Autumn Frost Squash: What I Will Grow Next Year

I have written about this before, but butternut squash is the go-to squash for "pumpkin" pie (and bread).  The canned "pumpkin" you purchase in the grocery is butternut.  I grow it every year, until this season, when the few seeds I had failed (maybe they got too old?).  But, luckily I had been seduced by the glossy photos on a seed house website and ordered Autumn Frost squash.  This squash is a pretty, buff colored squash, more orange than butternut, and just as tasty (some have green markings).  Though it is smaller than butternut, it is prolific and I will grow it next year, alongside the good old Waltham butternut!  By the way, this hard-stemmed squash has never been affected by squash vine borers in my garden (same with butternut and Long Island Cheese)! This is true for all Curcubita moschata squash.

Roast the squash (any winter squash) after you poke it with a few holes (you don't want it to explode!) in a glass dish in a 350 degree oven for 50 minutes or so.  Let it cool, cut it in half, remove the seeds and scrape out the flesh, easy peasey!

What I will Grow again Next Year...and have for a few seasons

 

Isn't she lovely? What a beauty!  I have grown a few types of bok choi/pak choi/tat soi over the years and this white-stemmed pak choi beats them all.  It is easy to grow and wonderful in stir fries.  I ordered my seed from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, located not too far from where I live in central Virginia (they are in Mineral, VA):  https://www.southernexposure.com/

The only special requirement is that pak choi is a cool-season crop. It does really well when planted in early spring.  You cannot grow it in the summer, it bolts too quickly.  Like all brassicas, it can suffer from cabbage white caterpillars, which munch on the leaves. If this is a problem for you, grow them under a light weight row cover.

Flowers in the Vegetable Patch: What I Will Grow Next Year

 I always get pleasure out of flowers and try to put some in my veg garden every year:

African Blue Basil, a bee magnet

 

Zinnias, beloved by butterflies

Black-Eyed Susan Vine (heads up, it's a little "spready").

The main reason I do this is not for the aesthetics, though the combo of larger, colorful flowers and veggies is entrancing.  I try to include flowers to increase the number pf pollinators that visit my garden-good for me, good for them.  If you do any nature reading, you know that pollinators, and all insects, are on the decline. So, plant some flowers to help them.  

 

I want to add a caveat to my selections above: The above plants, though beautiful and useful to pollinators, are not all natives. In fact, only the zinnia is native to the US, but in the southwest, not Virginia. Yet, not all native plants fit within the constraints of a vegetable garden, but certainly do use them in other areas of your yard when you can.  This article makes the case for increasing the use of native plants in pollinator gardens:

https://vnps.org/the-right-kind-of-pollinator-garden/

I have many native plants in other areas of my yard and will write more about them in the spring.

2020 Experiment...Ginger

 

Ginger growing in my zone 7a garden

 

2020 was the year of the pandemic garden, but for me, it was gardening as usual, or unusual. Every year, it seems, I want to try something new, be it a new variety of a old standby, or a new crop altogether.  This year it was ginger, a tropical plant and marvelous addition to Asian food, a great tea ingredients (the leaves can be dried and used as tea, too), and wonderful in my fave, tomato ginger soup.

 

Another plant, close up. Pretty, eh?

 

Ginger is the hardest plant I have ever grown (yes, even though I have mostly given up on cucumbers due to those nasty cucumber beetles, ginger is harder).  Ginger is tropical: it needs heat, water, and lots of organic nutrients. Its long growing season means that you are growing it for baby ginger, the most prized of all the stages anyway.  How did I do it?

 

In January, I went to my favorite Asian grocery (you can also order ginger to plant online) and selected rhizomes with as many fingers and eyes (growth points) as possible. I got home and cut the ginger into chunks, with two eyes at least per piece. I let it air dry overnight to cure.  Then I planted each piece in a large (5 inch?) peat pot in seed starting mix, placed them in a tray, watered them with warm, filtered water, and covered the tray with with a plastic dome lid.Then I put it on a heat mat under florescent bulbs placed as close to the top of the dome as possible.  After a week to 10 days, the baby gingers sprouted. I let them grow until they touched the plastic dome top, then removed it, and enclosed the shelf in plastic sheeting to increase humidity. I kept the heat mat on the entire time the plants were indoors.

