlarged stem and use them in salads or instead of zucchini in breads. 
3) cut the stem into sticks and use them as dipping vegetables.
4) use the leaves as you'd use any of the leafy cole crops including veggie chips, added raw to salads or cole slaw, chopped in soups, or mixed in with a mess of cooked greens.

All the cole crops are the same species: Brassica oleracea.

Aren't cole crops amazing?

Consider planting this interesting cole vegetable in your cool-weather edible garden next year.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Lime basil

Lime basil took over my early lettuce rows. I'd grown it here last year and now I know that it's an abundant reseeder. I'd let it grow since early September when I set up these 2 rows, but now it was time to give the lettuce and the beets more room.

Abundant harvest of lime basil! I shared some with 2
new neighbors and then made a pesto with the rest of it.

The standard sweet Italian basil doesn't do well here with our hot, humid summers. It is prone to various wilt and fungal diseases, which forces growers to harvest it early. So on a whim I bought some lime basil seed from Burpee Seeds a couple of years ago. It not only makes it through the summers, it also reseeds, so it's unlikely that I'll need to purchase more seed any time soon.

The taste really does have a distinct lime overtone. I use it in the same as I do for regular basil, but since its flavor is strong, there are some dishes that I have learned to use less of it.

So this happened...

I planted an early crop of lettuce, beets, and a few white radishes at the beginning of September. It was a little too early for the lettuces and only a few seeds germinated, but the lime basil, which had been planted in this bed the year before loved the new planting rows and volunteered there.

When it became obvious that the lettuce crop would be lacking, I planted some more seed, but I left the basil in place. Well, the basil took over the whole area, as you can see in the top photo, so it was time to give the lettuce some light and room. I did not want to disturb the roots, so I cut off the stalks just above ground level and this made for an abundant harvest. I gave half of it away to two new neighbors and made pesto with the other half. In this pesto, I used equal amounts of garlic chives and basil—in addition to the onion and other ingredients. (You can see how I make pesto in my post: A field trip, A Florida native plant hero, & a pasta salad.) This time I used about a third of the pesto for a Mediterranean pasta salad and I froze the rest.

Now, the lettuce and other crops have more room to grow. Some lettuce, like the black-seeded Simpson have been mostly harvested.

A week after cutting off the lime basil, it is already sprouting, but frost will kill it in December. 

These containers of pesto will allow us to enjoy this harvest when there is no fresh basil available from the garden.

I love the loose leaf salad blend. So pretty and so tasty. I had already harvested some of the red butter leaf  lettuce leaves from the outside of the plant, but you can hardly tell. Some oakleaf lettuce is making a good start for a later. harvest

One parsley plant left from last year's crop. Normally, this is a biennial and takes 2 years to complete its life cycle, but here in north Florida, our season is so long that parsley sets flowers in the same season as it is planted. But this one plant that was grown in a container did not, so now I have a little fresh parsley to use early in the season. My new crop has sprouted, but it will be a couple of months before it's established enough for picking.

We don't have any citrus plants in our yard, but many of our neighbors have too much. Ample Harvest is a matching service for people who have too much of a good thing with organizations that can use the surplus. How sustainable!

Time to turn the compost pile

With all the fall leaf supply, it was time to turn the compost pile. Looking from pile B toward pile A.

The okra stalks have not rotted in the compost pile A yet, but they will.

With the abundance of fallen leaves, it was time to turn the pile. Besides, the old pile was almost cleaned out and I needed the compost from the bottom of pile A (near the shed). I scraped the rest of the compost from pile B (near the cement pad) and put it in the old wheel barrow. I laid in about 6" of raked leaves for the floor, and added alternating layers of 1) unfinished compost from pile A, 2) raked leaves, and 3) thin dusting of finished compost from the wheelbarrow. After the finished compost layer I poured a watering can of rain barrel water.

Since the turning, I've added a layer of kitchen scraps and more leaves. I will continue to add layers of alternating green and brown materials until the end of the year and then let it rest until spring when the whole process will begin again.

As expected at the bottom of the pile A, there was a good supply of moist, rich, finished compost. I'm using this compost to enrich the winter veggies beds (which you can see in the above photos), store some of it in a bin (next to the potting bench) for winter use, and use the rest of it to topdress my recently planted woody plants and others that I want to push a little more. While I never put amendments in the planting holes, a layer of compost laid outside the root ball area several times during the first couple of years after planting will entice the trees' roots to grow outward. Wide-spreading roots make plants more wind-tolerant and more drought tolerant and this is important in Florida where we have and 7-month dry season each year and tropical storms on a regular basis.

