Blueberries in Texas

We are rejoicing over the clear skies. It seems all it’s done over the past few weeks is rain after an already wet spring. I lamented in one of the last posts about just how wet we were. I didn’t know it could get worse.

We were inundated last Sunday night when instead of the few tenths of an inch of rain forecasted we received 4.6 inches in 3 hours.

I’ve lost most of my tomatoes due to too high a water table, and I’m watching fungal diseases set in on other plants. I finally broke down the other day and just started gardening in the rain, cutting back flopped over Rudbeckia maxima (giant coneflower) and Coreopsis tripteris (tall tickseed) that has exploded in growth with its wet feet.

But, not all the garden is a source of frustration. Our blueberries have loved this wet spring. I have long admired Vaccinium virgatum (rabbiteye blueberry) for the multi-season interest it offers the gardener and its versatility in the landscape. For us in the deep south, this species is our best selection to grow. And, in case you’re curious, the common name comes from the pink hue that fruit turn before they ripen that resembles the color of some rabbits’ eyes.

Before rabbiteyes bloom, their red stems offer color to the void of winter. And, in early spring I delight when the buds start to swell. They have attractive urn-shaped flowers that are pollinated by native bees. I have a fond memory of a southeastern blueberry bee sonicating a stem I was touching one day. I felt a slight shaking on the branch as the bee pollinated the flower by vibrating its flight muscles.

The urn-shaped flowers of Vaccinium virgatum

A Carolina Chickadee inspects the flowers and young fruit on a rabbiteye blueberry

The foliage is worth having in the garden, too. Many cultivars offer a blue-glaucous foliage that contrasts nicely with the myriad of green. And, then in autumn, blueberries light up the countryside as their leaves turn vermillion.

One of my core memories is visiting Graveyard Fields and seeing the patches of blueberries there many autumns ago. It was as if someone painted the landscape with the most vivid reds and oranges. And, here in the depths of November when the blueberries glow, I’m reminded of being high in the mountains with their wild cousins.

A vermillion sea of Vaccinium constablaei (hillside blueberry) at Graveyard Fields

But, there’s no time I love them more than when they are flush with fruit as spring fades into summer. I have been picking blueberries over the past few weeks, nibbling the first ripe ones here and there and then picking handfuls with my shirt held out as a harvest bin. Our waterers also enjoyed them while we were traveling in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Vaccinium virgatum ‘Austin’

Vaccinium ‘Pink Lemonade’

Our flowers took a hit during the late March freeze last year, and I watched as the urn-shaped blossoms that dangle and catch the dew on wet mornings fell from the plants. Thus, we lost most the fruit on ‘Austin’, ‘Climax’, and the red-fruited hybrid ‘Pink Lemonade’. Only ‘Powder Blue’ yielded fruit.

But, this year has been much better, and the plants have been loaded in the absence of a crop from last year. After last season’s dearth of fruit, I’m looking at adding more varieties for diversity to deal with weather issues.

Planting them is easy. I like to put blueberries in the ground in autumn when they are going dormant as I do most shrubs to help them establish and grow with the coming wetness of winter. And, I don’t amend the soil with lime, as I have to for most plants to help neutralize our soil’s 4.2 pH. They thrive in acidic conditions like many of their relatives in the Ericaceae (heath) family. Blueberries have a high iron requirement, and the lower pH frees more of the mineral nutrient into the soil solution. If your pH is too high, you can always use sulfur to bring it down.

The area surrounding Nacogdoches has acidic soil and used to be a nexus for blueberry production. I do hate that many of the farms have closed (save for a few), but we are holding onto our blueberry tradition here in the community with this past weekend’s 34 annual Texas Blueberry Festival.

After eating blueberry pancakes, Magnolia, Karen, and I helped paint part of a new blueberry mural as part of Brushing Up Nac, a non-profit that is making our quaint town even more charming.

Part of the paint by numbers mural on Pilar Street

Other festival attendees painting the blueberry mural

The blueberry mural mostly painted by participants after the 34 annual Texas Blueberry Festival

This native fruit is well worthy of a festival, a mural, and finding a place for a few in your garden.

Granddad's Cowpeas

I’m always delighted at the people who say they’ve read my story on my website and how they learned that my great-grandfather got me into horticulture.  His name was Eron Edward “Crip” Conley.  Crip was a heartless nickname that came early in life when someone accidentally chopped off two of his toes with an axe.  But, I knew him as Granddad because that’s what mom called him, and even though he was my great-grandfather, the name stuck for me.  

