Writer Wednesday - Harvesting Your Vegetables and Fruits

Seeds & Sunshine 

with Jean M. Grant 

Harvesting Your Vegetables and Fruits

You started with seeds, inside or outside. Seedlings have sprouted. You’ve watered, fertilized, and tended. You’ve kept your Gardener’s Log of notes for next year. Now, you have gardens brimming with life…and food! Or we hope so, right? Mother Nature can be fickle sometimes. Pat yourself on the back. You’ve done it! Now it’s time to reap the harvest. 

Ways to harvest:

A preface: always do a quick read online about how to harvest your specific vegetables, as some are more particular than others (e.g. requiring curing/drying or have a longer grow period). When in doubt, refer to the good ol’ Farmer’s Almanac (online: https://www.almanac.com/). 

1. Leafy vegetables – such as herbs, spinach, collards, lettuces, Swiss chard – just cut/clip and eat. Some grow back, depending on the season, or can be replanted for an autumn harvest. A few herbs may require “drying out.” 

2. “Fruits” that have come from flowers – such as peas, beans, peppers, and tomatoes – just pick them right off the vines! 

3. Vine vegetables – such as summer squashes, zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers – usually you can twist and snap them off. 

4. Stalks – celery, asparagus – snip and enjoy! 

5. Root vegetables (below ground) – Carrots are easy to pull up and wash off as needed and they will grow into the cold temperatures of late autumn and last a long time in the fridge. Beets, turnips, radishes, and parsnips are harvested the same way. Onions, garlic, shallots, potatoes, pumpkins, and winter squashes – these all need some “curing” (drying) time for a few weeks before storing for later use. Since they grow below ground, time and observing the stalks will indicate when they are ready for harvest. Sometimes you need to just dig up one to see how it’s going. 

Spring Vegetables Have Come and Gone 

Lettuce, spinach, early peas, asparagus, kale, chard, broccoli, rhubarb, cabbage, cauliflower…have come and gone. Some stick around longer than others. Leafy vegetables are known to bolt in summer heat. Bolting is when the plant is done growing the green parts we eat (lettuce, broccoli heads, spinach leaves), and puts its energy into flowers. Once this happens, the leaves can taste bitter. 

Summer Vegetables in Full Force 

Cucumbers, zucchini/summer squash, beans, chard, celery, collards, tomatoes. Pick, eat, enjoy! Many will keep on going into autumn, too, depending on weather conditions. 

Autumn Vegetables are Still Going Strong 

Potatoes, winter squashes, onions, shallots, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, collards, pumpkins, gourds. Ah, autumn! These vegetables require a longer growing season. Did you know you can also plant spring vegetables a second time in late summer for an autumn yield? These include green beans, peas, collards, lettuce, and spinach among others. Planting for autumn is all about giving them enough time to get sun, while also being frost-hardy (or beating the frosts). I usually plant them in mid to late August.

How about fruit? I would be remiss to not talk a little about growing fruits. 

Here’s my Fruit 101: Always know your grow zone and sun location. You’re getting tired of hearing this, aren’t you? 

Apples – Apple trees are an investment in time, space, and money. Do a little research at your local nursery before purchasing. I have a Macoun tree and Golden Delicious tree. Some years you get a lot! Some years, none. Some years, the four-legged critters eat them all. They need to be well-spaced to allow for growth, pruned as needed to put more energy into apples than foliage, and you should grow at least two varieties—they need cross-pollination. 

Strawberries – These can grow in beds, rows, or pots. There are three kinds of strawberries: ever-bearing (slow and steady all summer), June-bearing (monster-sized crop early in June), and day-neutral (usually two to three peak times throughout the summer). Little critters love to eat these! Netting may be needed. 

Blueberries – Varieties include lowbush, highbush—the most common, rabbiteye, and half-high. Some are self-pollinators, some are cross-pollinating. Some require more pruning than others, too. Blueberries like more acidic soil and lots of sun and being planted near each other, and away from other fruits/vegs. Raspberries – These are the king of my yard. I got a handful of “canes” from a friend a few years back and they have taken over, needing constant maintenance to prevent the spread. These monsters produce an abundance of berries each autumn (with a small June harvest). The soil and sun must be in a magical alignment (west and south sun). 

