Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You
Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You
Episode 220: Fall/Winter Gardening & Sprouts
Spice spills the beans (literally) about fall/winter specific gardens and discusses sprouting.
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Hello, everybody.
Salty:Hello everybody. Welcome to the show the big show the most important and critically acclaimed podcast that is recorded in our car. Here we are, we are traveling down miniscule little road in northern Missouri. I mean, this one's a tiny little road. It's actually a state highway, but it's not a big one.
Spice:So what are we here to talk about today? Salty?
Salty:Does not very big state highway. That's probably not it. Oh,
Spice:it's December.
Salty:It's December. It's cold out. Everything is done for the year. It's cold. There's no such things as like gardens anymore, or
Spice:I think I'll go home and have a salad of lettuce from my garden.
Salty:Oh, do you mean we're gonna talk about winter gardening ish fall garden? We're in the Midwest, there is no, unless you're like in a full on greenhouse situation. There is no winter gardening here. It gets actually cold here in the winter. Yeah, and I didn't want my Florida cold, actually cool.
Spice:I didn't even get as ambitious as I could have and make glass enclosures, glass boxes or something for it. I just put in a standard fall garden. And frankly, I haven't had a lot of success with fall gardens in the past. So I've been trying some different things. This year. I got some crops to actually work. So that's what it's about. The thing is, everybody's used to putting in gardens in the spring, maybe you put some stuff in in the summer is the earliest stuff comes out. That's all good stuff. But most of that runs out about the end of August
Salty:for the tomatoes.
Spice:Yeah, we have tomatoes. The latest have ever had tomatoes was I had the last ones on Thanksgiving one year. And I lasted till mid November this year, which was pretty good.
Salty:Now to keep in mind we're in zone five, six area. Yeah, right there on the
Spice:journey. Yeah, that's about where we are.
Salty:So your zone wherever you are your zones, maybe I know people in Florida garden all year round, some new people in Arizona. Well,
Spice:a lot of Darden in the winter when they can possibly get enough rain to do it.
Salty:Water their sand. I say that I say Arizona Flagstaff where the snow is places in America. So you know, this depends on the elevation you're at. And
Spice:if you don't know what we mean by zones, you can Google that one or listen to one of our other podcasts where we talk about it. It's basically about the climate where you are. And five B is getting up there pretty pretty northerly, representing really cold winters, and somewhat cold springs and falls.
Salty:We are in Missouri, but we're about as far north as you can be. and still be in Missouri. I mean, we're way up on the Iowa border. In fact, if I were to make a left turn here, I would end up in Iowa for very long.
Spice:Yeah. So when you put in a fall garden, what you're doing is basically extending the growing season so you get more fresh green stuff later in the year. And that'll give you fresh greens if you're lucky all the way to this September 4, which is about where we are now. I'm about to eat the last of it and I let it go. As long as I could let it go before I pulled up the last of the garden. I saw the gonna have a hard freeze down to 15 and wasn't any blood us I've got gonna survive through that. So I pulled it the night before that.
Salty:And again, you know, how you go is totally dependent on how cold it gets. The sun isn't doing much of anything here. It's we're pretty. We're pretty pretty far into the short days of the of the daylight.
Spice:Yeah, pretty close to the shortest day.
Salty:Pretty close sales are not we love the turnaround day.
Spice:We love to turn around. It's a sign of hope in the midst of cold
Salty:turnaround day is the shortest day of the year. We call it turnaround day because things start getting better from here on out, at least where the sun is concerned from days. Once the day start getting longer warmth will follow eventually it has to it when it comes to the summer equinox. We just kind of pretend it
Spice:didn't happen. Yeah. It's warm. Now it's close enough. It's a half glass glass half full thing. So the plan is you can put in the same stuff for a fall garden that you put in for an early spring garden. The same stuff that can survive a little bit of frost in the spring is the stuff you want in your fall garden. So I put in some spinach, I put in a wide mixture of lettuces I put in, which was not hard. So I had a lettuce blend mix. I put in some beats, and I put in some snow peas. And I learned some things through that I've had failures in the past and mostly where I've had failures they've been failures to germinate. Because I got to put mine in at the end of August and at the end of August in northern Missouri, it tends to be really hot and sunny and humid and dry. And I often get germination failure. So I put them in this time. But I had a plan. I had some other plants that had basically finished what they were going to do for producing food, but they were throwing shade on particular regions of the garden. And it was the regions that had some shade from the other plants in August I is where I put in my stuff for fall. So they brand new seedlings wouldn't get totally baked by the heat of the summer sun at the end of August. So I put them in where they had a little shade. I did give them a little water. Basically, we have a dehumidifier that runs like crazy in the house during late summer when it's so humid here. And it was given me a good gallon or two, a couple gallons of water a day. And I would just throw that on what I wanted to be the fall garden plants. And that worked. That was enough. So I got some stuff to sprout, not the spinach because spinach is finicky. And I usually plant it in several different flights in the spring. And I usually get one really good sprout out of the several flights. And the other flights fail. Because I just find spinach is sometimes wants to sprout and sometimes not. So I get lots of opportunities. See this cheap, spinach didn't go bunches of the lettuce did the beats did. The bees came up, although it took them a longer time than usual. Especially when you're putting peas in in the fall, it helps to soak them overnight before you put them in. So I did that. And I got a lot of stuff to sprout up. And then we got into a serious dry spell. And for a long time, nothing was growing and I thought I was gonna get nothing at all like it again. But that wasn't the case. I just kept giving it up enough water to keep going. And then when it started to cool down, stuff started to grow.
