Happy Acres Blog

Every year about this time, I usually start to get serious about garden planning. I like to begin ordering seeds about now, and before I can do that I need to do a seed inventory as well as get some ideas about what I want to grow in the coming year. The seed inventory is now completed, and I’ve been working on my 2022 plan for some time already. There are always last-minute changes to my list of course, and sometimes things change even at planting time if I run out of room or lose seedlings for some reason. 2022 looks to be an interesting year for the garden here at Happy Acres for several reasons worth mentioning.

2022 seed catalogs

To backtrack a bit, in 2020 I decided to scale back the garden by 30-40%. I was literally gardening more and enjoying it less, and I am happy to say I was pleased with the 2020 plan and how things turned out. I still spent a lot of time working in the garden, but I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I had in previous years. Last year I planted about the same size area, and we hauled in over 800 pounds of fruit and vegetables. So that part of the plan seems to be working, and I can see me scaling back my plantings more and more as I get older. The 2021 garden kept us well supplied with plenty of food to eat fresh and to preserve for later use.

weed barrier fabric in garden

Last year I also decided to try something new in the garden for mulching – woven weed barrier fabric. The material I’m using is four feet wide, and listed as “professional grade 3.2 oz” material. I have used similar fabric in the past for walkways, but not in the vegetable garden. I tested it on transplants like squash, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, kale and collards. And I also tested it for direct-seeded crops like turnips and bush beans. It did quite well in all applications, and I plan to use it again for 2022. It kept the weeds down, and I should be able to reuse the fabric pieces for several seasons.

squash planted in fabric

One big thing I want to do different this year is to add walkways between my garden beds. Since I have idled 30% of the garden, there is ample room now to establish mulched pathways between the planting areas. That should cut down on soil compaction, as well as make harvesting and other work easier. I will likely put down cardboard on the paths, and cover with straw or another organic material. I don’t plan to make raised beds, just permanent walkways that are kept mulched to keep down weeds and provide a place to walk and work without compacting the planting beds themselves. I’m still working out the exact spacing for this, but I will share details and photos later as I get everything established. I will likely start with the first couple of beds this year and see how it goes.

Another thing I want to do different in 2022 is experiment with no-dig and no-till beds. I am inspired by Lee Reich’s classic 2000 book called Weedless Gardening. Reich’s background as a soil scientist and long-time gardener lends considerable credibility to his methods to have a successful garden without spending a lot of time weeding. I will still have to disturb the soil where I grow sweet potatoes, since I like to hill up the soil into a ridge before planting. Other than that, most of the other edibles we grow should work without tilling or digging. At most, a light raking in of fertilizer or other soil amendments like sulfur will be necessary in most places. As with the walkways, I plan to start with two or three beds this year and see how it goes.

I love to experiment with growing new things, so my growing list is always long. And there are always last-minute changes to my list too. Varieties I am growing for the first time are marked with an *.

Asian Greens: Central Red mizuna, Miz America mizuna, Mizspoona Salad Select,  Violetta pac choi

Basil: Amethyst, Everleaf Emerald Towers, Everleaf Thai Towers*, Profuma di Genova, Siam Queen, Siricusa, Sweet Thai, Thai Lemon

Beans (bush): Derby, Provider, Slenderette

Beans (pole): Bertie Best’s Greasy Bean, Gizzard, Lazy Wife Greasy, North Carolina Long Greasy, NT Half Runner, Pink Tip, Rose*, Turkey Craw, White Greasy*

Broccoli: Apollo, Artwork, Burgundy,  Happy Rich, Santee, Rudolph

Cabbage: Conehead, Green Presto, Minuet (napa),  Tendersweet, Wah Wah Tsai(napa)

Collards:  Alabama Blue, Georgia Blue Stem, Jernigan Yellow Cabbage Collards, McCormack’s Green Glaze, Nancy Malone Wheat Purple,  North Carolina Yellow, Yellow Cabbage Collards,  Whaley’s Favorite Cabbage, White Mountain Cabbage Collards

Cucumber: Corinto, Excelsior, Green Light*, Itachi, Manny, Mini Munch, Nokya,

Eggplant: Annina, Asian Delight, Charming, Dancer, Fairy Tale, Galine, Gretel, Icicle*, Orient Charm, Machiaw, Purple Shine, Nadia

Greens: Apollo arugula, Darkita arugula, Purple Stemmed arugula, Speedy arugula

Kale: Dazzling Blue, Groninger Blue Collard Kale,  True Siberian, Western Front, White Russian, Wild Garden Mix

Kohlrabi: Beas, Kolibri, Kossak, Terek

Lettuce:  Baja, Bauer*, Bergam’s Green, Cavendish, Frisygo, Grazion*, Hampton*, Kiribati, Mirlo, Nancy, Navara, Oscarde, Panisse, Pele, Red Sails, Salanova, Sea of Red, Simpson Elite, Slobolt, Starfighter, Tango, Tendita*

Parsley: Cilician, Giant From Italy, Hungarian Landrace, Splendid

Pepper(hot): Aji Angelo, Aji Delight, Aji Golden, Aji Rico, Biggie Chili, Chili Pie, Early Flame, Flaming Flare, Guajillo, Hernandez, Honeypeno, Malawi Piquante, Minero,  Senorita Jalapeno, Sugar Rush Peach, Tangerine Dream

Pepper (sweet): Carmen, Cornito Arancia, Cornito Giallo, Cornito Rosso, Escamillo, Jimmy Nardello’s, Sweetie Pie

Radish: Alpine, Bora King, Red King 2*, Sweet Baby

Squash(summer): Astia, Clarimore, Dunja, Early Bulam, Green Machine, Hurakan, Mexicana, Tempest, Teot Bat Put, Zephyr

