Deer Tongue lettuce is an heirloom variety that is documented back into the 1740′s.  It has a deep, nutty flavor that doesn’t turn bitter and delicious, crunchy ribs.  It is not widely available because its crispness makes transportation difficult, thus it is rarely seen in stores or even farmers’ markets.

Hyper Red Rumpled was developed by Oregon plant breeder Frank Morton to accentuate the red color and ruffling of the leaves.  It has lovely flavor and the deep red color makes a beautiful addition to salads.

Red Sails

is the most versatile lettuce we grow.  We plant it all year long.  It has great flavor and a nice crunch.  It is able to reach prodigious size without losing its quality.

CUCUMBERS

MARKETMORE: A basic American cucumber that is early and prolific. Loads of 8” tasty fruits.

TASTY GREEN: Our favorite English cucumber with thin-skinned 12” fruits.  Plants are very prolific and burpless.

LEMON: This heirloom cucumber is a great producer, especially at the end of the season.

SUPER ZAGROSS MIDDLE EASTERN: Middle Eastern cucumbers are meant to be harvested small. They are sweet, thin-skinned, burpless and incredibly prolific.

EGGPLANT

EPIC:  An early ripening large deep purple fruit well adapted to the NW (similar to Dusky).

ORIENT EXPRESS: These Asian eggplants are long and thin.  Each plant produces many fruits.

JAPANESE WHITE EGG: A round, small, white eggplant. Prolific and tender fruit.

HERBS

Thai basil, Sweet basil, Italian Large-Leaf basil, Red Rubin basil, cilantro, dill, curly-leaf parsley, and Italian parsley. Perennial herbs (rosemary, tarragon, sage, lavender, oregano etc.) also available at $3.50 per pot.

SWEET PEPPERS

ACE: Green bell pepper ripening red.  Usually ripens well in the cool NW summer.

CARMEN: Long pointed Italian pepper.  Very sweet with thick walls.  Ripens to red a few days later than Ace.

GYPSY: Disease-resistant peppers with bullnose shape. Thick-walled fruit ripen quickly from yellow to red. Prolific and early.

PALLADIO: Tall plants produce large, long green peppers that ripen to golden-yellow.

HOT PEPPERS

JALAFUEGO:  Best jalapeno for our climate.  3 ft. tall plants are covered with fruit.

TIBURON: Poblano chiles bear prolifically on large healthy plants. Quite spicy in warm summers.

SERRANO DEL SOL: Hot chiles are green when young and mature red. Perfect for Mexican dishes.

PUMPKINS

HOWDEN: A great big carving pumpkin. Large vines usually produce one or two whoppers.

NEW ENGLAND PIE: Small pie pumpkin is really delicious. Produces many fruits compared to Howden.

CINDERELLA: Large, reddish, flattened pumpkins are beautiful and tasty.

KAKAI: These small pumpkins are orange with green stripes. The seeds are delicious; dark green and hulless.

SUMMER SQUASH

RAVEN: Slightly more compact bush than some other zucchinis with a darker green skin. High in vitamins!

COCOZELLE: Italian striped zucchinis. Slender and prolific

HORN OF PLENTY: Crookneck summer squash stays smooth, even when fruits get large.

ZEPHYR: A straightneck squash that is half yellow, half pale green. Delicious, nutty flavor.

GOLD RUSH: Large bushes bear loads of bright yellow zucchinis.

WINTER SQUASH

TABLE QUEEN ACORN: Space-saving bush acorn squash.  Plants only spread about 2 feet in diameter.

WALTHAM BUTTERNUT: Butternut squash with great flavor.  Vine needs 3-4 feet.

SUNSHINE: This is the kabocha squash that so many of you loved when we put them in your baskets this past winter.  Very prolific fruit set (5-7 per plant) and a good keeper to boot.

CORNELL’S BUSH DELICATA: The best delicata we grow. Small plants (2-3 foot spacing) produce about 5 delicious fruits per plant.

TOMATILLOS

MEXICAN STRAIN:  Large, green tomatillos.  Fully ripe fruit will fall from the plant.  Incredibly prolific.

PURPLE: Very similar in flavor to Mexican Strain. These fruit turn purple where the sun hits the skin. Still makes green salsa.

TOMATOES

PASTE

ROPRECO: Our favorite paste tomato.  An open-pollinated paste tomato, similar to Roma.  The tomatoes are a little larger and softer.  Determinate plants  (i.e. compact bush).

ROMA: The old standard. A little earlier with a more concentrated fruit set than Ropreco. Determinate plants.