Raspberries can be ever-bearing like what I have, or June/Summer-only bearing. They like lots of sun and fertilizer. I also prune in the fall. The June fruits return on non-pruned (old growth) canes, and the autumn-growing (ever-bearing) fruit appear on new growth. 

Final Tips… 

• Some people fry up zucchini flowers. You can eat the greens on carrots, beets, radishes, turnips… 

• Plant some spring (cold tolerant and quick growing) vegetables in late summer for an autumn crop.

• Did you know you can pick green tomatoes, box them up in newspaper, and store them in a cool, dark place for slower ripening into the autumn months? Yup! If an autumn frost is inevitable, quickly harvest all those green fruits before the frost kills them. 

• For longer storage you can blanch and freeze vegetables, dry/cure for longer pantry storage, and “can” (pressure-can) them. I blanch my carrots and peas and freeze them, and directly freeze tomatoes and berries. I also make jam and applesauce. 

Have specific gardening questions? Drop me an email through my website contact form. Join me next time to talk about autumn pruning and planting and preparing for winter. 

© 2023 Jean M. Grant All Rights Reserved 

Jean M. Grant is a former scientist turned author of romance and women’s fiction, an avid hiker and traveler, cat-lover, and coffee fanatic. Follow her for more hiking, traveling, baking, and gardening adventures. www.jeanmgrant.com

Writer Wednesday - Designing Your Garden

Seeds & Sunshine

with Jean M. Grant 

Designing Your Garden 

Welcome to Seeds and Sunshine! This month’s topic is the three-season perennial flower garden. Designing your garden comes with much artistic freedom so let’s begin with the basics. 

Let’s start by drawing a map. 

Draw your property and label compass directions. Add in tree locations, walkways, and the areas you’d like to have your garden beds. Do you want flowers lining a walkway, flanking shrubs, climbing a trellis, or bordering the house or a wall/fence? Do you have standalone flower bed options? Don’t forget to determine your planting hardiness zone (https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/). 

Sun 

South-facing gardens get the most sun exposure (“full-sun” flowers) and north-facing the least (“shade” flowers). Morning sun hits the east-facing gardens, and that bright, hot afternoon sun shines upon west-facing gardens (both can have partial to full-sun flowers). Do you have trees or other tall structures? Shade-loving or partial-sun flowers do well beneath them. 

Bloom time 

Planting flowers that bloom at different times will guarantee lasting colorful gardens through spring, summer, and autumn. Things to consider when choosing your flowers: How long do they bloom for? Do they bloom more than once? Do they need to be dead-headed or pruned? 

Color and style 

Though I have an organized personality, my gardens are a bright rainbow and have been a trial-and-error project for nearly fifteen years. Purple, white, yellow, and pink dominate my color palette. Do you want an overflowing garden, or do you want it evenly spaced out? I have country-style, standalone flower beds full of flowers, whereas my walkway beds are evenly spaced and mostly symmetrical. What colors do you want in your garden—vibrant or subdued? Do the blooms change color over time (my Pee Gee hydrangeas go from white to soft pink to rusty pink)? Consider spacing, patterns, shapes, textures and foliage. What will your garden look like in winter? Plant evergreens for your fourth season: winter. Check out some of my garden arrangements (because they are three-season gardens, only some blooms are shown in the photos).

Height and size 

Flower height is important to consider (tall in back/middle/along fences, and shorter in front). If you are lining walkways, how tall is too tall? Fences are a great place to put tall flowers like orange daylilies, tall phlox, sunflowers, delphinium, tall asters etc. Likewise, size matters. Do the plants grow to massive mounds like wave petunias, or gigantic shrubs like hydrangea and euonymus? Are they groundcovers like creeping phlox or thyme? Do they grow slow or fast? Note: some plants may need trellises or supports. 

