Our Subsistence Pattern

Still frost free and our celery is potted up. In a another week or so it will be transferred to the root cellar for the winter, providing us with tasty stalks and leaves throughout the snowy months. Each pot contains 3-4 plants, 1/3 of whose foliage, preferably the less than desirable ones, are removed to compensate for root disturbance during the potting procedure. Only healthy plants that show no sign of bolting (sending up a round central stalk) to seed are chosen for winter storage. Most plants will not only survive the winter in our root cellar where they will continue producing, albeit somewhat more pale in comparison to the ones produced under sunlight, but can be planted back out into the garden in early spring for more fresh greens and eventually seed from chosen plants.

A new variety that we grew this year called Crisp & Tender, thanks to the seedy generosity of the kind soul at Kabun-Malay Kadazan girls blog, was a big hit with us. Unfortunately, we did not place it in the most ideal location as it was the last batch of celery planted this past spring and wound up in a slightly drier and shady location at the end of the row under a fir tree. Even so, the plants provided us with a plethora of slender and surprisingly dark green flavorful stalks...for sure we will be growing this variety again next season. We also grew Ventura, Giant Red, Utah, and a leaf celery called Parcel.

Sweet & Tender celery, all the way from Australia, thrived in our cool shady garden.

Also, meet Willie! This newest member of our family was found in the bushes almost two months ago. Hungry and emaciated the poor little guy took to us without complaint...he was so small. Little Willie has grown a lot, he likes to take dust baths with the chickens, greatly annoy the other cats, play in the garden, eat, eat some more, and sit on my lap while I am on the computer.

Some of my blog posts might seem a little odd at times, perhaps a bit on the rambling side. The reason for this is that, in part, I try to use this blog as a journal of sorts, finding that it helps me/us to keep track of what we have been doing on a monthly basis making for a good reference of past events. That said, our temperatures of late have ranged from pretty darn cold (-9) to not too bad (mid 20's) and the winter has been more than manageable thus far, nothing like the terrible weather some of you have been facing in other parts of the U.S. and world. We have received around 45" of snow thus far but it has not all come at once as it did in 2008/09 and has provided a nice insulating blanket for our winter garden. It is snowing out as I type this, they are predicting over 9o" of snow for this winter...Rowdy sure likes it.↓

It was so cold the other day his brown fur started turning white, our hair did the same thing...made us all look kind of ghostly in the early morning hours.:)

In the root cellar we have been able to maintain an average of between 34-39° the past couple weeks, ideal conditions for our produce. Unfortunately, before our latest cold spell we had a bit of a warming trend that caused some of our stored vegetables to return to life and start sprouting a bit. This is pretty normal but not usually something we have to deal with until early March. So last week I spent a few hours going through 6 totes of beets and gave them all a much needed trim before re-packing. The carrots look fine, but the turnips also needed a shave. This should keep everything in good condition for a couple more months at which point I may or may not have to repeat the process...routine root cellar maintenance. See also trimming carrots and parsnips.

Sometimes we pack a few of these beets into pots that are placed on an upstairs window cell and "Forced" to provide us with a nice bunch of fresh greens.

At the same time I took the opportunity to cut back any dead stalks of celery and water all of the pots well. We want the celery to keep growing and it sucks up a surprising amount of water each week, some of the plants are even starting to send new shoots.

A couple pots of endive were brought upstairs to be used in our salads. We will replace these weekly and give the remaining soil to our chickens to play in...they love it and sometimes even find a few worms. Speaking of chickens, the girls have started laying again and we once again have a plentiful supply of eggs. We are proud to have only had to purchase exactly one carton of eggs in the past 3 years.

Green and red endive along with a few speckled ones that have obviously crossed with each other.

This time of year our basement resembles a strange nocturnal garden full of potted plants whose foliage we rely on to help sustain us through the winter months. Just before the ground started to freeze this fall we potted up Belgian & Batavian endive, parsley, Swiss chard, celery, red sorrel, and other greens. We are even experimenting with rhubarb, arugula, and various lettuces this year. Some of these (not the Belgian endive) we leave outside, after potting, for as long as possible so they can more easily adjust, via new root growth, to their enclosures and receive the last few rays of sunlight before entering the gloom of our root cellar/basement for the winter.

