Garden Updates – Prior Unity Garden Blog

More trials of spring crops

January 31, 2021February 1, 2021priorunityLeave a comment

Let’s talk roots.

I was talking with a fellow gardener last spring about root crops and she told me, “I am not going to try and grow roots crops anymore, they just don’t seem to do well for me.”

This got me thinking about my adventure over the years with root crops and how I have really seen how much variety matters. Matching varieties with your soil type can make a big difference.

My friend Jean kept trying to plant long thin carrot varieties in our mostly clay soil. Even though she has been building her garden soil for many years, she wasn’t getting good carrots.

This got me thinking about root crops I have had success with and those I have not. For me, the carrot thing has been a germination or taste disappointment. There are only four varieties I grow anymore: Danvers 126; Yaya; Black Nebula and Amarillo.

After trying a good 10 orange varieties, the Danvers 126, and older open pollinated and Yaya a newer hybrid are the ones I recommend. Both are widely available. Yaya’s germination is more reliable. They are both easy to harvest and both have outstanding flavor.

With our hot summer, carrots that get to full size tend to get bitter and fibrous and skip the sweet stage, but not these two.

Purple! Who doesn’t love the idea of a purple carrot. I have tried: Cosmic Purple; Purple Sun and Dragon and frankly they tasted pretty horrid. Then I found Black Nubula from Baker Creek. This is one beautiful and yummy carrot. Even when I let a few stay in the garden into our blistering heat of mid-summer, they were still sweet, and huge.

And when it comes to color, I grew Yellowstone for years to have a yellow carrot in the mix, but never liked the flavor, so I always gave them away. Then, again, thank you Baker Creek for Amarillo – woo hoo .. a super yummy sweet yellow carrot.

Helios, Purple Plum and Cherry Belle Radishes

I love radishes, always have since I was a kid and my two new favorites are Purple Plum and Helios.

Several companies have Purple Plum which has white flesh and pretty purple skin. I find it reliable and it doesn’t tend to split.

You may not know there is a yellow skinned radish called Helios. I found it from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds but now I see other folks starting to carry it. I have never had one split, they just get bigger and even at 3” they don’t tend to get pithy. They don’t taste as good when they get that big, but they are edible, unlike some other of the smaller class of European radishes when they get larger.

That’s it for now. Look for my next installment soon ..

Varieities to Try – What I have been Trialing

January 26, 2021January 26, 2021priorunityLeave a comment

Some of you might be ready to try a new variety you haven’t grown before, but are not sure what to try.

Others of you might want to try and grow a different crop, but are unsure about doing so.

I realized in the last few days it has been a while since I passed on info on varieties I have been trialing. Each year I try new varieties along with ones I have loved to grow for years.

So in this blog post series I’ll pass on some varieties that I’ve fallen in love with and some I don’t ever want to grow again.

Both perspectives are important because the descriptions you’ll get from seed companies put every variety in a good light. We can get some idea from those descriptions what we might want to try, but there is nothing like growing them yourself to see if you like them.

I like to try a variety for at least two years before I make a decision about it. Each year the weather is different and can affect their growth. To give each variety a fair shot, I grow them in different beds each time, because each has a bit different soil or light. Plus, it may have had a different type of crop preceding it in crop rotation.

Today lets go through some brassica family plants. I start here because for some of us, it will soon be time to start spring plants indoors.

Lets talk broccoli. For years I have grown the same open pollinated varieties and they did okay. I kept reading descriptions of hybrids as being more uniform and the last three years I broke down and decided to try some. Okay, as you know, I am a champion for seed sovereignty and preserving genetic diversity in seeds, so I have tended not to grow that many hybrids. It has been interesting to start growing some to make comparisons.

So at this point both Fiesta and Belstar broccolis have outperformed my standard open pollinated varieties. They are both hybrids, both organic and both available from both High Mowing Seeds and Territorial Seeds. The germination rates are higher, the plants are stronger and they head more reliably and hold up over winter better.

Cabbage: another cool season crop you can start now is cabbage.

Caraflex cabbage — One late spring, after I have harvest the Caraflex head, I left the roots in the ground and it kept growing other heads. We ate from it all summer.

The best new cabbage I have been growing is Caraflex, another hybrid. I admit I was pretty darn skeptical about growing a hybrid cabbage, but my rep at High Mowing Seeds convinced me to try it and I am thrilled she did! I tend to get 100% germination, the cabbage heads well, holds better in the garden through heat and cold better than any cabbage I have ever grown, and I have grown over 20 varieties.

One cabbage listed for short season is Red Express. It seems to be the only short season offering in red cabbages. I have tried to get a decent head out of it for over five years and it just doesn’t happen. It takes about 120 days to get a head the size of a gold ball for me, so I’d say, don’t bother trying this one.

