Colossal Collards & Needy Spinach
In these cold months, folks often ask “What do you do on the farm this time of year? Can you grow anything?”
Thankfully, in our climate, we can answer: lots!
Firstly, we grow crops that tolerate freezing temperatures (these are sown in the late summer and early fall). The hardiest are cabbage, collards, kale, carrots and Brussels sprouts.
The collards and kale are amazing producers. We harvested weekly in October and November by cutting off the larger outer leaves - many collard leaves were about 18” across! The short winter days brought much slower growth, although most weeks we still harvested.
Beginning in February, many of them began bolting (going into reproductive mode and put up flower stalks). This means they greatly reduce their foliage growth, and the leaves become more bitter. Unfortunately, with the warm spells we’ve had this year, many varieties have bolted earlier than usual. On the bright side, the bees and other beneficial insects love this early spring source of food.
To prevent cold damage, some winter plants require a blanket – called floating row cover - on nights that drop into the 20’s. The row cover traps heat radiating from the soil overnight. We use a heavyweight kind (Agribon-50) that can keep the ambient temperature under the cover about 5 degrees warmer.
This year we had an amazing cabbage harvest where we planted the seedlings into the debris of a cover crop. In May we had cut down a crop of rye, crimson clover and vetch and left the material serve as a mulch and break down over the summer. Our carrots - which we just harvested the last of - did well, too. The chefs really dig the purple ones, and our favorite orange carrot was Mokum, an incredibly sweet hybrid.
Spinach and strawberries are our main overwintered crops (planted in the fall and harvested in spring). They grow very slowly until the late winter, then they take off. We harvest spinach in February/March, and juicy strawberries in April/May.
The spinach has been challenging this year due to weather and pests. Normally we don’t need to protect hardy spinach from the cold, but we noticed a lot of outer leaves suddenly yellowing. We knew the soil had been properly fertilized and suspected a disease. The testing of a sample plant at N.C. State’s insect and disease clinic showed that it was disease free.
Our theory is that the fluctuations from the daytime temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s to freezing nights happened too rapidly, and that caused the tissue damage. So we rolled out the row cover and are protecting the crop this winter. Climate change does make every year different than the last…
We also kept busy growing shiitake mushrooms. Each year we use fresh-cut logs and thick branches (we use trees from on-site when they are available) to inoculate mushroom logs. The logs produce “fruit” for 3 to 6 years before the mushroom bodies run out of food.
To inoculate logs properly, you must use wood from dormant trees - and because winter is a time to take a breath as annual crops slow down, this task fits in perfectly to the farm’s annual schedule. We’re looking forward to tender shiitakes from this January’s work in about a year. Here’s some info on how to grow shiitakes on logs.