He was the man that taught me to garden.  We used to work his plot together, he pushing his Troy Bilt and I following behind raking our footsteps left in the tiller’s wake.  We buried tomato stems to help them form new roots. We used string to mark straight rows.

Once he realized my interest, he started a small plot for me to grow some of my favorite vegetables like corn, beans, and tomatoes a few feet away from his garden.  Any question I had he could answer.  I loved every minute of gardening with him.  

He passed away when I was 12 going on 13.  The year after he died, my Granny, his daughter that lived with him in his house, allowed me to take over his garden since we didn’t have a good spot at our house due to the shade.  And, his absence and the desire to learn more about growing would take me on a path that would eventually lead to a Ph.D. in plants.  

But, that’s a different story. Today’s tale goes back to that first year I inherited his garden spot.  It was a piece of land about 30 feet wide and 50 feet long.  That year I grew what I normally would grow—tomatoes, corn, and beans.  But, off to the side of the garden I noticed what looked like a bean plant but wasn’t.  Once it got some heft to it, I realized it was a cowpea, and it was a seedling from Grandad’s crops the past year. Though he had left me, one single seedling from his plants from last year had germinated. I was delighted and ecstatic. I let it grow in the less than optimal spot, and at the end of the growing season, it produced a single pod with nine seed in it.  I planted those seed the next year and the next and the next until I had saved up a nice bag of seed. They were much more vigorous growing in better soil.  I’ll be honest. I really didn’t like to eat them back then, but I did like to use them as a cover crop, their nodules fixing nitrogen in my garden’s soil.

2007 was the last year I had a garden up at Granddad’s house because I moved away to graduate school in 2008.  The peas went into the fridge in my parent’s basement and were forgotten.  

I was home this past March, and I saw the bag in the fridge.  It hadn’t been touched in 16 years. And, now that I was a connoisseur of cowpeas, I was curious if they would still grow.  I had yet to find a good variety that I liked to cultivate here in Texas.  I had thought at times of Granddad’s peas, but I was worried they might fail here like many of my other plants I used to grow in Tennessee. I did a test sowing of the seed to make sure they were still viable after sitting in a fridge for 16 years, and sure enough a few days after putting them in a bagged moist paper towel, out they popped.

After prepping the beds, I sowed them using the trick of holding a waist-high piece of PVC pipe to plop the seed in the tube to limit bending over as I walked down the row. A few days later up they came.  I cared for those plants like it was the first plant I ever grew so many years ago.  I fertilized them, I thinned them, and I even used our mini-Dyson to vacuum leaffooted bugs off them (don’t tell Karen!).

The lovely purple flowers of ‘Conley’ cowpea

They grew and flourished, the first purple flowers appeared, and then came the blushed pods and green peas.  I ate the first couple of handfuls of seed in the garden raw.  It’s an acquired taste I suppose you could say—earthy and fresh, but sans bacon grease that we normally use to flavor them.  And, with the first mess, that’s exactly what we did.   

But, what were they?  Sure, they were my Granddad’s peas and a family heirloom, but I loathe not having a cultivar name. Greg Grant and I bounced possible cultivars of black-eyeds, Crowders, and purple hulls off each other but none stuck based on flower color, seed pod, and seed color.  The closest we got was ‘Whippoorwill.’  So, for now I will call them ‘Conley’.  

What amazed me as much as 16-year-old seed germinating and successfully growing was the number of insects the plants attracted.  From cultivating them years ago in Tennessee, I don’t recall the plethora that I now see flitting and stirring in front of me as I make my way down the row. Gulf Fritillaries, Gray Hairstreaks, American Bumble Bees, Winged Red Velvet Wasps, Eastern Tawny-horned Spider Wasps, Swarthy Skippers, Northern Cloudywings, and Clouded Skippers were a few of those I could identify.  Even in the leaf litter below I found assassin bugs waiting for prey. They were coming because cowpeas have extrafloral nectaries on the leaves and the inflorescences. Most species that have these nectaries outside of the flowers attract beneficial insects that then reduce pests on the plant. And, in such a rough summer where much of the garden was a desert, I was happy these insects found sweet nectar in my the oasis of my pea patch.

Gulf Fritillary

Northern Cloudywing

Clouded Skipper

Common Thread-waisted Wasp feeding from extrafloral nectaries

Gold-marked Thread-waisted Wasp

But, the plants are now tired, and the pea harvest is coming to an end. I have enough dried seed for next year and perhaps a batch or two for New Year’s. I’ve started clearing the vines to make way for collards and other greens that will no doubt accompany the first meal of 2024 with them. As I was clearing the vines dotted with pods I overlooked picking, I noticed a single cowpea had broken ground and germinated from the recent rains we’ve had. And, I thought back to many years ago when I found that first pea seedling that gave rise to the 60 foot of row I’ve enjoyed this summer.