Kale:

A kale I have kept trying to grow for years is Scarlett, red-purple curly kale that continually has very low germination rates. I have tried seed from four companies I trust, tried starting it indoors in winter for spring and again in summer for winter and tried seeding it directly outdoors in spring and fall and in all these scenarios, I get maybe 25% germination, so I quit and can’t recommend it.

But I can highly recommend Dazzling Blue kale, which is a lacinato type. Great germination, hardly plants in both cold and heat, they taste great and color is just awesome. Bluish leaves with purple/red veins in hot weather and deep purple when overwintered. I have gotten my seed from Territorial, but many good companies carry it.

Lookout for the next post on varieties I have been testing .. until then, have an awesome day!

Debby

Autumn Musings – What worked & didn’t this year – part 4 of 4

November 28, 2019November 20, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

As I continue reflecting on the garden year so far we did have some great harvests …

Eggplants, no water, no problem.

Love the white eggplants. They look like large duck eggs so not too big and not too small. We got loads, made dishes with them all summer and into fall. Have some cooked and frozen too. If you have a place with loads of sun and little water, your eggplants will be happy.

If you have an area that gets loads of sun and not much water, consider putting eggplants there. I did water them occasionally, but not that often and they were super happy.

over witnered fiesta broccoli — Overwintered Fiesta Broccoli

Overwintered broccoli, hardier than expected.

Wow, just didn’t protect the broccoli plants we got in late. Yet got a super early broccoli harvest, even with temps down into the single digits off and on for a couple weeks.

Hardier than I expected.. check out Fiesta Broccoli from High Mowing Seeds.

We also grow Belstar and De Ciccio green heading types.

Melons, melons, melons!

lots of melons — But when we looked under the leaves, we had about 8 per plant.

Remember when I didn’t water the potatoes and got no harvest. Well, the opposite happened with the melons this year. Both melon patches were in places that got watered allot and we had loads of melons. Water folks, plants love it.

That is all my Autumn musings for now. If more useful lessons come to mind, I’ll be sure to pass them on. For now, happy gardneing and check out all our resources if you haven’t yet. – Debby

Autumn Musings – What worked & didn’t this year – part 3 of 4

November 25, 2019November 20, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

Okay, folks, here are some things that did work this year.

dried christmas lima beans — Dried christmas lima beans. The bowl of beans in the photo is about 1/16^th of the number we have gotten.

Lets go back to those pole beans, they were Christmas Limas, one of our favorites. We got LOADS, I am seriously so many beans. We have had five means from them, have enough for another 8 or so meals of them fresh and a half gallon dried for winter. So .. eve thought we had to repair the deer fence – we got load of luscious beans!

fresh lima beans — Freadh Christmas lima beans

colors of christmas limas — Ripening progression of Christmas lima beans. Left are the youngest. Right are dried.

Tomatoes! Have you ever been sick of too many fresh tomatoes? I didn’t think it was possible, but it is. Gratefully, everyone loves them, so they are easy to give away.

Have been experimenting with pruning the last few years and have gotten it to keeping two to three leaders and pinching out the suckers. One leader – they were too tall to harvest. Not pruning enough suckers and they didn’t get enough air flow so we got diseases.

Autumn Musings – What worked & didn’t this year – part 2 of 4

November 23, 2019November 20, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

Continuing my consideration on what didn’t work so well this year. There were a couple things I really did know, but life and laziness can sometimes happen to not such good outcomes. A couple of these lessons are:

3.Blowing off watering potatoes. Okay, they were in the back, the farthest away from the water and I just got lazy, didn’t want to drag a hose back there, my bad since we got no potatoes. They have always been a super simple crop, but like other plants, when it doesn’t rain for a month, they need water.

Lesson: Water, duh, don’t get lazy about it if you want potatoes.

Was so bad, there was nothing to photo, but here is an inspirational one from a normal harvest..

4.Getting plants in late. So this year, it took a long time to get some of the garden beds cleaned out and so some of the pepper plants went in super late. They were just getting going pumping out peppers when it was time to pull them out to make room for fall and winter crops. Granted, lack of rain for a month didn’t help.

Lesson: If life happens and it gets late, if you have your plants already, perhaps have grown them yourself like I have, then you’ll want to plant to leave them as long as possible and potentially forgo using that bed for fall and winter, or know you’ll get less of a crop. If you don’t have your plants yet, consider short days-to-maturity varieties to get your fall and winter garden in on time.