Soil and fertilizer 

There is a science to soil and fertilizer. You can even send a sample out to be tested. A mixture of compost, peat, and topsoil works for most beds. Worm, ground beetle, centipede, and spider activity, fungi presence, root spreading, good water drainage, and dark crumbling soil are signs of healthy soil. Don’t forget to add those eggshells and coffee grounds! I feed my flowers twice a year with an 8-8-8 fertilizer (slow release), an acidic fertilizer for the azaleas, hydrangeas, and rhododendron, and monthly I spray them with my favorite “seaweed juice” (Neptune’s Harvest Fish & Seaweed). 

 A note about annuals 

These flowers last one year. In warmer climates they can stay year-round, but typically you plant them each year (whereas perennials get pruned in the spring or fall and come back year after year). I fill in spots in my gardens, porch pots, and window boxes with petunias and marigolds. Geraniums are lovely and can “winter” inside. I also have tropical plants like mandevilla and hibiscus in pots. 

What flowers bedazzle my gardens?

I’ve lost track of all the flowers I’ve planted. Here are some currently in my flower beds, pots, or boxes: Asters, astilbe, azalea, black-eyed (and red-eyed) Susan, bleeding heart, canna lily, catmint, coneflower, creeping phlox, coral bells, daffodil, daylily (about 12 variations), euonymus, geranium, holly, hydrangea (pee gee and creeping), iris (a variety), lady’s mantle, marigold, peonies, petunia, phlox (tall), primrose, rhododendron, sage, salvia, Shasta daisy…and more I can’t remember. 

Fun facts 

Did you know there are 10,000 daylily species? My favorite failure: lupine. They just don’t like my soil as much as I like them! 

Final Tips…

 • Keep plants of similar irrigation/soil needs together. 

 • Not sure what to plant? Ask at your local nursery. Plant nurseries in your area typically only carry flowers suitable for your region.

 • Let the tags guide you… Most plants come with a small tag indicating sun/shade, height, bloom time, and other pertinent details.

 • Don’t forget to plant flowers that attract pollinators. 

Have specific gardening questions? Drop me an email through my website contact form. Join me next time to talk about vegetable harvests and fall pruning/planting. 

© 2023 Jean M. Grant All Rights Reserved

Jean M. Grant is a former scientist turned author of romance and women’s fiction, an avid hiker and traveler, cat-lover, and coffee fanatic. Follow her for more hiking, traveling, baking, and gardening adventures. www.jeanmgrant.com

Writer Wednesday - From Seed to Seedling: Starting Inside

Seeds & Sunshine

By Jean M. Grant

From Seed to Seedling: Starting Inside

Welcome to Seeds and Sunshine! If you admire flowers or love to eat vegetables but are afraid to take that first step into gardening…look no further. I’m your garden gal. I’ve been obsessing over flower gardens for fifteen years, and I’m relatively new to vegetables, four years in now (thanks to impulse pandemic gardening). Let’s talk about vegetables this month! From Seed to Seedling: Starting Inside 

Supply list: soil, spoon/cup/trowel for scooping, seed-starting trays with dome lids, or small pots/containers, seeds, a sunny spot, and sunny outlook! 

Before you choose your seeds, your first assignment is to determine your season length (mine is late May through October in Massachusetts, but you can also plant some vegetables in fall for a spring harvest), hardiness zone, and first/last frost dates. Where you live impacts what you can plant. Next, choose your vegetables! What do you want to eat? Climate and germination time determine your indoor planting date. I start slower growers in March and quicker growers in April (my final frost date is typically around the end of May). Seed packets usually give information on when to start inside. 

Here we go! Using seed starter or potting soil, plant the seeds in multi-well trays (like these). The bigger the seed, the fewer you put in each cell. Keep them watered and keep the dome on to contain moisture until seedlings pop up (like a little greenhouse), then remove the plastic dome. You can also use small pots, leftover yogurt containers, or biodegradable pots. Whatever works. Some vegetables, like tomatoes and peppers, like heat for germination, so I use heat pads under my domed seed tray. For sunlight, hang lights over the trays, or place by/in a sunny window. I have a garden window in my kitchen. Once the seedlings graduate out of their little cells, transplant up to three or five-inch pots. You may need to divide some, or selectively thin out seedlings. Keep watering and feeding with sunshine! 