I doubt anyone has ever rejoiced over cowpeas this much, and I doubt Granddad thought anything special of them. They were probably just what the farm store had in stock that day.

But, to me, these seeds are priceless. That’s the power of saving seed. The act transcends generations. Saving seed reminds us of who we are, who we were, and who we are going to be. One day when Magnolia is old enough to help me sow seeds, I’ll share this story with her. And, I hope that after I’m gone, she’ll keep growing these cowpeas, too.

The Gift of Persimmons

The first NIKITA’S GIFT persimmon I ate was a present. I and a few colleagues were eating dinner with Brie Arthur in Raleigh in 2013. And, after dinner Brie pipped up that she had some NIKITA’S GIFT persimmons to share. We were to take a few and let them sit on the counter for a week or so to ripen and become soft.

I followed her advice, and sure enough about 10 days later, the fruit gave with a gentle squeeze. After one bite, I can still remember nine years later the sweet and tropical flavor—almost mango like—at the advent of winter. And, there was little astringency.

I had to have more.

---

Once we moved into our current home, one of my first tasks was planting an orchard for I knew it would take time for fruit trees to grow. NIKITA’S GIFT was at the top of my wishlist of trees. It’s not your normal persimmon. No, it was bred in Ukraine at Nikita Botanic Garden by crossing our native Diospyros virginiana with Diospyros kaki. It has the flavor of American persimmon but more vigor and larger fruit and leaf size like Japanese persimmon. Officially, the cultivar name is ‘Nikitskaya Bordovaya’, but Northwoods Nursery trademarked the name NIKITA’S GIFT; therefore, I’m following the practice of capitalizing the name to indicate name protection since the Americanized name is not a cultivar.

I ordered three one-gallon plants online in autumn of 2018, and after they arrived, I took great care getting them established.  I picked out a perfect spot for them in the orchard-to-be where they would be visible from the house and where the morning sun would would irradiate their future orange orbs on the trees.  The rootballs had J roots, a condition where the root grew down to the bottom of the pot, turned, and then grew back up.  After some teasing, I had the problem mostly fixed and the plants firmly set in the soil. I caged the trees to protect from deer, a wise decision seeing the other trees they’ve destroyed on the property. I mulched them, provided fresh leaf mold for their bases each year, and watered when needed.  Then, I waited.

I was delighted in 2020 to see them bloom. Their blooms were large, larger than I remember them being on a native persimmon. However, no fruits followed. They bloomed again in 2021. This time, fruit followed, but they fell off. I became concerned that even though we have persimmons around in the forests, the trees weren’t getting pollinated enough. I thought I would give them another year or two, but I had begun to consider grafting a wild male American persimmon bud onto the tree to ensure pollen was available.

 But, then this year came, and the trees were loaded with fruit. One tree had easily 50 fruit on it.  But, in midsummer, they began to fall off again.  I decided to take an extreme approach and prune most of the fruit off until there was only 10 fruit left on each tree.  My suspicion was the fruit were dropping because so many had been pollinated, but the tree could only support so many. 

The fruit ripening is like watching a slow, long burning sunset. The orbs started changing color in September as the green fruit shifted to a bright golden yellow and then made their way through hues of orange in October until they display that last fiery red now that November has arrived.

The reddening NIKITA’S GIFT persimmon is almost ripe!

Of course, I tried to cheat and take a persimmon early, but you can’t rush ripening on a persimmon. Even the fruit sitting on the kitchen window for two weeks isn’t enough. One bite and my mouth turned dry.  I gargled water at the spout on the kitchen sink trying to cure my dry mouth.  Dad always said fruit needed a frost before the wild ones were ready to eat. Same for NIKITA’S GIFT, too, I suppose.

Finally, the other afternoon my patience paid off.  Three weeks after a light frost, I picked my first ripe persimmon off the tree under the late cloudy skies of an autumn afternoon. The fruit gave a bit when squeezed in.

The taste was heavenly.  It had taken me four years to grow it, and it was the same taste I remember from trying my first NIKITA’S GIFT in graduate school so many years ago. It was like eating an even sweeter American persimmon with hints of the tropics but without the seeds.  I’m still surprised how red NIKITA’S GIFT is when ready to eat. The fruit appears more like a small tomato than a persimmon.