Most of these plants are brought upstairs into the light a few at a time starting in January to help supplement our daily salads. This is especially helpful on days that the weather or time prevents us from gathering greens from under our row covers. This week finds the plastic on all of our covered rows firmly secured to the ground by a thick layer of ice making it difficult to remove the covers without tearing them and was a good reminder that I needed to start encouraging growth from our potted plants. Within a week of sitting next to a somewhat sunny windowsill the plants begin to quickly green up and grow. Many of them can be cut numerous times before needing to be replaced.

While our Belgian endive roots were much smaller this year due to the fact that I did not thin them properly (again) we have simply stuffed more into each container enjoying the leaves all the same. The endive does not produce a very good second crop after the first cutting but the roots can then be used for coffee, tea, or roasted chicory chips.

Belgian endive beginning to put out new shoots, they will become very bitter once subjected to sunlight but possibly more nutritious.

This Batavian endive's blanched color will transform to dark green after being exposed to light for a few days.

Parsley is an excellent cut and come again crop that not only thrives in the basement but outside under our row covers as well. It seems to maintain it's greenness long after the other plants have begun to pale in the darkness. I will be growing Hamburg, a root parsley, this year and think/hope it might also perform well in this unnatural environment.

They don't look like much now but I just brought these plants upstairs and trimmed all the bad leaves off, they should start growing soon.

While all but the smallest leaves of the Swiss chard outside in our covered rows have finally succumbed to the weather and turned to mush after numerous freeze and thaw cycles those in our cellar live on. The potting up of Swiss chard is a little new to us in that we have only been experimenting with the forcing of this plant for a couple years. I have noticed that the more mature chard with a bigger root system hold out much better than the younger plants and will provide us with at least a few good cut and re-grow cycles before they are spent and begin to focus on bolting to seed.

I left a few of the smaller leaves on the chard but cut most of them back to compensate for any root damage caused during the potting process. After two months in the dark they are still maintaining their color pretty well.

Our hybrid Utah celery performs much better in the basement garden than its open pollinated kin Giant Red whose stalks tend to be more hollow and can get a little tough as the months progress. We find the new smaller shoots are best off this variety whereas the Utah's bigger shoots are better able to maintain a firm crunchy texture. This year I will be growing three new types of open pollinated celery in the garden in hopes of finding more varieties for winter forcing. I would like to try Safir, Par-Cel, and Ventura. That said, I still love my wild and temperamental Giant Red celery because of its cold hardiness and unusually strong flavor and will probably always save a spot for it in the garden.

We do not normally bring our celery upstairs due to the size of the containers and simply harvest shoots as we need them directly from the root cellar where they continue to put out new, albeit pale, growth.

Occasionally we separate a few of our more gnarly less palatable kohlrabi to bring upstairs and after being subjected to sunlight will harvest the greens. New shoots will then form at various places on this bulbous vegetable's "stem" allowing for numerous harvests. When you use a beet or kohlrabi in this manner the vegetable itself will become tough but can still be used as a food source for animals. Although I did experiment with beets and found that they were still pretty edible if used directly after the first forced growth had been harvested. The bigger the root or bulb vegetable the bigger the greens.

To control this leafy growth on my "good" kohlrabi, the ones whose thick stems I wish to eat, I will either keep them in a cooler part of the basement or am simply diligent in pinching back any growth before it takes hold, much the same as with my potatoes and carrots in the early spring when the cellar begins to warm a bit.

Arugula and the "frilly lettuces" as I like to call them seem to be holding up pretty well, time will tell the outcome of these and decide whether they are worthy of the indoor garden. Although, so far, I have been surprised at how long these lettuces have retained their green color in the gloom of our root cellar. I only potted up thirty 8" pots of the lettuce and arugula for this experiment, but could do many more next fall if we are pleased with the results. My fear is that they will immediately bolt once introduced to a warmer environment...I shall soon find out.

