I'm not fond of deadlines, so even though Weeds and Wisdom's deadline is self-induced I try to stay well ahead of it. If I have to hurry, I find that my concentration darts and dashes every which way, feeling as trapped as a chipmunk caught in a Hav-a-Heart trap.
A gardener has far more deadlines than a writer. If you don't weed the lettuce seedlings today, by tomorrow they'll have lost their battle with the pusley; forget to water the celery and it gets stringy; ignore the four striped beetles crawling over the potato vines and in a few days they'll multiply into forty.
If you don't have a vegetable plot, you can probably skip this column, but if you do, read on. With all the work and effort that goes into a vegetable garden, meeting harvest deadlines should be a top priority. It's just plain silly not to pick your produce at its peak, when flavor and texture are at their very best, especially if you're planning to freeze or can the excess.
The trouble is that harvest deadlines get closer and closer together as the season progresses. Too many vegetables need picking at the same time, and you're off at the shore for a two-week vacation, or your oldest friend has arrived from England, or maybe your tennis elbow's so painful you can't pick up a dishrag, much less pull up a carrot.
All those excuses will seem pathetic next winter when you find yourself eating produce that wasn't picked in its prime. I knew a lady (now deceased or I wouldn't tell this story) who had an enormous vegetable garden. She also had a very busy lifestyle, and was always one step behind in everything she did, from getting to appointments to getting in the beans. She harvested everything in the garden, but never quite on time.
Take her string beans. Like raspberries, beans should be picked every few days, but if this lady couldn't pick hers on time, she always harvested the oldest first. Since the young ones would then become old by the time she got around to picking them, the cycle was endless.
I'm not one to waste good garden produce, but good can hardly describe the tough and ancient beans that this gardener put in her freezer each summer. "Waste not, want not" is all very well, but I prefer "A stitch in time saves nine." If you don't harvest your broccoli on time, those tight green buds will begin to open into pretty yellow flowers, so cut off their heads, even if they aren't as big as you'd like. When cool weather comes in the fall, the plants will put out many more heads. They'll be small, but they'll taste as good as big ones.
Onions, too, have a deadline. When their tops fall over, their bulbs have stopped growing. If you leave them in the ground, they'll begin to rot in the next good rain. Pull them, shake off the dirt and hang them up to dry. Then store them in a cool, dry place. Ignore the lettuce deadline and the leaves will begin producing that bitter milky fluid, which is actually a narcotic, used in the old days as a substitute for opium.
Although root vegetable deadlines aren't very threatening, the younger such crops as carrots, beets and potatoes are harvested for table use, the tenderer they will be. Parsnips, however, shouldn't be used until cool weather has sweetened them up. Brussels sprouts also need cool weather before they're harvested.
Radishes are a root vegetable with a serious deadline. It doesn't take more than a few days of maturity to turn radishes hot and hollow, so if you've planted a long row you'll have all too many radishes to eat when they ripen. Plant short rows at two week intervals, but stop when we start having more than 12 hours of daylight. These tubers do poorly if grown in July and August, even if the weather is cool. They've been taught to flower when the sun shines for 12 or more hours a day, regardless of the temperatures.
Radishes are easy to grow provided the soil is loose so the roots can expand without too much effort. Trying to grow in heavy clay is as painful to a radish as eating a big dessert is for a woman wearing tight pants. Add some wood ashes or bone meal to provide potassium and phosphorus, two minerals radishes need. The seeds are big enough to handle easily, so take the time to plant them individually, well spaced and at least an inch deep. Give them plenty of water as they need to grow at a steady fast pace.
If you've grown radishes so spongy they're only fit for the bathtub or so hot they're only fit for a fire-eater or so misshapen they resemble a ginseng root, try following the above directions in early September and you should have a great crop. Slice them into salads or use them in stir-fry dishes or as a creamed vegetable. Or like me, keep a salt cellar in the garden and eat them right there as a reward for weeding.