I’ve got around 30 fruit total between the three trees.  And, the are continuing to ripen as their yellowing leaves fall to reveal spheres that have been hidden in the foliage all season.  The trees are still young, and I can’t wait to see them in future years even more laden with fruit for autumn, glowing orange-red against the browns and tans of a frosted landscape.  Perhaps one day I’ll have so many I’ll have no choice but to gift NIKITA’S GIFT to others. Something so good must be shared.

On Pruning a Peach

I spied a solitary bloom on our peach tree in the orchard, and I knew it was time to prune.  Removing branches from fruit trees in the south is typically a fall or winter task.  However, after losing a couple of small peach trees last year from the extreme cold, I erred on the side of caution and waited until the last possible moment to correct the tree’s architecture.  That moment had arrived.    

I scurried inside to review the art of pruning as if the minuscule time I saved meant less sap flowing toward the soon-to-be-removed buds.  Pruning is a commitment, like promising to cook a once-a-year meal for the family.  It is good to refresh the mind on technique. The last thing one wants is regret for years to come from a simple mistake, whether it be a bad cut or a burnt dish.   

I pulled The Holistic Orchard by Michael Phelps off the shelf and flipped through the pages.  Many things I knew. Prune for an open center, check.  Prune out branches that grow back inside the tree, check.  Prune above the bud that you want to grow outward, check.  

It was good to read again how light needs to penetrate into the tree and to imagine how the radiant energy would hit branches.  “Be the bud,” I am told not once but twice.  I chuckled at advice he received from a Vermont farmer in the book, “You done [sic] a good job at pruning if afterward you can take the family cow and fling her between the branches.”  

I don’t have a cow, and I wanted a second perspective. Therefore, I pulled up Dr. Mike Parker’s extension videos on pruning peaches.  I never had Mike for a class, but I considered him a friendly colleague while going through grad school at NC State. Since my tree was a couple years old, I opted to watch the video on pruning two-year old specimens. His discussion on heading cuts and scaffolding was helpful to think about maintaining good architecture.

Back outside, I grabbed my loppers.  My pruners were already in the holster I wear on my belt.  I would need both for the different sized branches.

I pruned the easy twigs first—the thin whips that grew into the center and on the bottom of the branches.  I next set about heading back branches to remove apical dominance and encourage them to strengthen and become more bushy in habit.  Then came the hard part—to reduce the upright growths down to nubs.  I should have pruned them last year, but I’m just so used to encouraging vertical growth in trees that it feels weird to make such cuts. The branches rose a good 10-12 feet up in the sky, and in a moment of, “Here we go,” one swift chop reduced the growth by half to stubs.  I felt like an accomplice to crape murder.  

Hatrack, anyone?

I always feel bad after a harsh pruning.   But, I know it’s better for the fruit tree—to encourage outward growth, an open center, and denser branches that can actually bear the load of the fruit.  And, having a well-pruned peach tree is better for me and my summertime cravings for cobbler.

Another benefit to pruning is the beauty I could bring inside afterwards.  Since I waited so late, the the buds were all primed to burst open.  I went through the clippings and chose the best I could to force indoors.  They have slowly opened over the past week becoming a beautiful sweet pink.  Now, I can’t wait for our trees to start bearing.  

The thinnings of ‘Tropic Beauty’ gain a second life with forcing. These peach blossoms are such a welcome sight after the buds pop open.

Wire Weeding

The lengthening daylight is now imperceptible. A month ago when I got home from teaching, there was barely enough twilight to do anything outside. However, now I find that I can see easily until about 6:15 pm, giving me almost an hour of time gardening in the evenings.

My recent task has been cleaning out the vegetable garden for the coming peas and potatoes. The freeze that hit over the holidays while I was gone was severe, enough to tank the broccoli, mustard, and Swiss chard that I’m usually continuing to harvest. By now, the mustards are usually bolting to provide some early season nectar for insects, but they’ve just turned to mush. I’ve learned my lesson for next year. I’ll cover plants with floating row cover before traveling for the holidays.

The biggest surprise is that the soil is fairly clean of weeds, even more so than it has been in the past few years.  It’s not because I used my leaf mold mulch; no, I’m saving that precious resource for the tomatoes in the spring.  

I credit the practice of using the wire hoe.  This ingenious tool was my favorite discovery of 2021. It features a long wooden handle that holds a thin piece of wire bent into a triangle and attached to a hex head insert, much like the head one would use in an interchangeable cordless drill. There are four sizes of these triangles from roughly 8 inches wide to barely over 2 inches that can be changed out based on plant spacing.

