Fall Gardening

October 27, 2011

My neighbor for several years grew a garden.  About early September he would harvest everything, and clear the garden spot in preparation for planting the following year.  He lost a lot of good fall vegetables.  Sarah and Brian, my daughter and son-in-law are still getting zucchini squash from the few plants they planted early spring.  This may be a record for zucchini productivity, but it still chugs along, awaiting the final killing frost.  Several plants will continue to grow and produce until a hard frost kills them. 

Every week since mid September my raspberries have produced 1 to 2 cups of nice disease free berries.  Berry harvest measurement is inaccurate due to the handful I eat every day or two when I walk by.  The last handful was yesterday with a few more berries this morning.   This fall has been quite mild with only some light frosts.  There are more berries to ripen but our chances for many more are slim.  Last year we had a hard frost late September that ended all berry production. 

The most productive zucchinis in the world with a Granddaughter

With planning and mid summer planting several crops do very well into the fall.  Simply look at the days to harvest on the seed package, calculate back from the average frost day and plant.  This is usually sometime in late July or August.  Some crops that grow well planted for fall harvests are Swiss chard, mustard greens, peas and lettuce.  Beets do well planted mid to late summer for a new crop through the fall until deep freezes end the season.  My fall harvested beets grew better than spring planted beets.  Short season carrots will grow very well into the fall.  My spring planted carrots continue to grow in the cool fall months.  After a short drought during August, two inches of rain fell in September.  The carrots doubled in size and some split after they rapidly expanded with the excess moisture.  Some carrots reached 4 inches in diameter.  A later planting would have provided normal size carrots in fall.

Cole crops grow well in the fall months and can withstand heavy frosts.  Early planted brussel sprouts keep producing until temperatures get below 20 F.  Cabbage and broccoli planted mid summer can withstand temperatures to 20 F or sometimes down as low as 15 F.  As a new graduate student and citizen of the great city of Columbus, OH, I visited a friends place who had a broccoli plant that had survived the cold weather clear into December.  There was a nice 4 inch head on the plant.

Radishes planted late can be very tasty as well as being a soil structure enhancement.  A few years ago tillage radishes started to be grown after a crop was harvested in agriculture fields.  The radishes are the long icicle types or Japanese types that grow a deep root that will penetrate deep to increase water penetration after the radish is harvested, eaten by cattle, or just dies due to freezing.  If the weather is mild through the winter and they don’t freeze, they can simply be tilled up in the spring.  There is a chemical in radishes that may be very helpful and provide a natural control of nematodes, a microscopic worm that feeds on plant roots.  Crops grown after a planting of tillage radishes usually have a good yield bump. 

The Garden Doc

Apple harvest

October 17,

Go to the farm market or your local orchard and taste all the varieties of fresh apples you can find.  Here are some of my favorites and assessment of varieties.

My sister has raved on about Honey Crisp.  Yes, they are excellent.  They are firm, sweet, tangy, crispy, delicious with a taste that hangs around, and more.  I have two trees, the first got eaten off by deer twice, even when they left other varieties and I planted the second Honey Crisp in a fence.  The deer know what is good.  The other produced apples last year.  The first is now growing inside the fence.  One online cooking guide states they loose their flavor when cooked.  If they lose flavor, it must make the air smell great.  There is finally enough Honey Crisp around that they were running a $1.69/lb sale locally.  Honey Crisp was developed by Univ. of Minnesota and can only be propagated under license.

SweeTango is the newest variety from University of Minnesota crossing Honey Crisp and Zestar.  I tasted my first SweeTango last year.  They are far and away the best apple I have ever eaten.  I purchased a whole bag and savored them one a day until gone.  There were a few available in my local Pic-n-Save this year. Any grower who has SweeTangos for sale is doing well at $2.99 a pound.  Do you cook with them?  Why bother, just eat them fresh.  Check out www.sweetango.com.

The apple I purchase most often is Gala.  Firm, crisp, good flavor and it is an all around good apple.  It was first grown in New Zealand, then later patented in the US.  (How did that happen?)  Now there are several ‘sports’ of Gala apples with slight variations.  This is an apple that is rated number 2 behind the old standard Red Delicious, which I never buy at a grocer.  A good Red Delicious is a very good apple, but when stored and sold in bags they leave something to be desired.  I have never gone wrong buying Gala apples alone or in the 3 lb bags.  I use them in cooking.

Any of the standard apples in a store with a good produce section should be good.  The ones I occasionally choose after Gala are Fuji, Braeburn, Cameo, and Jonathon. Once I found one called Ambrosia.  It was very good, but I only saw it once. If you can find a good Winesap, it is considered the best by many, but it is very late.  One of the tartest apples is Granny Smith.  I try to avoid green skinned apples for fresh eating, but it is great for cooking as demonstrated Sunday by my son Ben in one of my favorite deserts, apple crisp.  I never tire of apple crisp, warm with fresh vanilla ice cream melting over it.

As a youth, we had Transparent apples trees around.  They are very early and quickly ripened from green to yellow and fell off of the tree.  I longed for a good apple as summer came.  Transparent apples may be the earliest apple variety of the season.  That was before apples could be stored well and well before they were shipped around the world.  They make delicious apple sauce.

My Liberty apple had two apples this year.  They were good.  I never sprayed them and they had no disease and no insects.  For just a good easy apple tree to grow and enjoy, try Liberty or.  It is known for very low disease and no apple scab.

Earlier I bragged, and rightfully so, about SweeTango, but there is one apple that may rival it for over all eating quality, Red Astrachan.  My grandfather had a tree in his yard.  They are tart, maybe the tartest of eating apples, sweet, and become overripe in the shortest time of any variety, then fall from the tree.  They make delicious pies and my mother made apple sauce from them.  Seriously, they went from ripe to overripe in a day or two.  What a wonderful apple, brought to the US from Russia in the 1830’s!  If I had space, this variety would be in my yard.  It doesn’t store at all and will never be shipped.

One of the best all around cooking and eating apples is Golden Delicious.  They keep their integrity when sliced and cooked.  They maintain good flavor and store well.  If I were making apple sauce or apple juice, this would be my first choice.  I often mix apple varieties for pies, apple crisps, sauce and for juice.  Having a good portion of the apples as Golden Delicious really rounds out the taste to be full and flavorful.  Good ripe Golden Delicious apples are quite sweet with firm but not hard flesh.  Rome apples are also bragged as great cooking apples.  They look great and cook well but are far from my favorite for eating fresh.

One of my favorite ways to eat and serve apples is fried.  The recipe below is great for a morning side dish with toast and eggs.

Fried Apple Recipe.

5 apples peeled and sliced

About 1/3 stick of butter {Enough to fry the apples}

1/3 cup of sugar

1/4 cup of flour

Fry the apples in melted butter until they become translucent.  Stir in the sugar and flour until it becomes the consistency of gravy.  Serve hot.  Serves about 4 people.