Native flowers

Oh my! It's hard to beat the dune sunflowers for beauty and durability. This one is part of our mailbox planting. This one plant has spread across the whole bed and has lasted for 3 years. I trim it back to keep it within its boundaries and use those cuttings to make new plants.

Our state wildflower!

I renewed my membership in the Florida Wildflower Foundation and they sent me seeds with my new card. I've sowed these seeds in a meadow area and look forward to seeing more of these cheerful tickseed flowers in the spring.

I trust that you are enjoying your fall gardening.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

A beautiful sunrise as reflected in the St. Johns River. 

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Gardeners know when to "fold"

Gardeners are gamblers

We plant seeds or seedlings and we bet that we'll end up with a bountiful harvest, but it doesn't always happen that way. So when a crop is in distress, we need to yank it out and move on to something else. Case in point: our fall cucumber crop that I talked about last time. We had a pretty good harvest of 20 or so crispy cukes, but the vines got hit with a blight, so it was time to pull them out even though there were small fruits coming along and frost will not come until late December. The vines would not be able to overcome this fungus, and the longer you leave an ailing plant in the garden, the more likely it is to leave tainted soil behind. So I pulled the vines, gathered all the fallen leaves, and put them out with the yard trash. I never put diseased plants in the compost. We have to know when to fold, just like the old gambler...

"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
"Know when to walk away and know when to run..."

Even though there were more cukes coming, I ripped them out.

Fall blight...

Eat your seeds!

Eat the seeds!

We enjoyed a lovely acorn squash for dinner the other night and I also prepared the seeds for eating.
Separate from the squash flesh, cook for 10 minutes in about a half an inch of salted water, and then place the seed/saltwater slurry on a cookie sheet to dry. I turn my oven to 300 degrees for 10 minutes and then turn it off, leaving the seeds in the warm oven for an hour. You can also dry the seeds in the hot afternoon sun. Of course, this is also fun to do with pumpkin seeds, which you may have on hand very soon.

Add a little salt to about 1/2 an inch of water, bring to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Pour the seeds onto a cookie sheet or pizza pan. Put in a cold oven, turn the heat to 300 degrees for 10 minutes and then turn off. After an hour, delicious seeds to eat.

Snags are so important for bluebirds and other wildlife.

 

Snags, stumps, and logs

Whenever possible leave this deadwood in your landscape to provide food and shelter for bluebirds and other wildlife.

I covered this in my upcoming book, "The Art of Maintaining a Florida Native Landscape." Marjorie Shropshire, my excellent illustrator, created a lovely drawing to illustrate the concept.

I turned in all the drawings and their captions into University Press of Florida this week. This was the last piece of the puzzle; I'd already turned in the final draft, the color photos and captions, the B&W photos and captions, and a collection of possible cover photos, so now the ball is in their court. Yay!

I hope you are enjoying the excellent gardening weather. Just remember, if you are planting trees or shrubs that this is the beginning of our dry season and extra irrigation will be needed for the best success.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Sunrise this morning. How can you not love Florida sunrises?

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Spaghetti squash recipes & planting

A store-bought spaghetti squash contained a bunch of sprouted seeds.
How long had it been sitting there in the store?

I was craving a spaghetti squash, so we bought one. The rind seemed unusually hard and quite a number of the seeds had sprouted. I try not to waste squash seeds of any kind, so if I'm not saving them for growing, I prepare them for eating. In this case I planted some of the sprouted seeds, dried 20 or so for future planting, and the rest I fixed for snacking.

Squash seed recipe

This seed recipe works for any of the winter squashes: including butternut, acorn, pumpkin, & spaghetti.
- Scoop out the seedy squash center and separate out the seeds.
- Place the cleaned seeds in a pan with 1/2 inch of heavily-salted water.(You could also use seasoned salt or maybe add some rosemary leaves for a different flavor.)
- Cook over medium heat until most of the water boils away—about 10 minutes.
- Dump the contents of the pan onto a cookie sheet and spread the seeds out.
- Dry in a 200-degree oven for 15 minutes or out in the sun for several hours.
- Ready to eat: eat them by themselves or mix with other seeds & nuts in a trail mix.

