Farmers Weekly Review

The egg prices have been in the news for several months now, and occasionally I will have people ask me if it would just be “cheep-er” to just get a few chickens for the backyard.

The answer: definitely not cheep-er or even cheaper. And it isn’t even about the costs of the coop, the feed, the bedding, but consider, do you know how to take care of a chicken?

This might seem like a leap, but the same is true for growing food. Growing your own food, especially with prices as they have been the last few years, would seem to make sense to cut into that grocery bill. But, like the chicken story above, do you know what to grow? And what you will get? And when? And how much?

Many times a year, I hear from gardeners, new and even experienced sometimes, who say, “Why do I bother growing all this stuff, it takes so long, and then I have too much? And why grow potatoes when a whole bag only costs $5.00?”

Some even say their homegrown produce doesn’t taste like the grocery store. And I say, exactly! You need to know what and how to grow … and what to expect.

Our growing season, even with the early and extended warmth, is still limited. So yes, you will get a lot of the same crop in a short amount of time. The key is to know what to do with it when the crop comes in before you buy the seeds. But you also need to know what seeds you like.

Take for example lettuce. Lettuce grows so easily — leaf lettuce, romaine, butter bibb and myriad others — but not iceberg. Iceberg is the mild, sweet-tasting usual head lettuce the Midwest palette is most familiar with. The other lettuces have stronger flavors, and some people don’t find them as palatable.

Lettuces and all of the other salad greens for the most part also are at their flavor peak in early to mid-spring here in the Midwest. The hotter it gets, the more bitter they get, particularly when they send up their seed stalk (known as bolting). The energy of the plant converts from leaf production to seed production, and the leaf flavor suffers. It is time to pull that lettuce and replace it with a warm-season crop.

This is why seasonality plays such a part in what we can grow successfully and where we get our food the rest of the year. Most of our salad fixins come from the valley near Salinas County, California. The temperatures there stay modest year-round and so it is optimal and long. We have to shuffle our cool season and warm season crops fairly quickly; that is why it can be confusing.

This change in flavor also affects herbs significantly. Gardeners sometimes ask why their basil doesn’t taste like that purchased at the store? They say it has a medicinal taste and lacks that sweet licorice flavor.

And it is true; just like with the lettuce, once basil starts to set flowers, the leaves take on an undesirable strong flavor. Solution? Always pick off all the flower buds on basil you intend to use in the kitchen, so you prevent them from flowering. You will continue to get great tasting basil — well, that is if you planted Genovese basil.

Not all basil is meant for your spaghetti sauce. There are myriad basil plants that are grown for ornamental purposes. They won’t have the culinary characteristics. Same with oregano.

Oregano is a member of the mint family. Often when gardeners by oregano, a few issues occur. First any of the mint family are highly aggressive plants, meaning they are best grown in a container. Otherwise, you may end up only growing mints, and not only in your vegetable garden, but mints will invade your lawn and any crack in the driveway.

The other issue is if you purchase a plant called simply “oregano,” you will probably be disappointed that it doesn’t taste like … well, oregano. It has a vague minty taste. If you want oregano for use in the kitchen, only purchase Greek oregano.

Another main issue with gardening dissatisfaction is not knowing optimum harvest. Bigger is not better, and too small is not great, either. Again, each seed is packed with its own special genetics. And part of that is the mature, and optimum flavor size … and, of course, they are all different.

Seed packets usually focus on “days to harvest,” but a large part of that is tied to weather conditions. Fortunately for us, the University of Illinois Extension has a great fact sheet on what size produce should be and how it should look for optimum harvest. Here is the link: https://go.illinois.edu/when2harvest and don’t worry if the computer is not in your wheelhouse. You can call the Extension office (815 727 9296), and we will mail you a copy or you can stop in to pick one up.

Once you have picked your produce at the ideal time, how you store it both short- and long-term is important to know, too. Uncut tomatoes and uncooked potatoes should always be stored outside the refrigerator.

The tomatoes will lose flavor and in an odd botanical chemical reaction, uncooked white potatoes will develop a strange sweetness, if refrigerated. The starches are converted to sugars. That said, those strong varieties of leaf lettuce I mentioned earlier, refrigerating them does the same thing, makes they sweeter when refrigerated one to two hours before serving. See how it is so confusing?

Long-term storage for all those tomatoes, peppers, corn, etc. that you couldn’t possibly eat fresh when the peak harvest season is the way to have summer in winter … if you know how to properly preserve. Once again University of Illinois Extension Fact Sheets to the rescue: https://go.illinois.edu/freezingharvest

See why home gardening can be so confusing? You may not have the right plant to start with, or our growing conditions change and some produce naturally decline.

These little nuances aren’t really included on seed packages or plant tags. But once you know, you know. And now you do for a few of our garden plants.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected] or 815-727-9296 with any questions you may have.