Transplants and Direct Sowing

I transplant my seedlings to the gardens in May through early June. However, some seeds prefer to be directly sown outside because they are either too fragile (onions, lettuce), or get long and viny and can break upon transplant (beans, peas), or are vegetables that grow in the ground and need space (carrots, potatoes, onions/shallots). Some seeds swing both ways like lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, collards, zucchini, and cucumbers. I buy lettuce already started in six-packs from a local nursery because my seedlings are too fragile with the wind of spring, and shallots/onions I buy as bulbs. 

Designing Your Square-foot Companion Bed 

Have less space? Daunted by the idea of huge gardens? Never fear…the answer lies in square-foot companion gardens. Simply put, each square foot of a raised bed (wood or metal framed “boxes” of any shape or size) is designated for a different vegetable. For those that love grids, this is fun! Here’s a guide on how many seeds/seedlings to plant per foot. All you need is a smidge of space in your yard with good sunlight (my two raised beds are 4x8’ each and get west and south sunlight). 

What is companion planting? Like siblings who don’t get along, you want to keep certain vegetables apart and certain ones close (they thrive off each other and help keep pests at bay). Do a little reading online to determine who likes or doesn’t like who. 

Benefits of a raised bed include weed control, better drainage, soil control, and rodent protection (line the bottom with hardware cloth). I use PVC pipe arches and bird netting to cover my raised beds during the seedling phase (and sometimes all season long—I am very protective of my plants). Some vegetables need support (e.g tomatoes, peas): use trellises, cages, or poles. Some vegetables like space so give them plenty of room (e.g. collards, broccoli, squash, zucchini, cucumbers). 

What about containers? If you can grow it in a raised bed, you can grow it in a pot, growing bag, window box, or bin! Experiment. I’ve done tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, lettuce, spinach, and Swiss chard all in containers. This year: collard greens. 

What about soil and fertilizer? 

I’ll admit I’m still perfecting my ideal soil. My seeds start in a seed-starting soil mix or a potting soil with plant food (e.g. Miracle-Gro). My raised beds have “raised bed” soil specific for vegetables and herbs. I mix in compost (bagged or you can get it from local farms). Add in kitchen scraps like coffee grounds, eggs, or material from your own compost bin. I’ve added perlite to my potato experiment this year. Worm castings are also recommended (I just bought those this year). I spray my flowers and vegetables with fish and seaweed fertilizer a few times per season. There are lots of “plant foods” out there to choose from. I also top my soil bed with mulch. 

Final Tips… 

• Don’t be afraid to experiment. We learn from everything we do. I’m a former scientist so trial and error and tweaking are my jam! 

• Take notes! Keep a notebook or binder with highs/lows, dates, and other information useful for next year. I create a spreadsheet for my seed start/transplant dates. 

• Add flowers to keep pests away (e.g. marigolds, nasturtiums). 

• Most seed packs have instructions on when/how to start seeds inside or outside.

• Choosing seeds? I try to buy heirlooms as much as I can, and I shop from a few regional online/mailer catalogs, but you can get seed packs at any garden center, too, or even on eBay. 

• Some vegetables can have a second harvest (e.g. the early spring vegetables like lettuce, peas, and collards can be planted again in late summer for a fall harvest). Want longer harvests? Try succession planting (for example: keep planting lettuce every 3-4 weeks for a long harvest). 

Have specific gardening questions? Drop me an email through my website contact form. Join me next time to talk about setting up perennial flower gardens. 

© 2023 Jean M. Grant All Rights Reserved 

Jean M. Grant is a former scientist turned author of romance and women’s fiction, an avid hiker and traveler, cat-lover, and coffee fanatic. Follow her for more hiking, traveling, baking, and gardening adventures. www.jeanmgrant.com