Salty:Okay, it's time for a secret. When she says get nothing and like it. She doesn't really like it.
Spice:No, but sometimes you get what you get. And you might as well pretend you like it because that's what you're getting anyway. So yeah, so that worked. And by the time we got into the part of the year where most everything else in the garden had given up all the spring and summer plantings were done, except a few coughing and sputtering cherry tomatoes. I picked all the all the peppers and stuff off and those were looking sad because even a light frost makes them very unhappy. dug up all the taters and stuff, I dug up all the other parts of the garden. This is what I had left and fresh garlic because it sprouts the second time I was about it. So some things that I learned started getting spots that have a little bit of shade from the other plants. And then as the sun gets less intense and the temperatures start to drop, you pull up the other plants that are giving them shade and let them get all the sun they can get the peace came up, but they take so long to mature that the temperatures have been Okay, these peas don't mind getting cold. And although they looked a little cranky after the first couple of Frost's they didn't die and they kept growing, but they grew so slowly. I got almost no crop from them. I still had lots of flowers on them on the hard frost came. But it only gotten a couple puny little snow peas off them. They were worth it because they add nitrogen to the soil every time they grow. And again, seeds cheap. So it costs me basically nothing to get a little nitrogen added to the soil in their vicinity worth doing. But I got very little crop off them. The beets did well, they didn't grow big fat beats this time of year and I'm sure that's because the soil was so very dry. We had a dry fall. They had trouble growing. But I got greens often which is mostly what I grow the beets for anyway and if I'd wanted more actual beats I would have watered them but frankly, I've got a big enough supply from the earlier in the year. I don't wasn't going to eat any more full size beets anyway, so I didn't bother to water them long as they gave me the greens. They're good. And they did they didn't mind the light frost the lettuces didn't mind I pulled some of those through through the fall and ate off them a little bit in the fall and then harvested one last big batch of them right before that hard freeze was going to come in. And it's the last of that batch that I'm going to be eating when we get home here with some tomatoes dehydrated when tomatoes were coming in abundantly and some sprouts because you can grow sprouts anytime a year.
Salty:We'll come back to sprouts in a minute. Yeah,
Spice:that's, that's about what I got. I'll run more experiments in the future. But those are some things that I learned you start them out in the shade of other plants and pull up the other plants as they need more sun, you can get by with just enough water to keep them from dying during a drought in the fall. And if you keep them from dying, they will do surprisingly well when the water starts come in again. But the growth is slow. And since the temperatures have been mild for this time of year, I'm sure the slow growth is because the sun energy is just not enough to do a whole bunch of photosynthesis with. So even the plants that are surviving well are growing very slowly, because they don't have enough solar energy. So expect that expect him to kind of hang on in late fall if they're Hardy, but not actually continue to grow with enthusiasm. Once the days get short, and the sun gets angled, you've got most of the growth you're going to get and after that, it's just leave them in the ground, keep fresh. Okay, that's what I had.
Salty:sprouts,
Spice:sprouts, fresh green, nutritious stuff all year long. Very, very simple to do. Yeah. So salty, picked up a bunch of new sprouting seed for me this year. And I had a little bit leftover from last year, which it turns out is still good basic plan was sprouts is you buy the sprouting seeds. I like the grasses like alfalfa and clover, you can also sprout other things like the beans, and lentils, which are pulses not really beans, and they give you bigger, more robust sprouts. But I like the little find guys that grow very fast and are atrocious and soft. And so that's what I mostly grow. You take the seeds you want to sprout is soak them in water overnight. To start the germination process and let them pick up some water and start to split their holes. I use sprouting trays but you don't have to the sprouting trays are supports that have very fine little holes like there's it's a mesh, that is fine enough that the seeds won't drop through the mesh. So I can take those sprouts out. And about once a day I am a friend to sprouts, or salty as a friend of sprouts when I'm not there, fix trays out, we lay those seeds out in a single thickness layer on the trays once a day, spray them with water, drain off the excess water, which is why I use trays that have a holes in the bottom.