Lest I forget to mention them we also force, to some degree, turnips (the ugly ones), onions, dandelions, and my favorite forced veggie...beets. Tending hundreds of potted plants in ones basement may seem like quite the ridiculous chore but if it keeps me out of the grocery store I am more than game for the task. With any luck, this basement garden alone will provide us with a couple large salads every week during our most challenging months. Gardening never really ends around here it just takes on different, sometimes unusual, forms.

For more of my scribblings on forcing check out last January's post Forced To Provide.

Penelope giving my lovely wife instructions on how to properly pack endive roots ↑

With a little help from our trusty assistant and self-proclaimed Master Gardener, Penelope, we were finally able to get some of the endive pulled and packed into pots for storage. Little red headed Penelope has been a step ahead of the rest of the flock since day one. We can take her into the garden without worrying about what she'll get into as she just likes to keep us company. This never works out too well with the other birds who immediately seek out the garden's forbidden fruits. They must be very jealous of her as they are only able to watch from afar as we dote on her. She is a very affectionate girl, the minute you kneel down she will hop onto your leg seeking attention...chicken love, it's a Northern Idaho thing.☻ If these crazy birds ever get setty I hope it's her as she is by far the most intelligent of the bunch, and that's not saying much.

After carefully pulling the endive so as not to break the roots, we cut all the greens off and put them into a large pile slowly feeding them out to the chickens over the next few days. Piled up like this the waste greens will stay fresh for over a week in fall's cooler temperatures and provide the birds with a valuable source of nutrition. The roots are then layered into small pots for storage. I finally figured out that if you lay the pot on it's side it is much easier to place the long rooted endive into them...it was Penelope's suggestion of course. I will take these pots out of our root cellar and into the much warmer upstairs one at a time and enjoy the forced greens in the middle of winter. The roots can also used as a coffee substitute - Poor Man's Coffee.

Forcing = the art of raising plants, flowers, and fruits at an earlier season than the natural one, as in a hotbed or by the use of artificial heat. In our case this applies to winter salad greens - Forced To Provide.

A substitute for this root, both for forcing greens and a sorry cup of dried root coffee, is the common dandelion.

Forcing = the art of raising plants, flowers, and fruits at an earlier season than the natural one, as in a hotbed or by the use of artificial heat.

We do not totally rely upon the outside garden for greens in the cold months, forcing is used upon a variety of plants to help provide for us. To us, forcing means allowing certain plants that we have stored in our root cellar to get enough warmth that they will start to grow new edible leaves again.

In Victorian kitchen gardens of old it was popular to force belgian endive, sea kale and rhubarb. Belgian endive was always forced in the dark and the new non bitter shoots were often served at meals.

In the fall we pot up belgian endive

various beets,

turnips, kohlrabi (we call them martians),

and celery

that are stored in our basement/root cellar. As needed, we bring some of the plants upstairs and keep them next to a window so they get light and the pale new growth that has sometimes already started is allowed to change into a more natural healthy color.

The leaves are then cut and used in salads. The root or stalk on all of these is also used at that point. Most of these plants will send out more growth but it will not be as vigorous and the root will become less palatable. This also works well for onions that have started to spoil, instead of the mulch pile we can usually get them to send up some fresh shoots first by simply providing warmth and a little dampness to the roots.

We prefer to eat the leaves after they have been in the light, some of them (especially the endive) will be somewhat bitter tasting but perhaps much more nutritious. Our favorites are the endive and beets. Our endive roots are much smaller this year due to having been replanted in July after a hail storm destroyed them.

Here is a great YouTube video series on Victorian kitchen gardens. The last part of the video talks about forcing rhubarb and sea kale.

Has anyone else tried this, and if so with what plants and results? I am thinking of growing sea kale for forcing this year, I would love to hear others thoughts on this plant.