SLICING

BRANDYWINE: Brandywine tomatoes are large, pinkish and absolutely delicious.  Brandywine is an heirloom.  The vines are indeterminate (i.e. large vines).

SPRING SHINE: Spring Shine is a replacement for Early Cascade. This hybrid sets 5 oz. pinkish red globes in clusters with 4-6 fruits per branch. Mid-early production. Indeterminate.

NEW GIRL: New Girl is better than Early Girl! Produces medium-sized red tomatoes from early summer on.  Indeterminate (i.e. large vines).

CELEBRITY: Medium-large fruits on large vines. This is a mid-season hybrid well adapted to our climate.  Indeterminate.

GARDEN PEACH:  Light yellow, slightly fuzzy tomatoes with a fruity lemony tang.  We first grew these heirlooms at the suggestion of a subscriber and have become fans! The seed is our own production. Indeterminate.

GREEN ZEBRA: Heirloom plants produce striped yellow-green fruits with great flavor. Our own seed.

CHEROKEE PURPLE:  We like this open-pollinated, brownish-purple tomato’s winey taste as much as Brandywine’s. Ripens about a week earlier than Brandywine. Vines are indeterminate but not too large.

DELICIOUS: This is a large orange open-pollinated tomato that we have been saving seed from for years. Delicious develops a full flavor, even with the cool nights that Oregon throws at it. Indeterminate vines.

CHERRY TOMATOES

SUN GOLD: These are the orange cherries that many subscribers love.  They have a tropical flavor and produce prolifically.  They are early and dependable.  Huge indeterminate vines.

SWEET MILLION: Our favorite red cherry. Produces tons of fruit slightly later than Sun Gold. Indeterminate.

All our plants cost $2.50 (unless otherwise marked).  We will deliver them with your basket around the time we plant ours outside.  Our plants are grown in 4-inch pots in an unheated greenhouse, so they make the transition to the garden well.  To order, drop us a note in your basket or e-mail us at PumpkinRidgeGdns@aol.com with the varieties and amounts you want.

Every few years weather makes it impossible to harvest and deliver vegetables to our subscribers. Our solution is to skip that week and give extra the next week. In the winter, almost all the crops hold fine (except when we have such cold weather that we lose crops). This weekend, the temperatures were very cold (20 degrees) and the ground is so frozen that Tuesday harvest is impossible. We will have to see whether it is possible to harvest for our Friday subscribers.

We spent quite a while covering crops in the hoophouses and outside in order to insulate them from the cold temperatures. Only time will tell if we were successful. The freezing fog that came through is different than any weather event we have seen in 24 years on Pumpkin Ridge. It may be a good thing for the outdoor crops that so much moisture came with the cold weather; snow insulates crops at 32 degrees and water releases heat as it freezes. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that this unusual cold front didn’t do much damage.

On Sunday morning we woke up to a world of frost thorns. Everything was covered in spikes of ice that were 1-2″ long. Here is what a spider’s silk thread looked like:

The bamboo leaves and the bare twigs all looked like thorny plants

Pretty cool, eh?

As the days start to grow longer, our thoughts turn to spring. Starting in February, we will start seeding crops for the new growing season. However, these early seedlings are slow to grow. Even early, cool-weather crops like radish and lettuce take far longer to mature in the early spring than the days printed in the catalogs promise. For instance, French Breakfast radishes (labelled as 28 days to maturity) sown in an unheated hoophouse on 2/8/11 were harvested on 4/3/11, 55 days later and still a little small!

James with fabulous collards fall 2011

The crops we really rely on to get us past the Spring Equinox are the many wonderful overwintering crops that thrive in our special maritime Northwest climate. Some of these will stand outdoors all winter. Usually, they give us several fall harvests before slowing their growth in December and January around the solstice. The overwintering leaf crops start regrowing vigorously in February, utilizing the extensive root system they created in late summer and fall. In this category are collards, kale and chard, which can withstand temperatures in the 20′s or below.

We also rely on many European root crops that have evolved to withstand Northern European winters and work well here. These include parsnips, celeriac (also known as celery root), leeks, rutabagas (also known as swedes), carrots and beets. Because these crops are mostly underground they can also survive below-freezing temperatures.

celeriac and its incredible roots

These overwintering crops start to run out and go to flower as the days lengthen. This can make March and April challenging months. Leeks in flower develop a hard stalk though the middle and are inedible (although the flower bud is delicious). Other root crops also become pithy and fibrous as they put their energy into seed production. At this point, our harvest shifts to raab (flowering stalks) of many of these crops. Brussels sprouts, for example, unfurl and produce very sweet, broccoli-like heads. Turnips flower buds are known as cimi de rapa in Italy and used in many delicious dishes.

different types of raab

We grow two specialized overwintering crops that shine at this time in the spring: sprouting broccoli and overwintering cauliflower. These vegetables spend all winter looking like nothing but collards. Come spring, however, the purple sprouting broccoli produces masses of purple florets with long stems that taste like a cross between broccoli and asparagus. The overwintering cauliflower makes nice-sized heads in March through May. These cauliflowers, unlike spring-planted cauliflowers, mature at a time of year that predatory insects are not around. They are the best cauliflowers we grow!

