Gardening diary, New England edition

[Rosalind]

Thought I would share the various types of things doing well/not so well for me here in Massachusetts: Clay soil with rocks and extra rocks, partly shaded by hardwoods.

Flowers: Hungarian bread seed poppies, carnation poppies, rugosa roses of all breeds, all kind of pansies, borage, Arikara and black oil sunflowers, American Beauty statice, Milkmaid and black velvet nasturtiums, snail flower all did well for me this year. Not so well--Datura, madder, cockscomb, bee balm, Chinese pinks, southernwood, Midnight Blue & Apricot Rose statice.

Veggies

Lettuce: Reine des Glaces, SSE 1024 mix, Sandrina, Persian garden cress, Rouge d'Hiver did well. Not good--Red deer tongue, Four Seasons.

Cabbage family: Blue curled Scotch kale, red drumhead, Red Acre, January King, Copenhagen Market did well. Blue Scotch kale did awesome, actually, would recommend for beginners. Not good--Waltham 29 & Thompson broccolis (damped off, didn't germinate too well to begin with, et by various critters, only got 1 head/2 packets seeds till all said and done), Winningstadt did lousy and barely germinated. Lacinato Rainbow kale barely sprouted.

Squash family: Must be started in peat pots and set directly in ground. Had no luck with transplants at all. Good--Boston Marrow winter squash (they get BIG), Cocozelle bush zucchini, Blue Ballet winter squash, Parade & Mideast Prolific cukes, spaghetti squash. Bad--Cheyenne Bush pumpkins, luffa, Lady Godiva, Thelma Sanders sweet potato. Mostly the unlucky ones were transplants that croaked, but Lady Godiva damped off. I have no idea why, because all the squash seedlings around the Lady Godiva ones were perfectly fine, go figure. Melons, forget melons, they all croaked despite my best efforts. Even the nursery-bought melons croaked.

Peppers: SSE Fish peppers are doing the best so far, Czech black are also OK. Others (Alma paprika, Sweet Chocolate, Ring O Fire cayenne, Purple Beauty & Sunrise Orange bells, Aci Sivri, Aji Colorado, Ancho) are quite scrawny for July. Eggplants also puny and pathetic, although Udmalbet looks the best of em.

Tomatoes: So far, all tomatoes assayed are freakin' huge and broke their trellises after today's rain. All tomatoes are still green and small though. But the plants all look nice--Etoile Blanche D'Anvers, Red Ruffled, Brandywine, Culstrage, Pale Perfect Purple, Heidi Paste, Banana paste, Amish paste, German Queen, 3 Sisters, Amana orange, yellow pear, all look great.

Early wonder beets, excellent, v. productive. Beetberry did not even germinate. Danvers 1/2 long, Coreless Amsterdam carrots also well. Autumn King, Nantes coreless carrots did lousy. Purple Peruvian potatoes did well as usual, as did banana fingerling and a bag of half-sprouted store potatoes.

Grain: Hopi Red Dye amaranth, Rainbow quinoa, black tip wheat, white hulless popcorn all doing pretty good. Sweet corn did horrible, we just got too much rain and it all rotted. I'm buying store corn...

Beans: Purple podded pole bean started yielding just as the sugar snaps finished up, and very productive, reasonably tasty. Ideal Market bean, not so ideal here. French green lentils sprouted & leafed out but never made any beans.

Onions: Blue solaize leeks did OK, but otherwise terrible all around. I can't grow onions without sets, apparently.

Alpine strawberries did far better than the regular kind. Go figure. Must be the part shade.

Flax did excellent. Should you want a quick field of green stuff that gets pretty little blue flowers in summer, kinda like a meadow, flax is your friend in New England. If I had a lot of other fiber crops (alpaca, sheep or some such) and did a lot of spinning, I'd put in a lot more flax. Trouble free, easy to plant.

How are things in your neck of the woods?

 

[lesa]

Wow- you certainly keep good records...Could you tell me more about growing quinoa? Were you able to grow enough to make it worth while? Do you have a photo? This is one of my favorite grains, I would love to try growing it...I'm in zone 4-which I imagine is near yours....

 

[Rosalind]

Don't have a photo, sorry. It doesn't look like much--looks a lot like lamb's quarters until the seeds start to form. The seedheads look more rounded and less pointy than lamb's quarters though. I had it mixed in a 10x10' bed of winter squash, so let's just say I didn't try very hard to get a lot. Probably if I had put the entire bed into quinoa, I would have gotten a very decent amount.

I think I lucked out because the spring was fairly warm--if we had gotten a late frost, as we so often do, then I'd have a problem. I suspect this crop in New England would require either no late frosts or no early frosts, but we've been having plenty of years with either/or. I grew a smaller amount last year and it would have given me enough for about five side dishes, except DH didn't recognize it as a food item and mowed it for a weed.

 

[lesa]

Very interesting- did you buy the seeds locally or did you have to order them? Is their a process involved in harvesting and consuming it? The kind I buy in the store seems like maybe it is dried? Or do you just eat it when it is ready, off the plant? Thanks!

 

[Rosalind]

Ordered seeds from JL Hudson, they had two kinds. Harvesting is real easy, just grab the seedhead and shake it over a big bowl. Give it a few whacks with a spoon or something to make sure the seeds all shook out. Normally you let the seedhead dry on the stalk, but there is a certain amount of bird damage to consider--you want to beat the birdies to it, you might have to pick it not-quite-dry and let the stalk dry in the basement upside down, sort of thing. Then cook just like the kind in the store. You can put it in a fine sieve and rinse it a bit to get some of the bubbly saponins off, but this is sort of optional. I never rinse my store quinoa either, I never knew you were supposed to until I read an article somewhere. I thought it was supposed to taste faintly bitter, and just added a bouillon cube to the cooking water.

 

[lesa]

Too cool- thanks for the info! I just recently read something about the rinsing, too. I have been cooking it for years, without! I guess maybe I'll give it try. I will try to order seeds and see how it goes. Thanks!