Late this season, about the end of August I decided to experiment with a late planting of lettuce.  In the past I have kept my lettuce growing to the spring then quit when it got hot and the lettuce went bitter and bolted. If you live in a place where the summers get hot and you want lettuce throughout the summer you must do close succession planting. I just never bothered.  I was only planting a garden for my family, but my first summer as a market garden had me thinking a little differently about lettuce.

I wondered if I could plant a very late crop and be successful into October. At the end of August I planted seeds into soil blocks and tended and waited. after about two and a half weeks they were set out in the garden.  They did beautifully.  I was so excited watching them, anticipating sweet little heads of lettuce those last few weeks at market. We even successfully held them over through a hard freeze that took out the rest of the garden, by erecting temporarily tunnels covered with floating row cover and a thick blanket during the nights.

I had peeked at them a few times after they had been covered and everything looked so good. I felt my experiment had been successful and we would be able to do this again next season…fresh lettuce into October without a greenhouse.

Then I uncovered them and took a real close look. I first noticed it on the dark leaves and my heart sunk.  Little white exoskeletons, little aphids. Not only had my lettuce lived through the cold nights and hard freezes, but so had the aphids, and they thrived.
My beautiful crop of specialty romaine lettuce was a complete loss. While they will feed the rabbits and chickens, which in turn will feed the soil, I wanted them for market, and they are not fit to sell at market.

As always, everything is a learning experience.  I did learn that with a little effort we can grow lettuce into October and maybe even November in the garden without a greenhouse or hoop houses.  I also learned that pests will also extended their season in the nice warm shelters I create.  Next year we will experiment with organic pest control inside our mini hoop houses.

Using cover crops isn’t something I have done aggressively over the years.  I would use beans and peas in rotation and we’ve planted rye and clover in some areas. This will be the first season that we are going to be using cover crops extensively. I have had many hesitations, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to plant vigorous weed-like plants in the areas I am wanting to grow vegetables. Wouldn’t I just be creating a bigger mess? Why would I plant my own weeds?  The more I read and researched organic market gardening and regenerative agriculture it became clear to me that not only are cover crops beneficial, but in my situation they are essential.

“Green-manure crops help protect against erosion, retain nutrients that might other wise be leached from the soil, suppress the germination  and growth of weeds, cycle nutrients from the lower to the upper layers of the soil, and–in the case of legumes–leave to the following crop a considerable quantity of nitrogen.  Other contributions of a green manure are improved soil structure, additional organic matter, enhanced drought tolerance, and increased nutrient availability of plants” Eliot Coleman “New Organic Grower” p.63

So I tentatively took the plunge into cover cropping at the end of this season.  I began with planting clover in the rows between the beds.  Pretty simple and safe.  Then as I’ve posted about before I planed annual rye grass in the empty beds after they had been harvested.  Yes, I planted grass.  In my garden beds. Grass.  On purpose. I even under planted my winter kale with rye grass. I would be lying if I didn’t’ admit that every time I walk out into the garden my heart leaps a little as I see the grass  coming up and then have to remind myself I did that on purpose and this is a good thing.
So what do I do in the spring when it comes to planting time with beds full of rye?  It’s actually pretty simple. The rye gets mowed before it goes to seed.  I used an annual rye grass, meaning it only lives one season.  This next spring when we are ready to prepare the beds for planting the rye will be mowed down low and lightly turned in to the soil. This will add a lot of organic matter and create humus in the soil.

“Humus, the end product of organic-matter decay in the soil, is the key to good soil structure, nutrient availability, moisture supply, and the biological vitality of the soil.” Eliot Coleman “New Organic Gardner” p.64

I am excited to learn how to work cover crops into the market garden, this next season I will be adding more varieties and playing around with under sowing, something I will talk about more later.

Producing healthy food for my neighbors, food that nourishes them at the same time protecting, building and nourishing the land is very important to me and Mike. We hope and pray we will be able to do this well and for many years to come.

Using cover crops is an important part of regenerative agriculture, permaculture and organic gardening. Winter rye is an excellent cover crop this time of year, it loves the cold and will contunie to grow, even when temperatures reach below freezing. Its growth slows down considerably when the days get shorter, and goes into a hibernation mode, then picks right back up as the spring days get longer and warmer, completing its life cycle in time for market crops to be planted.

Rye has several advantages beyond its ability to grow in the cool fall and spring weather.  It creates considerable biomass, I always love the biomass, and mowed in the spring acts as a mulch, keeping in moisture and making it harder for weed seeds to germinate. Once the rye is mowed down the roots will start to decompose adding organic matter and nutrients right into the soil, where it is needed.  Rye can bind nitrogen, making it harder for market crops to access, but adding a legume with the rye helps that.  This year we aren’t set up to add clover or vetch, instead we will add blood meal or fish emulsion come spring to help with nitrogen deficiency, we will also sow clover this spring.

Rye can easily take over other, small seeded plants when planted at the same time.  This is one advantage to starting seeds separately. The kale shown at the top was planted before the carrots were harvested, able to grown nice and big and then given a week in the ground before the rye was planted.  That gave the kale three weeks head start before the rye needed to be sown and we didn’t have to rush the carrots. The kale will have no problem growing among the rye, where as if they had started as seeds at the same time the rye would have quickly over taken the smaller and slower rye.

A few years ago I bought carrots seeds and the strangest thing happened.  Instead of producing an edible root (well it may have been edible, but they certainly weren’t palatable) they went right to flower.  This is strange, in that clearly I didn’t get the correct seed and typically plants in the carrot family are biannual and flower on their second year.  It was a lovely mistake and I had a whole 50×4 foot row of beautiful Queen Ann’s Lace type flowers.  I soon discovered that they were even better than beautiful, the bugs LOVED them.  I had so many different types of pollinators that year that I decided they would always have a place in my garden. This has been quite easy in that they readily reseed themselves. In a permaculture garden it is very important to have plants that attract  pollinators, the term is usually coined “pollinator strips”.  We are preparing some new markets gardens from virgin land and will be adding perennial rows with bushes a few trees and flowers galore to attract pollinators. It is very easy to gather seeds from these flowers.  As the flowers mature and the seeds ripen the heads curl inward, almost making a cup, I just clip off the head and drop it into a paper sack for safe keeping over the winter.  This spring when its time to get our strips, or beds, of perennial plants ready those seeds will find a new home.