You cannot plant ginger until June, when the soil and air temps are warm enough. I planted them in enriched soil, mounded them with compost, spent potting soil, and coffee bean chaff from my local coffee roaster. I kept it well watered, but not damp all the time, and regularly fed it more compost, vermicompost tea, and diluted fish emulsion.  I harvested it in early September...and...it worked!

 

Part of the harvest

Part of the harvest, cleaned and ready to go

 

Here is what I did with it.  First, ginger freezes well.  Clean, cut up into sections, and freeze. The skin scrapes off easily with a knife when you are ready to use it, but the skin is so tender, it hardly matters.  Second, I put sections into a glass jar, topped it with white sherry, and put in the fridge. Keeps for months, can be sliced and added to stir fries. Lastly, I made my own pickled ginger for sushi...yum!

Oh, also....I am drawing it!

 

Next year, I will try to grow turmeric as well!

 

Happy garden planning!

Red Dragon Cabbage...What I Will Grow Next Year

 

Red Dragon Cabbage, Washed and Ready to Cook

 

I realized as I was selecting garden seeds, I was favoring plants that were red or purple!  Aside from green, these are the two most often-used colors in my colored pencil box. Red Dragon Cabbage is a Napa-style cabbage, heading but not like the standard bowling-ball cabbage.  Planted in early spring, it sprouts easily and grows well, at least until the cabbage worms inevitably arrive.  You can see a little damage on the leaves in the photo above...harvested in the nick of time!  If you do get cabbage "worms" (actually caterpillars of the cabbage white moth), you can wash the leaves after soaking them say, for an hour, in a sink full of salted water (about 2T). And pick out the deceased critters...don't be squemish! Don't let them soak too long, then give them a wash and drain in a colander. Sadly, the pretty electric-purple leaves turn green when cooked. (NOTE: there is another option to dealing with cabbage worms: I feed them to my carnivorous pitcher plants!).

Purple Cosmic Carrot...What I Will Grow Again Next Year

                                                First harvest of purple cosmic carrots

Root crops, except for turnips and garlic, are not my specialty. After seeding in loose and fluffy soil, most require vigilance, to make sure the soil does not dry out and crust over.  This is true for beets (which one day I WILL successfully grow), but especially true for carrots, with their tiny seeds.  Now, with retirement (though I am busier than ever!) I have the flexibility to water every morning, and in the afternoon or evening if it is very dry. Some gardeners cover the newly planted seed bed with newspaper, and keep it damp.  Try it, but it never worked well for me, and I forget to remove it soon enough. You can also try carrot seed tape (strips of paper with seeds embedded at proper spacing, but I have only ever seen a few varieties commercially-prepared this way. DIY here: https://www.finegardening.com/article/make-your-own-seed-tape).  Make sure you thin your carrots after they sprout. Despite all this trouble, this spring, I had great success with Purple Cosmic Carrot. It seems to sprout more easily and quickly, and grow lushly, and tastes good.

But, bad gardener Judy, I let a second crop of carrots grow and mature through a hot, dry spell.  This usually turns carrots bitter, but this variety did pretty well.  It was tasty, with occasional bitterness.  How to cook the bitterness out of carrots?  Slice and shallow steam in water or stock, with a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar.  After the liquid steams off, I add an Asian-inspired sauce (made with hoisin sauce, tamarind concentrate, or gouchujang) (I am an improvisational cook and make it up as I go).

And, as a botanical artist, I find the color to be AMAZING (carrots studies below).

 

Burgundy Okra...What I Will Grow Again Next Year

 

 

Chinese Red Asparagus Beans with Burgundy Okra

 

The plants grow 4-5 feet tall 

I grow vegetables to eat!  Well, duh.  What I means is that I grow for flavor, but I also grow for texture, productivity, and disease resistance. And, as a botanical artist, I grow for beauty.  I acquired a liking for okra when I moved to the deeper south decades ago.  Yes, fried okra is tasty (and slimy sometimes), but I like okra for its mild taste, for thickening soups, stews, and pasta sauce, and for the appearance of the sliced pods in my bowl. But is is a also a beautiful plant, with it's deep red stems and leaf veins, large leaves, light maroon pods, and stunning creamy yellow flowers.  Did you know it is a member of the hibiscus family?

                                                                        Just beautiful!

Planting okra is easy. It likes warm soil and thrives in hot weather.  When the pods begin to form, make sure to harvest regularly. Long pods (over 3 inches) are often too woody and fibrous to eat.