Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest

Cool Season Crops for the Year-Round Gardener

Binda Colebrook

• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781550925005
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Horticulture
• Index: Biological Sciences

Many gardeners can supply a significant amount of their own food during the plentiful summer harvest. But the key to substantial savings on your food bill is putting fresh, homegrown produce on your table every month of the year. And in the mild, forgiving climate of the maritime Pacific Northwest, it can be easier than you might think.

In Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest, Binda Colebrook provides a complete guide to cool-season crops and how to raise them. Gardeners from Southeastern Alaska to southern Oregon will benefit from her clear, practical advice on:

• Selecting and preparing the ideal winter gardening site
• Maximizing production and minimizing pests with cloches, cold frames, mulches and companion planting
• Choosing the best strains and hardiest varieties for a year-round growing season.

An excellent companion volume to The Winter Harvest Cookbook, this revised and updated edition of the classic text will have you serving up fabulous alternatives to bland, expensive and tasteless imported supermarket vegetables in no time. Whether your favorite meals include hearty roots or succulent greens, Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest will help you maximize your food production year-round.

Which Vegetables and Herbs to Grow

Introduction

I’ve tried to make this list as comprehensive as possible so that you will learn about the full range of vegetables and herbs suitable for cool season cropping. I don’t suggest you grow all or even most of them in your first years. There are some I haven’t grown myself; information on these comes from others or from books.

I usually don’t give general cul­tural requirements unless they are uncommon or not available elsewhere. Not only am I trying to keep this book short, but I think that you’ll benefit from reading many gardening books and seed catalogs. No one book says it all. Once you realize there is no single “right” way to make a garden, then you are free to experiment on your own.

Using This Guide

The vegetables are arranged in four sections. First are the members of the Cruciferae family — the important brassicas, including cabbage, kale, broccoli and so on. Next come onions and other vegetables that will survive and even thrive over the maritime Northwest winter. The final group includes herbs suitable for winter cropping. The entries in each section are listed alphabetically; if you’re not sure where to look for a particular species, please refer to the index.

Terminology

“Sow” refers to putting seed in the ground (or pot, plug flat, etc.). The term “plant” refers to putting a plant in the ground (transplanting).

Taxonomy comes from:

Suzanne Ashworth, Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, The Seed Savers Exchange, 2002.

S.G. Harrison, G.B. Masefield, and Michael Wallis, The Oxford Book of Food Plants, Oxford University Press, 1973.

C. Leo Hitchcock and Arthur Cronquist, Flora of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington Press, 1973.

Hardiness

I have designated each vegetable as very hardy, hardy or half-hardy. Very hardy plants include leeks, kale, salsify and corn salad, which may live through temperatures as low as 0°F (–18°C). Hardy plants such as cabbages and onions will usually survive frosts of 10°F (–12°C). Half-hardy plants die at freezing or a little below (18°F [–8°C] at the most). These designations are for the purposes of this book only; most of the plants mentioned are hardy compared to other garden vegetables. Freeze-out data are from maximum/minimum thermometers in my own and other gardens in the north­western part of Washington State. At the present writing, the Washington State Extension service has given some actual freeze-out numbers that some varieties will live down to. I have included them here for your interest, but as there are many factors relating to a plant’s winter survival, I would not take them as gospel. Remember that these numbers are approximate. A temperature of 10°F will cause greater damage if it lasts for three days than if it lasts for three hours. Several hard freezes during the winter will cause greater damage to your plants than one. A strong wind along with a low temperature will cause even greater damage. If it snows and then plunges to 10°F, you will get less damage to the covered plants than if it freezes to the same degree without snow cover.

Sowing Dates

When discussing the time to sow certain varieties I often say something like “June in the north, July in the south.” By north I am referring to northern Washington and southern British Columbia; by south, the Willamette Valley. There is about a month’s difference in sowing and planting dates between these two locations, which are approximately 300 miles apart. You will have to adjust these dates for your particular site.

Varieties

Many garden books don’t even list varieties because they change so rapidly. The authors feel there is no point in recommending varieties that may be gone from the market in another five years. They have a good point. Nevertheless, in several places I have broken with this convention for several reasons.

First, it helps gardeners distinguish between summer and cool-season versions of the same vegetable. Second, many breeders have switched over to produc­ing hybrids for industry and therefore so have wholesalers and retailers. If you know the names of the best open-pollinated winter varieties, it will help you recognize them in catalogs, especially in the Garden Seed Inventory pub­lished by the Seed Savers Exchange. If you purchase these varieties now, you have some chance of getting to know them and learning how to save their seed before they disap­pear from the market. Although hybrids are not necessarily bad per se (in fact, many are very superior), they are usually expensive to produce and tightly controlled by the company that produces them and therefore expensive to buy. Third, the name of an old variety can give clues to the nature of present or future ones. If you read in a catalog that a certain cabbage, carrot or kale, hybrid or open-pollinated, has been developed from one you know, you will have some idea of how this new one might perform in your garden.

