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Post by templeton on Apr 4, 2013 6:48:44 GMT -5
How do folks maintain extended harvest periods, beyond doing multiple sowings of stuff? I'm trying to curb my tendency to fill every bed to the max every time I go out to plant out seedlings - with not a lot of success, but are there tricks to maintaining long harvests rather than the boom/bust cycles my produce goes through? I recognise that we are constrained by seasonal things like temperature and day length, but any suggestions most welcome. I'm a bit limited for space too. Maybe should have put this under the 'backyard' header. T
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 4, 2013 12:07:24 GMT -5
In my fields I get extended harvests without meaning too. The soil is not consistent from place to place. Weeding is not consistent. Watering is inconsistent because I sprinkle irrigate with rainbirds. The spray pattern is not perfect. Reflections or shadows from trees or buildings affect how fast things mature. The ground is not level. Plants on the sunward slope mature quicker. Competition with tree roots severely retard maturity. I have paid attention over the years, so I know which areas will affect the crops in which ways. Sometimes I take advantage of the differing conditions to extend harvest.
Things that I do to deliberately extend the harvest include:
Planting genetically diverse crops which have extended harvest built into the DNA.
Multiple sowings. I'm mark off the row for planting crookneck squash, and plant a few seeds from time to time until the row is filled.
Floating row covers over part of a row early in the growing season. This can make about a week difference in harvest.
Planting a few plants on the sunward side of a building to get an earlier harvest, or on the shaded side to extend the harvest.
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Post by steev on Apr 4, 2013 12:35:05 GMT -5
I do it not so much by multiple sowings of the same crop variety as by sowing a wide range of crops and varieties, resulting in a wider seasonal harvest of most crops.
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Post by 12540dumont on Apr 4, 2013 15:31:44 GMT -5
Templeton, I have that same sort of boom bust thing going on. I do have one side of the house that's baking and the other that is dappled shade. The only thing I have been able to do is plant tomatoes for early harvest on the extreme sunny side. It never freezes there. But, I can get a light frost there.
I just planted cabbage in the dappled shade side to see if I can get late cabbage. I have had some luck with beans (of course) by planting French Filets early in the season and Romanos (they take the heat) later.
This year, I'm going to see if I can't use the shade of the corn or bean trellis to do lettuce in the summer. Something I haven't ever been able to do.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2013 12:06:26 GMT -5
When I saw a farmer prune suckers from his tomatoes, the results seemed catastrophic, for the first week or two. He migh thave cut away 2/3 of the plant! His plants bounced back and harvest was extended for a full two months. In my experience, they tended to put out more foliage than fruit, following summer solstice, but we did not get a hard freeze until November. His practice, which he could not explain, did happen to divert energy away from this extra foliage and back into fruiting branches.
In the case of greens, flowers can be pinched, when they bolt (go to seed.) I have successfully extended their lifespan for several years but had to be fastidious.
Rootcrops suffer in my soil, not for dryness or dampness, but for wide fluctuations between the extremes, causing them to crack. Planters in the shade, with foliage in the sun, allowed live roots to survive much longer.
I am finding that most plants could barely survive, indefinitely, if you could keep them from freezing, but they slowly lost vigor. Anything cooler than late Spring, should probably get extra heat, I am learning.
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Post by littleminnie on Apr 6, 2013 19:00:06 GMT -5
I plan it all out. I do things like that. I have a MN season extension chart I am writing and I use excel files to make maps for the seasons. Every year I see areas of improvement when I have lulls in bean production or basil all getting seedy and then I make sure to do more the next year. So it takes planning and following the map/plan/chart to not plant all the crop at one time like you would like to.
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Post by galina on Apr 6, 2013 19:41:16 GMT -5
We eat different things during summer and winter. At the moment winter is overlapping spring - this means stored winter squashes, onions, potatoes, garlics and normally (but not this year because of floods over winter) brassica, mostly kale and purple sprouting broccoli. Leeks, Babington leeks, perennial onions and spring onions. There are still a few bags of frozen peas, tomatoes and beans. The first chard leaves are ready and in the greenhouse the first salad greens are appearing. Spring is generally a lot of salad, radish, the last potatoes and squash. Early summer peas arrive, followed by beans, then tomatoes and courgettes/zucchini. By September there is usually a glut, which is useful to fill the freezer, then the follow on crops start producing, the chicory and endive salads, the turnips, the late carrots sown after the garlics were harvested, a few late sowings in the greenhouse of oriental greens, lettuce, rocket, cress etc which will mostly survive and get harvested in early spring.
Winter is the time for brassica, leeks, parsnips and scorzonera from the garden and the cycle begins again.
I have left a lot of crops out, but the main principle is seasonal cropping. It is easy to plan for the summer months, winter crops need a bit more planning. Brussel Sprouts and hardy cauliflower and cabbage for example need to stay in the soil for 9 months, but can be harvested over winter, as can leeks. These need space to grow during summer.
Another season extender is storing crops, either preserved in jars, dried or frozen, or just plain stored like potatoes, alliums and winter squash.
I make full use of the greenhouse over winter. It is a cold greenhouse (no heat or extra light input), so nothing will actively grow over winter, but plants will be there after the tomatoes are gone -for the last greens of the year at around Christmas time and again for the first greens in March until the ground is needed for tomatoes and peppers again.
After Christmas the sprouter comes out. Mung beans and Adzuki beans bought from the health food shop, get sprouted for extra vegetables during this sparse season. Witloof chicory roots get harvested from the garden and put in buckets with damp soil, covered and left to produce chicons for winter salads. Cress also grows well on kitchen paper or on a thin layer of soil on the windowsill during winter.
There is always something to harvest using these methods.
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Post by templeton on Apr 6, 2013 20:25:48 GMT -5
Some great suggestions Minnie and Galina. It's interesting, after a few years of growing single crops successfully - tomatoes, garlic, salads, the challenge of continual cropping is actually far more complex than just growing enough tomatoes to make sauce in autumn, for example.
And I did enjoy shop bought chicons last year, but i might just leave them to the experts for now. T
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Post by richardw on Apr 7, 2013 0:51:12 GMT -5
galina your seasonal rotation pretty much matches mine,though my unheated tunnelhouse in winter does manage to grow salad greens but its not quite warm enough to keep tomatoes alive,so i start an early variety (Napal) at the start of winter and grow inside as a house plant then half way through the last month of winter its warm enough to be planted in the tunnelhouse,mid summer i start long keeper tomato which keeps us going into the first month of winter,so we end up with three months with out tomatoes,and we do do without too, there's no way i'm going to buy those anaemic tasteless bullet proof things from the supermarket.
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Post by ferdzy on Apr 8, 2013 8:44:36 GMT -5
Like Galina, what we grow/eat changes with the seasons; like Minnie we spend a lot of time planning planning planning. We are also getting a bit ruthless about pulling out things that have slowed down, but not completely stopped, so that we can plant something else and have it ready in time (i.e. before winter). It's fairly complicated, and now that we are wanting to save more of our own seeds, it's only going to get more complicated... or maybe less complicated, in that we just won't be able to do the succession planting we have been doing thus far.
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