Wire weeding is a pleasant task in the garden. Doing it regularly beats hand pulling all those weeds.

The wire is not sharpened. No, the strategy here is to get weeds while they are mere threads through shallow cultivation, perhaps only disturbing the top 1/2–1 inch of soil. It’s almost like sweeping the garden of weeds, much like one would sweep the kitchen regularly to get the crumbs up from making dinner. If weeds are controlled early in the first several weeks of plant growth, the plants will typically then cast enough shade to discourage other weed growth.  

It is incredibly pleasant to use. The handle is long enough to allow the user to stand up straight with both thumbs facing upward and weeding the garden.  I was amazed years ago when reading Eliot Coleman in The New Organic Grower write about the four thumb positions on a handle while weeding.  I mean, who thinks about these things? But, such a consideration has a big impact on the ergonomics of the tool. Both thumbs out or both thumbs in don’t make much sense, so I won’t discuss those. Both thumbs down toward the blade is horrible on the back and how most gardeners have to hold a common hoe to actually cultivate the soil due to the head length and angle.  Both thumbs up away from the blade is how one wants to hold a handle to be to minimize back issues, and the wire hoe allows for this position.  

I made it the first task in the garden, and in 15 to 20 minutes I could weed over 700 square feet by shallowly cultivating the top layer of the soil.  They key is not digging deep; it is actually better because that will reduce the number of new weed seeds brought to the surface.  I had students use this tool on campus last fall, and it did a good job of keeping the beds clean of weeds as well where they used it.  You can use it in perennial beds, too, but I find that Roy Diblik’s Dewit diamond hoe works better.

The design of the wire hoe is so simple.

Working with this hoe has given me that this-tool-is-so-simple-I-could-have-created-it-and-been-a-millionaire feeling. But, it was the brain child of aforementioned Eliot Coleman. On the episode of the Winter Growers podcast (1:01:30), Eliot notes how he was first inspired by Michael Fitzpatrick who said that his favorite tool was this little hand held device that had wires on it for cultivating in the greenhouse. He went back and made a version that could be attached to a long handle using a bolt you screw onto the handle. Conor Crickmore then took the design and put hex head inserts on the wires and ran with it making several versions of the wire hoe. And, really it has been Conor who has helped popularize it and get it into mainstream horticulture.

You’ll note earlier I didn’t just say that it was the wire hoe but the practice of using the tool. The key to weeding in the vegetable garden is developing it into a routine to see results. It becomes something you do frequently, every day or a few times a week.  Seth Godin shared Elizabeth King’s quote in the front of his book The Practice, “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” And, wire weeding has saved me from a wealth of weeds.

Tomato and Carrot Soup

It’s cold. Well, cold for Texas. I love winter, but these days where the clouds dim the sun and frigid gusts cut through clothes, its requires more to be outside.  So, I bundle up head to toe with layers. And, with the neck gaiter I’m sporting, the band around my eyes is the only skin visible. 

A sane person would wait it out inside, but I find these dreary days good for tackling projects that have been on my to-do list—woodworking and building fences, cutting out invasive plants along the fencerows, raking leaves, and earthworking.  Planting is out of the question until the weather moderates as I don’t want to to have the desiccating winds dry my new installs out.

I find myself craving soup after being outside in this weather as it warms the soul.  And, one of my favorites is tomato and carrot soup. I love the blending of summer and winter in this flavorful dish.

We entomb the taste of those hot days long gone by freezing tomatoes we pick in June. We process those delicious orbs into crushed pulp and juice and save both for cooking later in the year. The former makes delicious spaghetti and chicken cacciatore sauce, and the latter stores well in large glass jars for later soups.

And, then there’s the carrots from the dark side of the calendar. My carrot tops are blemished from the sudden cold snap we had earlier this month.  But, as they emerge from the ground, I find they are beautiful. And, sweet!  As Eliot Coleman described in his book The Winter Harvest Handbook, he sells these overwintered carrots as “candy carrots,” and kids go wild over them.

When carrots are exposed the cold temperatures, the roots accumulate sugars to help act as an antifreeze.  So, I like to harvest carrots in January once we’ve had some chillier weather.  They taste sweeter than those harvested in warmer spells.  The roots come out of the ground all shapes and sizes, but they taste and cook the same. Often, I will harvest a whole batch, steam them, and freeze them at this peak of taste. Once they’ve been vernalized (chilling exposure that induces flowering), it won’t be long until they start bolting, which for us can start as early as February. ‘Rainbow’ is a favorite cultivar of mine for its incredible sweetness, and I like ‘Napoli’, ‘Mokum’, and ‘Bolero’, too.