Squash(winter): Centercut, Goldilocks, Honey Bear, Thelma Sanders, Tromba d’Albenga, Turkeyneck

Sweet Potatoes: Beauregard, Bonita, Korean Purple, Murasaki, Purple

Tomatoes: Artisan Seeds Test Varieties, Better Boy, Chef’s Choice Orange, Chef’s Choice Purple, Chef’s Choice Red, Chef’s Choice Yellow, Cherry Bomb, Damsel, Garden Gem, Garden Treasure, Golden Cherrywine*, Granadero, Health Kick, Juliet, Monticello, Pink Cherrywine, Pink Delicious*, Purple Boy*, Purple Zebra*. Sunpeach, Sunset Torch*,  Sun Sugar

Turnips: All-Top, Hakurei, Topper, Turnbroc

I’m back again with the second part of my annual garden review, and I hope you enjoyed reading the first part. Let me start now with another crop that did extremely well this year, and that’s the berries. We have both blueberries and blackberries planted here, and they kept us well supplied with fruit for fresh eating and for freezing for later use. My wife is in charge of the blueberry harvests, and she picked over 22 pounds of them. We enjoy them almost daily when they are in bearing season, and the taste is hard to beat in my opinion. I did the blackberry picking, and our fairly new plantings gave us over 10 pounds of fruit from the thornless canes.

blueberries and blackberries

Another thing that did well was the cucurbit family, including the cucumbers plus both summer and storage type winter squashes. I count the moschata types we use in the green stage (like tromboncino and the Korean avocado squash) along with the tally for summer squashes. I harvested 120 pounds of summer types this year, and I did freeze quite a bit of that for later use in soups and stews. The frozen zucchini even makes its way into smoothies. Tempest remains my favorite yellow squash, and it is both productive for me in the garden and tasty in the kitchen. Last year I grew several zucchinis that did well, including Green Machine, Dunja, Clarimore and Mexicana. I plan to grow them all again next year.

squash and cucumber harvests

I grow the cucumbers in the summer greenhouse, and we use almost all of them for fresh eating. I do add a few of them to ferments, but I rarely make any pickles these days since we don’t really eat them that often. Mini Munch is one of my new favorite cukes, while the dark green Corinto and the white skinned Itachi also do well for me.

squash and Mini Munch cucumbers

I grew two neck pumpkins this year, Turkeyneck and Centercut, and both did quite well. We use the Centercut at both the green and mature stage, while I let the Turkeyneck grow to the mature stage. I also planted Thelma Sanders acorn squash, and Tetra delicata. The 2021 AAS Winner Goldilocks acorn squash was a new favorite for us as well. I have struggled to grow delicata types here for years now, and when I do get them they typically aren’t all that tasty. So, they will not be back in 2022. I harvested 115 pounds of mature winter squash last year in total.

winter squashes

Ample rains make for lush growing greens, and we were well supplied in 2021. The collard greens overwintered nicely without cover, and gave us edible leaves until I pulled the plants in April. I began harvesting from the new plants in October, and with any luck they will give us greens until next spring when they begin flowering again and I pull the plants.

Top Bunch and Jernigan’s Yellow Cabbage collard greens

I grow kale in the fall garden outside, plus I set out a few plants to overwinter in the greenhouse. When spring comes, the kale in the greenhouse begins to flower and gives us lots of tender kale rapini. White Russian is a long-time favorite of mine, and always produces lots of tender green leaves to eat.

kale rapini

White Russian kale

I grew other greens both inside and outside the greenhouse to add color and flavor to salads, soups and stir-fries. Miz America mizuna is a green with dark reddish purple leaves and a mildly spicy taste. It and Central Red mizuna are my two favorites these days for color and because they both do well in containers. I also grew the Red Veined Sorrel for the first time in a container planting, and it did well also.

Red Veined Sorrel and Miz America mizuna

2021 was a year when almost everything we grew did well for us, with one exception. That is the asparagus patch, which has been slowly and steadily declining in production each year. We harvested only 9 pounds of runty spears last year, down from 13 pounds in 2020. Only a few years back we were harvesting 25 to 30 pounds each year, so the decline is obvious. With a bit of sadness, we have decided the yield doesn’t justify the amount of work we put into keeping the patch weeded and mulched, so we will be letting it go back to lawn area next year. We may still get a few spears though, since the roots won’t die off immediately. If we want more asparagus, we can always buy it. I debated about setting out a few new plants, but decided at this point in my gardening life it just wasn’t worth it.

NOTE: Here’s an article from University of Illinois Extension about Growing Asparagus. The varieties we have planted (Jersey Knight, Jersey Giant) are expected to remain productive for 15-20 years. Our patch is 15 years old now, so that explains a lot of the decline.

asparagus

I’ll close this recap with another crop that did very well for us this year. I’ve been growing the Appalachian heirloom pole beans for several years now, and they produce steadily for me for several months to give us an extended harvest throughout the summer and fall months. Lazy Wife Greasy, Turkey Craw, Pink Tip and Non-Tough Half Runner are a few of my favorites. I like to grow a few of the bush types as well for an early harvest, and this year I trialed one called Speedy that lived up to its name and gave us beans 48 days after sowing. I also planted Orient which did well. I harvested over 50 pounds of beans this year, and we ate them fresh all summer and I froze the rest for later use.

Speedy beans

pole bean harvest

I hope you have enjoyed this review of some of the veggies and fruit we grew here in 2021. I’ll be back soon with more adventures from Happy Acres, including my plans for the garden in 2022.