Jasper behind outdoor purple sprouting broccoli

Polly holding a bunch of purple sprouting broccoli

overwintering cauliflower April 2012

2011 Thanksgiving Double Basket

Double baskets will be delivered on Tuesday, December 18th and Friday, December 21st.  We will skip Tuesday, December 25th and Friday, December 28th.  We will resume normal deliveries on Tuesday, January 1st and Friday, January 4th.

Our expected harvest includes:  potatoes, onions, leeks, shallots, squash, pumpkins, celery, celeriac, chard, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and rutabaga

Our Pumpkin Pick Up Weekend was the most well attended in our 23 years of farming.  It was inspirational to see so many of you and to see the joy in young faces as they found the perfect pumpkin or tasted fresh cider for the first time.  We are already looking forward to next year and are planning to grow more (and more varieties of) pumpkins and gourds.  Thank you to everyone who came and those of you who sent photos.

Three of our subscribers arrived at the Pumpkin Pick Up on bicycles despite the threatening weather.  Follow these links for some of their photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynnefitz/8089277809/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynnefitz/8089277677/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynnefitz/8089278370/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynnefitz/8088686067/

Looking over one area that we planted up to the gardens

Thank you to all who participated in the tree planting on February 11, 2012! We have a grant from the Natural Resources Consevation Service, part of the USDA, to reforest the back 10 acres of our 20-acre farm. When we came to this land in 1989, this back field had a bare sprinkling of grass. It had been used to grow commercial strawberries, with rows running up and down the slope. With herbicides killing all the vegetation between rows, the rain washed the shallow topsoil down hill into the swampy area. We started planting trees 22 years ago (see our post on “Making Soil” March 2011. Click on “Recent Blog Posts”). The USDA grant enabled us to step up our effort. After two years of blackberry control, we tilled strips 10 feet apart and seeded them to rye grass last fall.

Tilled rows in part of the field

On Saturday, a mighty crew of 35 community members planted close to 3,000 native shrubs and trees in the field.

Polly explaining the protocol to (L-R) Joe, Lisa, Sara and Daniel

James handing out trees to Beth, Bunny and Gayle

Beth and Art planting

We had an awesome lunch crew who served a great lunch.

Allison, Kristine, and Matia

The delicious spread

It got sunny in the afternoon!

Phil and Dawn Iris planted Nootka roses

Teamwork!

Sharon and Mason doing community service

Jasper was not much help

Thanks to Ted who took all the pictures as well as planting alders. Thanks to you all. We’ll need to keep these babies weeded, so anyone who missed this work day will have more opportunities!

Two of our six hoop houses

At this time of year polyculture is vital to us in the hoophouses. This valuable but limited space has to be utilized fully, especially since growing tender crops outside can be difficult in rainy years. What we do to maximize the space is to transplant new crops between those that are going to be harvested imminently. This is a tricky business. Here are some tips on what has worked for us as well as a few instructive missteps:

Ruby Streaks Mustard growing between overwintered lettuces

The lettuces in the above picture have had their outer leaves harvested for salad mix weekly for at least six weeks. At some point, they are going to need to be taken out completely. By then the Ruby Streaks mustard will have filled in the space. Look at this time lapse sequence of a similar situation:

[Show as slideshow]

Here you can see Mibuna mustard slowly overtaking the constantly-harvested lettuce they are planted between.

Sometimes the timing of this cohabitation misfires. Above you can see some vigorous endive overtaking the spindly arugula that were transplanted in between them.

The arugula was much happier in this bed. Here arugula and pea transplants were put into the bed around the same time. The peas are climbing strings, allowing the arugula to flourish. By the time the peas are large enough to shade the arugula, the arugula will be harvested for salad mix or as a bunched item.

Here is another happy pair. The Red Sails lettuce and watercress were transplanted into the hoophouse in the Fall at the same time. The lettuce can be harvested from early February, while the watercress tends to stay in suspended animation until late March. At that point the lettuce heads can be harvested whole and the watercress will take over the bed. Of course, when the watercress blooms and becomes bitter (a few weeks later) it also comes out.