More musings to come .. have a great day .. Debby

Autumn Musings – What worked & didn’t this year – part 1 of 4

November 20, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

Hi folks,

Sitting in my office on a Tuesday in autumn, I begin reflecting on the passing gardening year. As I consider what worked and what didn’t, it occured to me there are lessons here that may be useful for you so here you go …

What didn’t work:

1.Pole beans too close to the deer fence. Yikes, the pole beans grew over 15 feet and jumped onto the deer fence, seems okay, until a big wind storm came. The weight of the beans took down a section of deer fence in a big wind.

deer fence down inside garden — Deer fence caved in toward the garden

deer fence down outside — Bent deer fence from outside the garden

Lesson: keep space between your pole beans and fence, or trim pole beans away from fence.

2. Watch the last day of school. If your garden is accessible, hang out there the last day of school. Had someone/s throw spring cabbages around the garden the evening of the last of school at a display garden I manage. It was heartbreaking to see them all over the garden, such a waste of food. There was vandalism all over the area, which is normally very safe and benign. Several folks said it was Jr. High boys. This is a good reason to get your children and grandchildren involed in growing food and understanding what goes into food production, so they have respect and don’t waste.

Vandalized cabbage were all over the garden …

cabbage on top of 12 foot tomato cage — They even threw them on top of the 10′ cage we have to protect tomatoes from birds

Lesson: If your garden is accessable on known potential vandalism days, like the last day of school, shedule a pot luck, or hang out there, or rotate folks being in the garden into the evening.

Check back for the more lessons from this year and have an awesome day! Debby

Why Growing Dry Beans is So Awesome

October 17, 2019October 17, 2019priorunityLeave a comment

Do you love soups in the winter? I sure do, a pot of soup on the stove heating up the house with its yummy smells filling the air. Dried beans are a must have for winter soups.

Today is a pleasantly cool rainy fall day, perfect for listening to some favorite tunes, enjoying a cup of tea and shelling beans, humming and dancing while the shelled beans pile up in a bowl, ready to be planted next spring and eaten this winter.

When I shell dried beans, I keep some of the biggest, plumpest out for planting the following year. The rest are put into jars for eating.

There are literally hundreds of varieties of dried beans, so choose the ones you like to eat. Are you into Minestrone soup, then grow Cannellini beans. Into nachos, then grow pinto or black beans. Love making chili, grow some Kidney beans. Beyond these pretty well known favorites there are loads of other types to try to make you own unique winter soup.

A couple lesser known of favorites I like to grow are Vermont Cranberry and Christmas Limas. Vermont Cranberry is a bush bean, where Christmas Limas are pole beans. They are both beautiful and both make your soup broth a rich warm burgundy color.

You can find lots of varieties of dried beans that grow as bush beans or pole beans, depending on which you prefer to grow. I like a bit of both. Bush beans yield faster, but I get a larger harvest from pole beans. Check the Days to Maturity on the varieties that look interesting to you. This will tell you if you’ll have enough time to grow them until they dry on the plant. If you are in the south, this is usually not an issue. Northern gardeners whose number of hot summer days are shorter may want to stick to shorter days to maturity bush types.

When looking at seed catalogs for bean varieties, note that some beans are good both fresh and dried. This can be a good use of garden space, as you can have a round or two of fresh green beans, then let the rest go for dried beans. This way you get two types of beans from one plant!

Bon appetit, I’m off to enjoy my first cool weather soup made with home grown beans.

Get a Free List of Debby’s Favorite SEED COMPANIES

Why Grow Your Health?

March 23, 2015priorunityLeave a comment

For three years now I have been honored to be a part of the team who put on the Grow Your Health, Gardening, Local Food and Wellness Festival.

There are several reasons for our participation in this local annual event:

First off, we are passionate about spreading the word of growing your own food. Gardening is a great way to get outside, off our computers for a few, and get back to our roots – sometimes literally – in the case of carrots and radishes. Grow Your Health is a great venue to talk gardens and empower people to garden.

The festival is also about local food. This local festival gets community members together with local farms and healthy food providers in a fun environment. Connecting folks with our local farmers and practitioners enriches our local economy. It also allows each to expand their community support system. Families supporting family farms was part of how this country was built and these relationship nurture the heart of everyone involved.

The third focus of the festival is wellness, not only of our bodies through various support systems, but also the wellness of the planet that supports us all. The movie we are showing this year, GMO OMG talks primarily about the potential effects of genetically modified organisms in our food, but the business of growing these has major impacts on the wellness of planet earth.

Helping the next generations learn about healthy practices for themselves and their planet, how to connect with the planet through gardening and knowing where their food comes from is part of the family value this festival can provide. Each year we strive to make the event better for families to attend, more fun for children and provide everyone who attends an enriching community event.

