The fall potager starts now!

07/28/2005
The fall potager starts now!

There comes a time in late summer when most of us have had it with our gardens. There are too many giant zucchini, too many tomatoes, and most of all, it's too darn hot! With sweat stinging your eyes, you look around and you just can't wait for frost to zap it all and bring it to a halt.

...But wait! Think of how you'll feel once you're standing in the same spot in your garden...6 weeks from now. You'll be scrounging every last tomato from the withering vines, bedding each one down in your basket with a loving caress and wondering whether you'll be able to ripen the green ones in your kitchen. With the suddenly diminishing daylight, every remaining leaf of lettuce will seem precious, as you feel winter's icy breath at your back. You remember with a shudder the taste of supermarket salads.

Alright then! Hot it may be, but now is the time to think ahead to a prolonged season of gustatory delight. With a little planning and--admittedly--some work, you can still be harvesting at least some salads, leeks, roots, and brassicas through a good part of winter, and even right up until new spring harvests start. And you can do it without a greenhouse, in all but the very most frigid zones.



Nothing is as rewarding as continuing home grown salad greens in fall and winter. And while in summer, the battle is to eat your lettuces before they bolt and go to seed, with the short daylengths of fall and winter, bolting is not an issue. So now is the time to plant, for instance, all the wonderful Italian chicories (Castelfranco, Treviso, Chioggia, etc.), which will head up over winter and early spring into brilliantly colored, succulent heads full of tangy flavor.

The inimitable roquette (arugula) is very cold hardy as well, so you don't need to go through withdrawal from its spicy, smoky taste over the glaciated months. And perhaps the princess of the winter salad garden is m”che, or lamb's lettuce--naturally a winter annual, meaning it germinates in the fall, overwinters as a rosette (which you harvest for your salads), and goes to seed during the elongating days of spring.



Also an important constituent of the winter salad bowl are the "winter lettuces", such as 'Hative Erstling' and 'Brune d'Hiver.' They can be sown in late September to early October. While they can be cut throughout the winter time, they are really meant to provide the very first lettuces of very early spring. Around the spring solstice, you'll notice them begin to grow rapidly and head up to give you the very first lettuces of early spring.

Both escarole and curly endive--so misunderstood and under-appreciated in the U.S.-- are wonderfully robust throughout the winter and in fact achieve their very best flavor during the cold months. Don't forget to use their delicious outer leaves in Italian-style soups and sautés.



Even in USDA Zone 5, it's not too late at the end of July to plant a late crop of potatoes. And don't forget to sow now new plantings of turnips, beets, and carrots, to provide fresh young roots through the fall and winter.

Now is also the time to plant fall greens such as collards, kales, and spinach. Fall is by far the most rewarding time to grow spinach, as the shortening day length precludes bolting. However, you'll need to trick the seeds into germinating in hot summer soil by layering it in moist paper towel in a plastic bag in the refrigerator until you have tiny sprouts. Then plant these and pay close attention to keeping them watered.



Being able to harvest garden peas in autumn is one of the great triumphs of gardening. To succeed, plant now, and for best success, use an edible-pod variety so that even the tiniest pods can be harvested.

And of course, I can't close without mentioning the great stalwart of winter gardens, the leek. Normandie markets are full of leek sets at this time of year. Leeks are fabulously cold-hardy and you will be able to harvest them right up through the end of May of next year.



Finally, gardening is an on-going adventure. So why not plant some fennel, for fall harvests of crisp, sweet, anise-fragrant bulbs? Fennel germinates easily direct-seeded in mid to late summer, and it is indispensable to so many wonderful dishes (just check out 'Dans la cusine' to see how many fennel recipes I've included). As the plants start to thicken at the base, cover the bulbs with soil to keep them blanched and tender.



I'm of the generation that remembers "...to everything a season...turn, turn, turn..." Summer may come to an end, but your potager needn't. A bit of foresight and planting now, and you'll be able to wish yourself "Bonne dégustation! come the cold weather!

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Products of Interest:
Fennel 'Tardivo di Sarno'
Lettuce 'Brune d'Hiver'
Lettuce 'Hâtive Erstling
Snow pea 'Delikata'