All in the Cabbage Family
We finally have a proper garden, and our suburban homestead is growing! No coincidence our word of the year this year is "growth"... it really is something that works, you know. Last year we chose "progress" and it kept us going forward, closer to our dreams, and deeper into our passion.
If we can't take some time to follow our passions, than what good is it to work a job? It just seems to about making someone else's dream come true?
This was an idea I got from Nicole Sauce's podcast Living Free in Tennessee, check it out, I even had a little challenge I thought would be fun here on Hive to get some of you to find a word to guide you by each year... perhaps I should get it out there again, it was a good idea.
Back to the Gardening bit of this post!
Cut-and-Come-Again is a technique I came upon accidently while harvesting the outer leaves of our winter garden using the kratky method.
It's really just that simple, I only cut bigger outer leaves of my lettuce heads whenever we wanted a salad, and a few days later there were more leave ready to harvest. That went on all winter basically! Had we more than three heads of lettuce, and one of arugula, we probably would have been able to have enough for salads everyday that winter!
I'll definitely have to make time to build another kratky system, a bigger one for sure. Now that we have a full basement, we're going to turn part of that into a whole different laboratory than the one being developed in the garage. This one will be for all sorts of thing about food. I'm talking fermentation, processing hickory nuts to make nutritious milk, acorns for a wild alternative to nut flour, a pantry, a root cellar and so on...
Here we go again, drifting off... but than again it's about food ain't it?
So, we were about to leave for 12 days.. away from our garden, yes. We found a friend to water it while we were gone, but before we left I decided to look up when and how to harvest pak choi and swiss chard. We had never grown these and so I wanted to do it right. The leaves were getting so big, we had to do something about it before going on vacation.
Of course, the first video that popped out for me was something about cutting the outer leaves (and sometimes the whole head a couple inches from the ground). This method of harvesting is apparently called "Cut-and-Come-Again". And it makes perfect sense, as most plants I have had interactions with regrow more leaves when you cut some off.
This is how much it's grown already since I harvested all that you see in the image at the top of this post. I had left only small leaves (up to about 4 inches long), to let grow!
It is now 3 week later!!! I don't know you, I think it's amazing though.
As for our broccoli, it bolted early... we planted it too late and the ground got too hot. We'll have to try it again just after the summer cools a bit. It's probably an easier crop to grow in the fall! So we have been eating the flowers. The same sort of thing happens, the more I cut the tops, the more new growth come up, and flower!
It almost feels like we can have an endless supply of food
But I know wit will come to an end, typically gets too bitter sometime between flowering and going to seed. It's ok, I'd like to eat more in season anyway, something about that feels so much healthier.
Soon I will try to show off our corn.. it's over seven foot tall right now!!! Seems crazy to me, but again, that's something I have never own before, so maybe it's perfectly natural for corn to be so lush and tall?
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Good one! I never knew you could eat broccoli flowers... how do they taste?
As for the corn, they're looking really healthy, but I don't think there's enough plants there to fill out the cobs with kernels. I found this out the hard way a few years back planting corn; bought a bunch of seedlings and planted them in a row. They grew magnificently, but the cobs only had 10% or so of the kernels that they could have at the end of the season. I did some reading afterward and discovered that they're meant to be "block planted" in order to pollinate successfully.
I did it backwards! Should have read up, then planted :D hahaha! Oh well, you live and you learn.
Best of luck anyway, you've got a few there so it might work out for you!
Thoroughly enjoyed your post, thanks for sharing! Those leafy greens at the top look absolutely delicious
Yeah, thanks! The broccoli flowers with a few leaves and the soft stems taste a bit like broccoli actually, different texture of course.
Yeah for the corn, what you read makes sense. We were just thinking maybe there's only female plants there and so they can't pollinate properly, or something along those lines... Should have read up on it too!
I think the leafy greens are lambs quarter (wild spinach that came with the horse manure we picked up)
Kratky is such a good method. We started an outside system this year and, just like you, are enjoying heaps of cut and come again veggies, especially celery.
I'll have to go back over some of your older posts and check out your basement in more detail. It sounds like a lot goes on there.
Heehee yes à lot will go on!!! Last winter was our first time li ing in that house, so we were mostly remodeling the place to make it as we want it. This year will be a lot more. We started our pantry but that's ajout it.
The kratky method is awesome, yes! We had that in 4 gallon buckets with grow lights in the living room!
Thanks for looking
I've been doing my Kratky outside but in a fairly sheltered place. The problem is that when it rains, the tubs overflow and I lose nutrients.
I suspect something also happens to the roots that get exposed to the air overtime too, they harvest oxygen out of the air as your liquid evaporates.
So yeah I could imagine you lose quite a bit of nutrients when they overflow
Oxygen uptake from nutrient solution is an issue in the cold too.
Ah yes, thank you. We'll be doing this again this winter in the basement.
Ah yes, we'll be doing this again this winter in the basement.
Your corns look good. Can't wait to see them bear fruits.
Oh the corn is huge!!!! Never grew corn but it seems pretty tall. I can't wait either... no flowers yet though
Very tall indeed, By the way, I love that selfie with the corn. Have a nice day ahead.
My favourite way of harvesting! I currently have rocket (arugula?) going bananas, so I'll cut the bolting stems, pull off the nice leaves for us, then give the rabbits what's left. It feels like they still all grow back in a day!
Ooh I love arugula!!! We direct sowed a couple rows of it, but I don't kow if the birds ate the seeds or were they too old... nothing came up!
Why take the whole thing if it keeps on giving, harvesting only the leaves?
Mine self seed these days. I'm a bit of a messy gardener, but it means there are nearly always some leaves I can collect for dinner when I need to. Plenty of rabbit food too (aka weeds 😅).
Haha nice! At least the seeds are great, I'm anout to collect our broccoli seeds to make sprouts... they bolted early.
How many rabbits do you have?
Too many! 😅 Currently I have four, two older ones and a pair that were supposed to be my replacement breeders, but he's a dud, so they just live together as a childless couple.
Oh rabbits that don't jave a thousand babies!!! I never even thought that was a thing. A friend ours started with just 4... she has too many, and they're getting tired of eating them now. We benefit from that once in a while though.
These are mini lops, so just pets. Recently someone else thought we bred for food and asked for help in butchering some rabbits. He must have been pretty puzzled when I said I'd never butchered one before. I thought he was asking because he knew we did our own chicken and quail on occasion and thought it would transfer. 😆
I love the way your garden looks. I like chard very much, and I have been given some seeds, but as I don't have a garden, I don't know how they will do if I plant them in pots.
Hi, yeah I imagine it would work fine in pots! Perhaps not as huge as it can get in the ground but, your best bet is to give it a try!!!
If you do, let us know how it goes
Sure, I will try and I hope I will have something to tell about it :)
Mmmm, gorgeous photos, @senorcoconut !! I love cut-and-come-again, and I also leave many kinds of wild/ self-sown plants to grow leaves, and pick a few of each, when I'm making a salad.... I adore the more complex flavours of wilder plants, mixed in with the blander 'cultivated' ones. :-)
Blessings on your beautiful plants!
Thank you!!! We had a pick-up load of horse manure, and as I was building our garden beds lots of "volunteer" lams quarter came up... we kept those, replanted a bunch in one of the beds, and we'be been eating those in all sorts of things!
I love wild food too
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