Come out and join us, Saturday, March 28, 10:00 am – 5:30 pm.

Stop by the Prior Unity Garden Booth and sign up for the raffle to win some prizes.

As part of the class lineup, Russell will be part of a Gardening Q&A at 11:00 am and Debby will be teaching Small Space Gardening at 1:30 pm.

We’ll also have spring plants and other cool stuff.

MORE EVENT INFO

GET TICKETS – Adults $10 in advance, $15 at the door – Children under 16 FREE

– Debby Ward,Founder & Owner of Prior Unity Garden & Management Team Member, Grow Your Health – Gardening, Local Food & Wellness Festival

Grow Your Health Festival 2015

March 17, 2015February 23, 2015priorunityLeave a comment

We'll have baby lettuce, kale, chard and arugula plants for your spring garden. — We’ll have baby lettuce, kale, chard and arugula plants for your spring garden.

Come celebrate spring at the Grow Your Health – Gardening, Local Food and Wellness Festival on March 28, from 10:00 am – 5:30 pm. W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax VA.

Come take classes on gardening, food and wellness. I’ll be teaching Small Space Gardening and Russell will be teaching about building healthy living soil.

Watch the movie, GMO OMG, enjoy local artisan food and stop by our booth and get your baby spring greens plants !

More info

Get a ticket NOW

Come by the Prior Unity Garden Booth at the Grow Your Health Festival and say hi !

Do You Know Quality Seed and Where to Get It?

January 2, 2015priorunityLeave a comment

Seed Catalogs — Catalogs from some of our recommended companies.

The easy answer is to purchase your seed from one of the companies on our Recommended Seed Company List. This works great if you have come to trust our process of evaluating companies.

I am not an “activist”, it is has never been my interest or my bent, yet I do “vote with my dollar” and so choose to support companies who have the values I consider important. To that end, each year I research companies, read a pile of seed catalogs and compare varieties and plant lists of those folks I know and trust and those I don’t.

It has become clear that in addition to the current 13 criteria we use to evaluate a company, two more need to be added. Here are our additional criteria and why we added them. See the first 13 criteria.

Does the company sell varieties that are owned by companies who engage in genetic modification of seeds?

One company in particular, who was on our list for years, has staunchly continued to offer a small percentage of varieties owned by Monsanto. Granted, most of these varieties were not bred by Monsanto, but were bred and owned by companies who Monsanto bought a few years ago. For those like us, who do not want to support companies who engage in genetic modification of seed, the act of buying from a company who buys from a company who engages in genetic modification of seed, is indirectly supporting companies who engage genetic seed modification. Prior Unity Garden does not support this activity. Therefore any company who buys seed from companies who create GMO seed will not make our list, even if they have signed the Safe Seed Pledge.

You may be thinking, but if they signed the Safe Seed Pledge, then they are not selling GMOs, right ? Generally speaking, you are correct, they are not selling genetically modified seed, but they can still sign the Pledge and sell seed that is not genetically modified from companies who make GMO seed. Doing this practice now excludes a company from being on our recommended seed company list.

Does the company actually grow the varieties they sell?

There are ‘seed houses’ who are resellers of seed only, buying seed wholesale and reselling it. They may grow some of it, but do not really have field trials, so are not really in touch with the varieties they are offering.

We have found the seed quality and reliability from these companies to swing wildly and these companies do not have people you can talk with about growing specific varieties they offer. While this may be fine for some folks, we find it frustrating when evaluating specific varieties for growing traits our clients have requested. In effect, you become the testers. Because we want to recommend the highest quality seed companies how offer the highest quality seed, we will not be putting companies on our list who do grow all or most of the varieties whey offer. These companies simply cannot support what they sell to the high degree other companies can.

In some cases, a company will offer seed from a variety of local farms and this is a practice we love seeing as it supports small local farms and seed. In this case, the seed house may not trial every variety, but their partner farms are growing seed and this practice has proven to be an excellent marker of quality seed, in part because the farm’s name is on the seed. These companies do make our list. Granted, most of them also test all or most of the varieties they offer.

Who owned the company?

As large Agribusinesses buy out smaller companies, this question is becoming more important. It used to be seed companies be handed down through generations of a family. Now, it is good to know and sometimes difficult to find out. Often the Agribusiness does not want their ownership known.

Call the company, see what is written in the catalog and website. The point here is avoiding supporting agribusinesses who engage in generic modification of seed.

Companies who are owned by large agriculture businesses will usually sell varieties they own, so knowing what those varieties are, helps you discern if you want to support that business or not.

You can make the process easier and let us do the research for you. See our list of Recommended Seed Companies and/or the rest of our Seed Company Criteria.