Unfortunately, in the last few years the seed business has changed dramatically, and many of the old European varieties that work so well in the maritime Northwest are being dropped by commercial seed vendors. Also, the quality of the seed stock of those that have been kept is declining due to lack of breeder attention, improper roguing and other factors. Briefly, companies stand to make far more money from hybrids that they themselves have developed and patented than they do from open-pollinated varieties, which most growers can produce at will. And breeders, as Carol Deppe points out in her excellent book, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, are now working to perfect commercial varieties that are grown on vast scales and are usually unsuitable for the home gardener or even the small producer.

All is not totally bleak, however; many alternative small seed companies have started up to deal with this issue. See Appendix A for a list of recommended companies, keeping in mind that both varietal offerings and the companies themselves come and go over the years. To quickly find a source for a specific variety, try an Internet search for a variety name and the word “catalog.” Seed companies will pop up like weeds after a late summer rain.

If you are a beginner, it will help you to begin by trying some of the recommended varieties — though if you are reading this book ten years from now, you may find that catalogs offer entirely different stock. The important thing is to find the equivalent variety for the job, whether it’s an overwintering cabbage or a good cold-frame lettuce. And the second important thing is to become a seed saver. Choose some of the old varieties that do well in your garden and help save them. Read Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed and the Seed Saving Guide, available free from the Organic Seed Alliance. Join the Seed Savers Exchange and trade seeds.

Since we probably can’t save everything, we should concentrate on whatever we can do best in each of our areas. In the maritime Northwest, our biennials should take high priority. Among these are the cabbages (the fall and winter greens, reds and the Savoys), the late Brussels sprouts, the overwintering cauliflowers. But those are also the more difficult varieties to save, and are better left to a very methodical and experienced professional person. Easier are the kales and the leeks. Annuals such as the Asian cruciferous greens and the winter lettuces can best be selected in winter areas that present a challenge to the varieties but don’t kill them outright. If seed savers in any given area coordinate, they can parcel out endangered varieties to adopt and save. (The Seed Savers Exchange considers a varie­ty endangered when only one company is carrying it.) Also, some people organize Seed Exchange meetings in the late winter; they are lots of fun and educational.

Get to know the people at seed companies in your area that are involved in this process. In short, do what our ancestors had to do in order to have vegetables on their tables.

Crucifers

The Cruciferae family is so large and important to the year-round gardener that it merits its own section. Included in the group are Brassica oleracea (cabbages, broccolis, cauliflowers, Brussels sprouts and some kales), B. rapa (Pe-Tai, Napa, Chihili), the closely related radishes (Raphanus sativus), horseradish (Armoracia rusticana), watercress (Nastur­tium officinale) and American winter cress (Barbarea verna).

These species form a horticultural group with similar needs, pests and diseases. When you practice crop rotation, they should, with a few exceptions, be considered as a group and rotated together.

The exceptions are watercress (which belongs in water or moist soil), horseradish and winter cress (which can go in permanent herb beds) and rocket (which is best grown as a catch crop).

Since our most important brassicas evolved in northwest Europe’s maritime climate, they adapt well to our maritime climate and have special pertinence to this region.

Most of the European brassicas are heavy nitrogen feeders, do well with lime and are susceptible to attack by clubroot, cabbage loopers, cabbage maggots and gray aphids. These brassicas usually benefit from transplanting, as it aids their root system. For individual preferences and cultural tips, see the books by Hills, Simons and Shewell-Cooper listed in Appendix D.

The Asian brassicas are a little harder to work with, because their sensitivity to day length makes it necessary to plan their planting times carefully. But they are flavorful and extremely useful for cold-frame work in more severe climates. Hills, Simons, Solomon, Chan and Larkcom have some cultural suggestions, as do the catalogs from Kitazawa, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, West Coast Seeds and Territorial. Rodale Press has put out a good pamphlet, Sum­mary of Cool Weather Crops for Solar Structures, that discusses the use of frames and includes seed sources and recipes.

Note that the crucifers contain goitrogenic sub­stances (they lower the activity of your thyroid, your body’s thermostat), so I’d go slow on them if I were you, or eat seaweed to balance them out. On the other hand, crucifers are now also believed to play an im­portant role in the prevention of cancer, so that’s a plus.

Broccoli (Brassica oleracea)

Broccoli is one of America’s favorite vegetables, and in milder areas it can be harvested almost year round. Gardeners in cold­er sites will have to do without from early winter until spring. There are good varieties for e...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Praise
• Rights Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the Fourth Edition, 1998
• Preface to the Fifth Edition, 2012
• What This Book is About
• Principles of Winter Gardening
• Winter Gardening Mechanics
• Cloches, Frames and Polytunnels
• Sharecroppers
• Which Vegetables and Herbs to Grow
• Afterword: Food Warrior
• Appendix A: Seed Companies and Other Resources
• Appendix B: Further Reading
• Appendix C: Nutrients in Winter and Summer Vegetables
• Appendix D: A Year-Long Planting Guide
• Index
• About the Author
• Books to Build a New Society