Fall Vegetables for Fast Harvests
From Seed to Table in Under 60 Days
Burpee Gardens is showcasing 9 varieties of short season crops ideal for growing even as far north as my Long Island City Zone 7. The recommended varieties and their time to harvest:
1.Radish, "French Breakfast," described as a classic heirloom variety, 23 days from seed to harvest
2.Lettuce, "Gourmet Blend," "tasty and colorful, tender and very sweet", ready in 45 days
3.Spinach, "Baby's Leaf," Burpee's most popular fall crop, ready in 30 days
4.Arugula, "Rocket", "tender leaves with robust flavor", 35 days from seed to table
5.Mesclun "Sweet salad mix," a mild, sweet blend, 30 days to table
6.Broccoli, "Flash Hybrid" ready in 30 days
7.Cucumber, "Double Feature" described as tasty at any size, ready in 50 days (where do I keep my pickling spices?)
8.Beet, "Chicago Red", Burpee's earliest harvesting variety, ready in 49 days
9.Kohlrabi, "Sweet Vienna' described as uniquely sweet and superb raw or steamed, 45 days
Burpees also offers a helpful map to the climate zones for the entire country. Just input your zip code, and you will be informed of the expected temperature range for your area and the earliest sensible dates for spring planting. Burpee also offers a nutritional guide that tells you what vitamins and minerals each crop provides. Frankly, their guide is a lot better than what I have seen passed off as nutritional information.
Burpee offers a "Floating Row Cover" In 6 ft by 50 ft reusable roll for $18.95. Essentially, this is very heavy clear plastic that can be draped over a crop to protect from late season frosts and cool nights. For those who want to go a little more high-tech, a "Tun-L-Cover" is available $19.95 which expands to 18 feet and is supposed to increase growing temperatures up to 25 degrees. Both of these are suitable to be reused next spring to extend the growing season on the opposite end.
Or you can skip the fancy stuff and grow some of the smaller crops in window boxes, next to heat emitting walls or in protected courtyards. Without your doing a thing natural micro-climates can easily extend your growing season by several weeks. Our Southern Cousins need do nothing at all.
You may also have some heavy plastic of your own lying around. Astoria tradition includes several generations of Southern Italians wrapping their fig trees with black plastic and a bushel basket on top to keep the plant within from injury. With the right materials, a few strategically placed stakes,... you get the picture. Or just cover them at night, remove at first light.
Sources:
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Published by Mary Finn
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garden for your life! Copy this site to paper for fear of losing power for your computer, and stow all the survival information you can get with your most precious papers! We are a button-push away from certain total destruction, a game playing out beyond our power to change, and in dead earnest, all these Centuries! Plant Food! The dark horse rides on! The dark horse rides on! Hide your virgin daughters, save your seeds peasants! The gods are angry and playing their deadly games with your country! The dark horse rides on!
Part Two
disease! He revels in its corrupt corporatists! He sings to the glories of dishonest, constipated, self-serving government! he knows the lobbiests lobby for him in the end, and he awaits the final glorious blood-bath to come! Plant food dear peasants, peons of America! and develop gardening and greenhousing to save your very souls! The end is near, and to survive the huge paradigm shifts it brings, with great cycles of the economy, and the Greater Depression looming on the horizon, we must look for other means for survival in a world with little else than seeds and soil and sun! The turmoil will blast us back into the days of agriculture, and hand-farming on the land! The jobs and factories are already gone! The base is moved to Asia, and we linger, reminents of what once was, the Great late America! No heed to the lessons taught by the fall of the U.S.S.R. we have run headlong, with great determination straight into the same quagmire, even Afghanistan a part of our follies!