Easy microwave spaghetti squash

- Turn cleaned squash halves, split side down in a flat dish with 1/2 inch of water. (I use a 9"x12" glass dish so I can fit both halves in one dish. I stop the turntable from rotating for this dish.)
- Nuke for 10 minutes at full power.
- Take the pan from the microwave, turn the halves cut side up and test the squash with a fork to make sure that it's soft.
- Prop up the halves into the corners of the dish so they are level and pour spaghetti sauce into the seed cavities (I used half a 24-oz jar of store-bought sauce for both halves.)
- Top with freshly ground pepper, oregano & parsley flakes and then grated Pamesan cheese.
- There should still be some water in the bottom of the dish. Nuke for 5 minutes.
- Serve whole in a bowl. Eat right from the rind or turn it out into the bowl.
A delicious, filling, and gluten-free meal.

Prepared squash it ready to turn out of its shell.

The meat of the squash is stringy and fills the role of pasta.

Sprouted seeds

The beginning of August is a little early for planting the fall squash crops, but with sprouted seeds, I couldn't really wait. My long bed opposite from the garage was turned and mulched 6 weeks ago, so it was ready. I planted several of the sprouted seeds on one side of the squash swale and some summer squash seeds on the other side. The spaghetti squash seedlings are in a row above my name in this triangular-shaped swale as shown in the photo below right. The summer squash is to the left. The vines are likely to grow out from the area so this section of lawn will host the runners and we'll mow around them until they are done.

The sprouted squash perked right up when planted.
For more details on how I prepare the squash mounds see my post, From compost to dinners

My squash swale is at the far end of the outer bed. In addition to the spaghetti squash, I also planted some summer squash.

Ooh my rainbow carrots!

Rainbow carrots

I grow a lot of carrots from fall, through the winter, and into spring. We've enjoyed the cosmic purple  carrots over the last couple of years, but this time, I decided to branch out with more colors. I'm not sure if I have any purple carrots seeds left over, but I do have some orange carrot seeds so I'll have a more complete rainbow.

This seed pack includes deep purple carrot, yellow carrot, white Kutiger carrot, and nutri-red carrot seeds.

It's not quite time to plant these, but
I am looking forward to my:

Only the worms can see it.

 

 

 

Integrated pest management

It's a wasp eat caterpillar world out on our front porch step. This is why landscape-wide poisons are not used in our sustainably-managed property. You want Mother Nature to send out the troops when there are too many caterpillars in the area.

A potter's wasp found a caterpillar. It ate part of it, but then they disappeared. The wasp probably flew it to the nest, laid eggs on it and sealed it up.

Trouble in paradise

For 3 years we tried physical removal methods to knock back this invasive fern from our front pond.

See what we did to get rid of this invasive floating fern from our front pond in my post over on Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog, "Managing a native pond." Finally, we have a clear pond again.

More than a hundred crows gathered in the trees around our yard the other day. They all hung around for quite a while having a noisy ongoing conversation, and then, they all flew off. We've seen large groups of crows before, but not very often.

Summer's winding down, I can hardly wait to start planting more crops in my edible gardens again. What about you—are you ready for cool-weather edibles? In our book, "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida," there are 3 monthly calendars—one for each section of the state. Order your copy today.

Special Summer Appearance:
My presentation is "Organic Gardening—You can do it!"
Aug. 12th 10am at Fleming Island Library in Clay County.
1895 Town Center Blvd, Orange Park, FL 32003
(about 7.5 miles south of I295 & Rt 17 exit)
This event is open to the public and has been coordinated
by The Garden Club of Fleming Island.

Green Gardening Matters, 
Ginny Stibolt

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6 reasons to use pine needle mulch in edible gardens

I use pine needles in between my wide rows in the edible gardens.

Here are some of the reasons for using pines needles in wide-row edible gardens. (Read my post "Wide row planting & trench composting" for the details on this planting method.)

Pine needle mulch:
1) does a good job at limiting weeds.
2) doesn't form a crust, so even a light rain filters to the soil and doesn't roll away.
3) is easy to handle and remove when it's time for a crop change.
4) lasts for 2 or more years.
5) does not significantly acidify the soil below.
6) is free if there are pine trees in your neighborhood.

Corn salad, red-stemmed spinach, and garlic growing in wide rows in a winter bed. The pine needle mulch is 4 or 5 inches thick in the trenches between the rows. For crops like onions or garlic I mulch the whole row with about an inch of pine needles—the crop will grow right through it.