Sweet multi-colored ‘Rainbow’ carrots picked and ready to go into soup.

I had not thought of adding carrots to tomato soup until we travelled through Washington, Connecticut a few years ago. I still remember our visit as clear as ever.  Karen had wanted to see the town that inspired Gilmore Girls, and after walking around for a few hours on a cold, sunny day, we were hungry. We made our way up the hill to G.W. Tavern, a quaint restaurant in an 1850’s colonial home. On a whim, I ordered their tomato soup, and it was THE most delicious tomato soup I’ve ever eaten in my life. There was a texture and especially a sweetness to it that I had never tasted, and it wasn’t too runny. They even had these little harvest crackers to go along with it that were made with sunflower seeds and other grains.

The revolutionary styled G.W. Tavern where I first had this delicious soup

I immediately got online and found a copycat recipe from whenwegettoit.com. We made it after returning home, and it was very close to the original we had on our trip.

But, I realized over the holidays that the website was no longer active, and that recipe was gone! Fortunately, I had saved it, and I want to welcome this delicious dish back to the internet with a few changes of my own.

Let me know what you think. We serve ours with gooey grilled cheese.

Ingredients

Two tablespoons olive oil 

Two medium-sized onions

Two large carrots (or several small-to-medium-sized carrots if you like more texture)

Two cloves of garlic

One 32 ounce jar of tomato juice frozen from the summer (or tomato juice from the store)

Additional fresh or canned tomatoes as needed (depends on how tomatoey you want it)

One 32 ounce container of stock (chicken or vegetable)

Fresh or dried basil

1/4 to 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Sugar, salt, & pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Peel and chop up carrots, onions, and garlic.

2. Heat olive oil in a big soup pot.  Add the vegetables and cook for 10 minutes.  Cook until onions are golden and carrots are just getting soft.  A little water can help prevent the vegetables from browning.

3. Add stock, tomato juice, and additional tomatoes. (For the additional tomatoes, I’ve used diced, stewed, paste, crushed, or fresh. It just depends on how much tomato flavor you want or what you have available in the pantry). Bring to a boil, then simmer for another 10 minutes. If the tomato juice is too runny, you can simmer for longer periods of time to boil off more water.

4. Turn off the heat and add dry or fresh basil leaves to the soup. 

5. Blend the soup with a hand blender until smooth or in batches in a normal blender.  Mix in cream as needed until soup reaches the desired consistency, usually 1/4 to 1/2 cup for me.  Add sugar (I like to add at least 1 tablespoon to help play off the sweet carrots), salt (I add 1 tsp as a general rule), and pepper to taste.  Place back on heat to warm if needed.

6. Enjoy after a long day of winter gardening.

Direct Sowing the Fall Garden

I’ve always thought of August as the start of a new year. While I suppose that living on a school calendar for some thirty years has engrained that into me, there’s more to that feeling than just the return of classes. Change is in the air. Summer is waning, and the days are palpably getting shorter. It’s time to begin planting the fall vegetable garden. As a young gardener who experimented around with season extension, I realized that the crops that I was sowing now would live on into the spring. And, that really to begin planning next year’s garden I had to begin in late summer. It was often time to start clearing out warm-season crops that were finishing up their production anyway. So, yes, it does have the feel of a new chapter beginning.

For us in east Texas, there’s about 90 days left until our first frost, so plantings are usually intense for a month trying to get everything started and in the ground to be able to overwinter. I typically start direct seeding in late August, so I thought I would share some techniques and cultivars that I’ll be direct sowing over the next few weeks.

Mustard and Collard greens

Even though mustard and collards are separate species, I’ve grouped them together because I start sowing these greens in late August. Growing mustard greens were a Tennessee tradition for our family. I hated them at first, but once I planted them in my own garden, I quickly gained a taste for this classic southern crop.

Collards came to me later in life. I first tasted collards at the Old Salem Tavern in Old Salem, NC. They tasted delicious flavored with bacon drippings and brown sugar, so delicious that I added them to my fall rotation.

I try to time my seed sowing with a good pop up summer thunderstorm or tropical storm moving through. But, those rain events are too often unreliable, so I set sprinklers up for a week to help seeds stay moist. To evenly disperse the seeds over the growing bed, I have mixed seed with sand and then broadcasted across the bed in a criss-cross pattern. But, planting them in rows allows for easier cultivation between the plants. So, the decision is yours based on the space you have available. In either case plants live all the way through the winter here in zone 8 with yellow cruciform blossoms emerging in the spring.