Here is another example of crops being stacked in time. In this bed, the row of radish down the middle was sowed in early February at the same time the Asian broccoli was seeded in potting soil in flats in the greenhouse. By the time the broccoli transplants were ready to go into the hoophouse bed four weeks later, the radishes were teenagers. Two to three weeks after that, the Asian broccoli will be taking over the bed and the radishes will be ready to harvest.

Of course, using this space so intensively means taking special care of the soil. We add compost between each crop, sometimes three or four times a year. Watering is also important. With crops spaced so closely, overwatering can cause fungal diseases. Hoophouses, with their plastic covering, recycle water very efficiently. Only water when the surface is dry! Air circulation is vital as well; our hoophouses have roll-up sides that we open whenever possible.

Nature has a way of experimenting with a range of varieties, timing and niches. Although farming is not a natural system, we try to mimic nature by creating a varied ecosystem in our hoophouses. The care and effort we expend is amply rewarded with a bounty of Spring greens.

The holiday season is upon us, and we have worked out our November and December schedule.  As we always do, we will deliver a DOUBLE BASKET PRIOR TO THANKSGIVING (FRIDAY NOVEMBER 18TH OR TUESDAY NOVEMBER 22^ND). WE WILL SKIP DELIVERY THE FOLLOWING WEEK AND RESUME DELIVERY on Friday the 2nd or Tuesday the 6th.

This year the calendar and our travel plans mean we will be delivering fewer but larger baskets for the month of December.  Because most winter vegetables will store very well for several weeks, we plan to give you five weeks worth of vegetables in these deliveries. Until the harvests actually happen, this is only our plan, subject of course to weather and/or other influences beyond our control.

TUESDAY DELIVERY SCHEDULE:

11/22/2011 (Thanksgiving double basket)

pie pumpkin, acorn squash, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, celery, celeriac, shallots, carrots, parsnips, spinach, and garlic.

12/06/2011

cabbage, beets, potatoes, squash, celeriac, leeks, onions, carrots, kale and garlic

12/13/2011

pie pumpkin, Brussels sprouts, squash, celery, collards or other cooking greens, potatoes, parsnips, leeks, rutabagas, carrots and garlic

REGULAR DELIVERY WILL RESUME 01/10/2012

FRIDAY DELIVERY SCHEDULE:

11/18/2011 (Thanksgiving double basket)

pie pumpkin, acorn squash, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, celery, celeriac, shallots, carrots, parsnips, spinach, and garlic.

12/02/2011

beets, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, leeks and collards

12/09/2011

cabbage, beets, potatoes, squash, celeriac, leeks, onions, carrots, kale and garlic

12/16/2011

pie pumpkin, Brussels sprouts, squash, celery, collards or other cooking greens, potatoes, parsnips, leeks, rutabagas, carrots and garlic

REGULAR DELIVERY WILL RESUME 01/13/2012

BUTTERNUT

Waltham (left) and bush (right) types.  Both have very small seed cavities and deep orange delicious flesh.  Great for soups or eating on its own.

DELICATA

One of the most popular, long-keeping squash we grow. Its flavor improves in storage.

CARNIVAL

Looks like a funky-colored acorn, but is tastier and better keeping.

ORANGE DAWN, SUNSHINE, OR EASTERN RISE

All three of these varieties are Kabocha types.  This is our new favorite winter squash.  The dry, sweet flesh is a great substitute for sweet potato.

SWEET MAMA

A new variety for us this year (2011).  This large-fruited buttercup type is very similar in taste to kabocha; dry and sweet.

SWEET DUMPLING

Another new variety for us this year (2011).  The flesh is sweet and similar to Delicata.  The smaller size makes it appropriate when you want a single serving.  We found the plants to be very prolific.

SMALL WONDER SPAGHETTI SQUASH

A more basket-friendly version of the giant vegetable spaghetti squash we have grown in the past.  Our favorite source for wheat-free pasta. We use it for the Oriental Noodle Salad recipe (elsewhere on the web site).

TABLE KING ACORN

Everybody’s favorite Thanksgiving squash.

ACORN SQUASH

Who knew the plants would sometimes throw an odd colored fruit?

SUGAR PUMPKINS

Perfect for pies or even bulking up other squash varieties.  We like to make a pumpkin curry, too.  These will be in your Thanksgiving and Winter Solstice baskets.

TRIAMBLE

If you picked up one of these heirloom squashes at our pumpkin pick-up weekend, let us know what you think of its flavor.