Use a very light layer of pine needles over the area where you've planted seeds. Here  I removed the smaller okra seedling and left just one to grow in this space around my okra swales, because you don't want to crowd okra. I always plant 2 or 3 seeds in each spot to make sure I get at least 1 good plant, especially when the seeds are older.

When ready to plant, use a leaf rake to clear the pine needles away. For this garlic, I'm ready to create the wide rows and to dump my kitchen scraps in the bottom of the trench between the rows. Note the wood chips on the path next to the garden.

This batch of needles contained a fair amount of soil after I removed it from the bed, so I raked the whole wad of needles across the lawn to clean them up. As a bonus, the freedom lawn receives an addition of compost.

I collect pine needles from the neighborhood
streets--after a storm is especially fruitful.
Then I keep a pile of them near my gardens.

Down by the lake, a longleaf pine drops its foot-long needles. Easy to rake and great for mulch. My husband mows every other week, so before he mows, I often head down there to collect a new batch.

Why not wood chips?

I've written before about using arborists' woodchips in the landscape, but I don't use them in my edible gardens for two reasons.

Wood chip mulch:
1) is impossible to remove completely once it's laid down. For other uses, like paths and more stable gardens, that's not a problem, but it doesn't work well with all the activity of changing crops at the end of the season.
2) depletes nutrients as it comes in contact with the soil microbes. Again for path mulches, this is an advantage for keeping down weeds, but we work so hard to increase the nutrient level in our edible gardens, why compromise it in any way? Eventually, the chips decompose and add nutrients and humus to the soil, but not at first.

Getting ready for fall...

Yes, it will be 6 weeks or more until I'm ready to start planting the cool weather crops, but there will be some end of summer crops like squashes, cucumbers, sugar snap peas and maybe tomatoes. It was time to turn under my marigold cover crops into their beds, so they'll be ready for the next set of crops. Read about my multi-year marigold experiment: Results: the nematode experiment. 

These two vegetable beds (with their marigold cover crop) are ready to be turned.

There is a Chinese fringe bush at the north end of this bed. Each year I remove its roots that are encroaching into the garden space.

I lay in unfinished compost on top of the marigolds and then
I'll add back the original soil.

First I pull the marigolds and weeds, and then I rake away the pine needles with a leaf rake. I raked the pine needles from this bed across the lawn as shown in a photo above to get rid of the embedded soil. Then I dug out about 5 or 6 inches of soil from the whole bed into the big cart. This bed is about 6.5 ' by 5' and I filled the whole cart. I laid in the marigolds, some grass clippings, topped it with a wheel barrel load of almost finished compost. (Completed or finished compost will not have any recognizable pieces of the original materials. This batch still has some leaf mold and small sticks and chips.)

Then I shoveled the original soil back in place and smoothed it out. I added another half load of compost on top of the soil. Finally, I covered it with pine needles and added wood chips in the walking areas around the bed.

In a few days, I'll turn the next bed.

After burying the marigolds, compost, grass clippings and layering back the original soil, I mulched the whole bed with pine needles. It will sit until fall when it'll be time to start the cool-weather crops. FYI, the downspout shown here, runs into a French drain that runs next to the sidewalk and is released into one of my rain gardens. The rain water then heads down to the lake in an open ravine.

The squash is done, so it was time to turn the marigolds into this bed, too.

I started near the okra (by the bench) and had a load of kitchen scraps ready to compost, so those went into the bottom of this bed for some extra nutrients.

Except for the okra, garlic chives, and the Greek oregano in the foreground, the beds have been turned. The outside bed was turned a couple of weeks ago and so I will probably start planting in that bed first when it's time.

Early in the spring pines also drop their male catkins (sex organs). These break down much more quickly than the pine needles, so if I rake them up, I use them to mulch my blueberries or in the compost pile where their acidity will be neutralized.

For further reading on pine needle mulch:
From Dave's Garden: Pine Needle Acidity: Myth or reality?
On Wildlife Gardeners' website: Pine Straw (Pine Needle) Mulch Acidity: Separating Fact From Fiction Through Analytical Testing

Amazing summer clouds just before sunset last week.

I hope you are enjoying the summer clouds and are planning for your fall garden of edibles. Why not purchase my book to help you get started? Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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