You’ll hear people say let the plants experience a frost for better flavor, and there is some truth to that. Plants increase the soluble sugar in their foliage when exposed to cold temperatures, which lowers the freezing point and acts as a natural antifreeze. After harvesting, I follow my Granny’s practice of tossing the midribs and soaking the remaining foliage in salt water to rid of any pests that might still be hiding amongst the leaves.

For mustard greens, I like the classic cultivars like ‘Tendergreen’ and ‘Florida Broadleaf’. There are also ornamental mustards. ‘Red Giant’ turns a beautiful violet, ‘Magma’ has chartreuse curls and is blushed rose, and ‘Tokyo Bekana’ has a golden hue to it.  

‘Magma’ mustard erupts in the fall with blushed leaves and chartreuse curls.

For collards, definitely check out The Heirloom Collards Project for old time varieties. ‘Alabama Blue’ has lovely steel blue foliage with purple petioles. ‘Variegated’ is another fun cultivar to grow because some individuals in the population will have green and white leaves.  

One year, I had ‘Alabama Blue’ collards seed into some tall grass. I could identify it by its purple petioles.

Peas

Peas were another crop that I hated until I grew it. The truth is I didn’t know what a good pea was. Most of the peas I had from the store were very mealy and had a horrible texture. But, one year on a whim, I tried some English peas from our Sprout garden, and I was blown away by the flavor. They were as sweet as candy.

Since then, I have dedicated a couple beds at home to growing peas both in the fall and the spring. I struggled with seed germination until I realized that my plants were succumbing to a fungal wilt. Since then I have only grown disease resistant varieties like ‘PLS 595’ and ‘PLS 141’.  I should add that I sow the seed densely. It seems counter-intuitive to space them close and not thin them, but the recommendation has worked thus far.

While I have used sapling stakes, I have appreciated the consistency with nylon support held by a T-post and electrical conduit frame. The conduit is fed through PVC T-joints that rest on top of posts. The vines are rambunctious growing towards the low sun; thus, I run cotton twine every foot or so to help encourage them to climb their trellis. They will tank with the first frost, but I rip them out and plant something cold tolerant like spinach in their wake.

Carrots

There is nothing like a fall grown carrot. Seed sown in early September will be ready around early November, but if you let them sit in the soil for another month or two, they will sweeten, again due to sugar acting as a natural antifreeze. That’s a trick I learned from Eliot Coleman, and while we don’t experience quite the extended cold they do further north, I still notice a different between fall and spring carrot flavor.

When sowing seed in late August/early September, moisture is crucial. The seeds have to be watered well every day for six days.  SIX DAYS. I cannot stress that enough in the south. To aid in moisture retention, I will often cover them with floating row cover and check daily for any sign of emergence on the seed. Note that as you sow later into fall, the time to harvest increases. Carrots sown in late November will be ready to harvest 3-to-4 months later.

My favorite cultivars include the orange ‘Napoli’, the crimson ‘Atomic Red’, the violet with orange center ‘Purple Haze’ (although seed has been hard to find of late), and the creme-amber-tangerine mix ‘Rainbow’.

Floating row cover held down by T-posts is an effective cover for reducing water evaporation from the soil to aid in carrot seed germination.

I’m super excited to welcome the fall garden back into production. Best of luck direct sowing seed for these crops this fall, and happy new year for all you cool-season gardening aficionados!

A Little More Thyme

My thyme is in full bloom.  It’s one of the plants that I’ve had the longest in my life.  

My original start came in the early 2000’s from visiting Denise and Charles Berryhill’s herb weekend at their farm Briarwood Gardens right across the state line in Kentucky.  They were both generous in teaching me as a teenager about herbs and organic gardening, and I bought some of my first herb starts from them. The label said mother of thyme, but I’m still not 100% certain of its identity.

I planted the first little sprig of thyme in my little herb bed in the vegetable garden I had at my grandmother’s house.  It was welcomed amongst the mountain mint, sage, yarrow, and comfrey.  I watched it cover the ground and quickly form a dense woody mat. I enjoyed its little flowers it would don in early summer and the fragrance the leaves released with a simple brushing.

Time passed, an offer came for graduate school, and I moved to North Carolina.  I had to leave many of my plants behind, including the thyme. And, within a few years, the Bermuda grass that I had fought for almost a decade reclaimed the ground I had tended.  

