You might love the more frequent, hands-on tasks that your home garden calls for during the growing season, but what if you could learn organic gardening techniques that save time and money, as well as create a continuous, season-long output of vegetables, fruits and herbs?
Charlie Nardozzi's latest book, The Continuous Vegetable Garden: Create a Perpetual Food Garden that Sows and Grows Itself includes tips for just that. The book is out on Feb. 3, and available for pre-order.
The book covers multiple ways to intentionally plant your garden so it continuously produces food right through the season. With handy tips in each chapter, the book guides home gardeners on how to plant, grow, harvest and use their backyard bounty and make a sustainable, self-perpetuating garden.
By planting some perennial veggies, letting select greens and herbs self-sow and reusing plants, you'll be able to grow more of your family's food in an ecologically friendly way, for less work and less money.
Beyond asparagus
When you think of perennial vegetables, asparagus and rhubarb might leap to mind first. Those are the types of plants that, once you get them established in your garden beds, they will, indeed, grow and produce vegetables year after year, in some cases for decades. But there are other great perennial varieties to plant: This spring, try perennial broccoli, kale, sorrel and even horseradish.
Become a 'garden editor' with self-sowing veggies
Plant self-sowing vegetables — like lettuces, mustards and arugulas — then in the fall, let them go to seed. If you let them go to seed or "bolt," they'll naturally produce more seed. You save a trip to the garden center to purchase more, and you can use those seeds for your next crop.
So, resist the urge to cut the plants down when they start bolting. Instead, leave the large center stalk that grows in late summer or early fall, and let the seeds drop. And either that fall or the next spring, you'll have baby seedlings coming up in your garden beds and pathways. At that point, you become a "garden editor."
Either dig those small seedlings up and move them to a different garden plot or leave them to grow where they are. And because they are already in the ground and innately sense the soil and air temperature, they know when to germinate, so you don't have to guess when to plant them.
Seed-saving and plant-saving
The book also covers more seed-saving techniques, as well as how to save and replant sweet potatoes and potatoes. You can also replant your favorite pepper, tomato and herb plants by saving those them indoors then replanting them in the spring as mature plants.
Also featured in Nardozzi's new book: why home gardeners should plant an area with wild plants or "weeds," how to have continuous fruit from spring all the way up to November and December, and more tips about soil building and no-dig gardening.
How to care for Chinese lantern plant indoors
Q: Long-time listener and watcher and immensely appreciate and enjoy the programs! I have a single live rooted Chinese lantern plant that I was unable to get into my perennial garden this fall prior to frost. It is currently tucked into good soil in a black plastic pot in a back room for the winter at approximately 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Is there a possibility this plant will survive to plant in spring? If so, do you suggest cutting off the stalk, wrap the pot loosely in burlap, etc? I really would love to add this to the perennial garden in the fall. - Shawna, via email
A: You're on the right track keeping it in a bright room. Aim for even cooler than 60 degrees Fahrenheit, if you can, and don't over water it. It's key to keep the soil barely moist, but not too wet.
Come March or so, it might start putting out new growth and get a little leggy. You might have to cut it back a little bit, but it should survive the winter. Then, come May, you can transition it outside and put it in your perennial flower garden.
Overwintering geraniums
Q: This fall I was able to keep my hanging baskets of geraniums from freezing. Usually the frost takes me by surprise. The containers are the brown stuff. I have them in the house. They are in a West bay window. I have large round trays underneath them so that I can water them. I have noticed the plants aren’t as thick as they were this summer. They are still producing blossoms. I was just wondering if there was any specific thing I should (could) do to try to keep them over the winter. I thought it would be nice not to have to buy new ones next year. - Maridelle, in Huntington
A: Geraniums are really easy to overwinter. You can cut them way back and place them in a sunny window, and they'll do just fine. You can still do it now and then let them start growing, and as they grow, they might get a little leggy. If they do, cut them back again, and they'll come back with another flush of new growth and flowers.
Continue that until April or so, and then start transitioning back outside in the hanging baskets. You should have some beautiful geraniums next year!
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