Life After Frost

Nighttime frost has come regularly for the past two weeks, but the garden harvest just keeps coming. Greens are everywhere, and last week brought in a few robust heads of broccoli (yum!). With an actual hard freeze predicted in a few days, I've been gathering hold-outs from beets to bok choy, and trying to get the beds set to rights before working outside gets uncomfortably cold.

Meanwhile, I have two stories to tell.

Yes, You Can Transplant Rutabagas

It was hot and buggy back in early August, but I was determined to get a fall crop of rutabagas growing anyway. The books and extension publications I consulted emphasized that rutabagas should not be transplanted, but what's a gardener to do? Soil temperatures that spiked above 90 degrees every day would not suit the germinating seeds, so I started them indoors.

Two weeks later I carefully slipped the seedlings into the soil, and they showed new growth within three days. Three months later I have a bunch of beautiful rutabagas, so it's fair to conclude that rutabagas can be transplanted quite successfully after all.

Exploding unfounded old garden myths can be so much fun!

Celeriac is a Cinderella

Barbara Pleasant vegetable gardens

The celeriac seedlings I set out in spring were a quiet presence all summer, and I noted time and time again that pests ignored them completely - even slugs! The plants did like their drink, and every few weeks I pulled off the lowest leaves that bent down toward the ground.

Now I have a half dozen nutty, knobby roots that turn into one of the most interesting vegetables I have ever tasted when cut into chunks and roasted, or sliced into discs and sauteed in butter. When it comes to minor crops that are well worth growing in your garden, celeriac is true Cinderella - a peasant-plain veggie that turns into a princess on the plate.