After I got my teaching job in Texas, I wandered back to my old garden one Christmas.  I could still make out the worn down paths, but they were now covered by bleached turf mixed with sprigs of green yarrow that had survived my absence.  And, then it caught my eye.  A single sprig of thyme with its red winter cast.  I was ecstatic, as it had hung on this long as if waiting for me to return.  I dug it that day, and brought it back with me to Texas.  I nurtured it in a container, and soon it spilled over the edges and outgrew the pot.  

Once we moved to our log cabin, I planted it back into soil, and it took off once again.  I figured that being Texas it would die in the ground.  But, the plant’s survival surprised me again. This thyme grows during our wet spells, tolerates the hottest days next to black pavement, and shrugs off the cold winters.  I may occasionally loose a small patch, but the plant quickly works to fill the hole.  In June it comes into flower and attracts beneficial insects like bees and wasps.  And, with the first frost each leaf is outlined with a brilliant white, which forms an interesting pattern. Throughout the year, we like to use it chicken dishes as well as Poole’s Diner mashed potatoes with herb-scented cream.

In our kitchen garden it has grown into a dense layer of green that stops most weeds growing.  When needed, I rip off the edges and cram them into an open spot of soil where I want a good groundcover to help prevent erosion.  Life could always use some more thyme, especially one that’s been around for the majority of my time here on earth.

A wasp exits stage left from the thyme patch in our kitchen garden.

This Week in the Garden: Broccoli Ready for Harvest

I returned home from holiday travel to find my broccoli ready to harvest.  I was delighted to see about 15 speckled-blue balloons rising from the forest of glaucous leaves.  

I tried two new cultivars this year—‘Dura-Pak 16’ and ‘Burney’.  These two varieties caught my eye flipping through the Twilley seed catalog because they were listed as part of the Eastern Broccoli Project, an effort to develop broccoli cultivars for the eastern and southern US that tolerate our warmer nights, have flatter heads to shed rain, and root systems that are more tolerant of wet soils.

It was certainly a good year to evaluate their adaptability to wetness.   Greg Grant posted online the other day we’ve gotten 82 inches of rain this past year.  Just since September 1, 45 inches have fallen!  That explains why I’ve had a creek running through my yard since October.  

The plugs also got into the ground a little late, but it’s not uncommon for me to be harvesting broccoli in December and January.  Now, I’m curious to see how these types do on the other end of the cool-season spectrum.  We shall see come later this spring.  

One of my favorite ways to cook broccoli is a recipe learned from Alton Brown’s Good Eats.  Wash it well.  Quarter the florets and stems.  Put it in a skillet with about a 1/4 cup of water.  Turn the heat on high for three minutes and then low for three minutes.  Add some butter and salt, and you’re good to go.  

The buds of ‘Dura-Pak 16’ are quite tight.

‘Burney’ buds are getting a little large, but they’re still delicious for eating.

I'm Digging Peanuts

I dug peanuts the other night for the first time ever. I did the math and determined that approximately 130 days had passed since I shelled the seeds and thumbed them into the ground. Still wanting to garden after the sundown in a month of shortening days, I decided their time had come. I turned on our side door lights, grabbed the pitchfork, and stepped off into our kitchen garden to start prying them up.

We don't have very many plants in the ground—maybe 30–40 in a bed ten feet long. I was wanting to trial them out here in east Texas before I went gung-ho planting. With this small space, I didn’t expect the harvest to take too long or be too difficult.

The only hindrance was finding where a plant’s crown was. It wasn’t the dark that hid them but the long shoots. 'African Runner' was really living up to its name as shoots two feet or longer weaved together to form an amorphous mass of foliage.

A few pries from the fork along the edge, and they slipped right out of the ground with a gentle tug. I was surprised to see the peanuts holding onto the plant so well from the little pedicles. Having just dug sweet potatoes a few weeks back, I figured they’d be breaking off left and right to escape the harvest and remain in their underground sanctuary.

After digging, I laid them upside down to let the plants wilt a bit and called it a night. A rain the next day washed most of the soil off and made removing the chthonic fruit from the plant a much cleaner job. Karen even helped a bit, and by the end of sorting through the legumes, we had over a gallon bucket’s worth. Plenty for next year, Pad Thai, roasting and salting, and maybe even some peanut brittle if I’m adventurous.

Peanuts galore.

Overall, I was quite pleased with their performance. They made a spectacular groundcover during our fierce summer; therefore, I’m considering integrating them with summer crops like sunflowers and corn. Get the taller plant growing and then come behind with peanuts. Their nitrogen fixing ability is a plus as I explore using more functional cover crops here.