Salty:There are many other ways of doing yeah trays.
Spice:You want to keep them damp but not wet. That is the defining character. They don't need sun. In fact, you don't want them in the sun until the very last day. We have
Salty:one of those. Forget the name of this big plaque squared yeah graders,
Spice:Excalibur dehydrator, we
Salty:have a really great unit, fantastic dehydrator that we really don't use much in the winter because
Spice:I just finished drying all the fall stuff and I'm tired, tired, tired, dehydrating stuff, right after the garden dies in the fall.
Salty:So that makes a perfect place for for we just rearrange the trays a little bit in the dehydrator and stick the sprouts in the dehydrator and close the cover. And there you go, you have a dark place for them to grow. Just don't turn the the hydrator on. Yeah. They like it. And it's someplace that's already taken up space in the kitchen. So you know, it's like, it's just, it's very convenient. If you immerse where they need the need the sunlight for you to set them on top of that hydrator. When it's time for them, we have a window right next to the hydrator. So
Spice:although even a artificial light will be enough to greet him up.
Salty:Yeah, sometimes she sits on the counter and puts a little we keep a one light on in the kitchen at all times and
Spice:give that to them. But basically just keep it moist. If it's the really soft greens like the little grass seeds, it's like three or four days, about four days,
Salty:or five or $6 batch of seeds will grow batch after batch of sprouts.
Spice:Yeah, you look at that bag of seeds and it's a bag of grass seed and it's several dollars and you're like really, but then you buy it and start sprouting from it. And five months later you're still sprouting from the same bag. Because you get I get about a quart of fairly tightly packed well grown sprouts from less than two tablespoons of seed. So at that rate the seed last quite a while.
Salty:I honestly don't know in the city where you would get sprouting seeds. I don't know if there's almost a grocery store or not.
Spice:Some places that have a good kind of hippie ish groove to them or a good organic section. You can often find sprouting seeds in the organic section. I know we will get to natural foods
Salty:we get ours at our local country store which
Spice:Yeah, they would sell us out alfalfa or you know, Clover seed buy the 10 pound bags if we wanted it. We don't we get the sprouting special stuff because that way we know they haven't put pesticides or anything on it. It
Salty:works really well. Yeah. Very high germination rate
Spice:and last so very long. For a bag that spending a couple bucks for a bag is is nothing if you buy a little pint of sprouts at a grocery store. One, they're fairly fragile and they don't stay fresh very long. And they cost several dollars pint often. Whereas for the same cost as two pints, you can get a bag of seed that's going to give you court after court after court after court
Salty:were very, very, super easy to do.
Spice:Yeah, if you're sprouting bigger seeds, like beans or pulses, it's gonna be 10 to 14 days, until they're full size. And then the very last day when they're big enough to eat, but they're still pale, you set them out where they can get a little bit of light. And that triggers them start putting in the chlorophyll. And they start making their lovely antioxidant compounds when they start making the chlorophyll. So you get extraordinarily nutritious little greens, and you can use them on salads, like, and I've even made salads with them entire when I didn't have other greens in the winter, because that's what I can grow. Use them on sandwiches, where use lettuce, you put them on tacos, you can sprinkle on top of soup, soups and stuff. I even put a little bit on salties. And he's not generally a giant salad eater, but a little
Salty:bit sprouts on thing if you have people who are picky, who are not biggie. Yeah, I like the occasional solid meme around that much of a solid year. But you could take these sprouts, and you can drop them into things like pastas. And people won't even notice they're there. You can't really taste them. But it's a way that you could take the picky people who need to be eating some greens who don't like the greens, well, you could get them to eat greens, that way,
Spice:they get a little fiber, they get a good bunch of minerals for the amount of food they're eating. Not very calorie dense at all. But they've got a lot of micronutrients in them, and they've got good phytonutrients in them. And it's stuff you just don't get from the package food. So if your pack if you're putting away food stores, and it's a prepping podcast, after all, you can easily put away sprouts,
Salty:lot
Spice:sprout seeds, and they're good for at least two years. I haven't really tried them extensively further out than two years because I usually use mine up by then. But I know they're good for a good two years.
Salty:So they're cheap. They're plentiful. They don't require any kind of special storage, whatever. And you can grow fresh greens for your family to eat in an emergency situation without even you don't even have to use potable water. You can just use ditch water if you want to. I would wash them in bottled water before I am. But you know you can just use puddle water. Oil stuff.
Spice:Yeah, I use rainwater off the roof, but I wouldn't use bottled water. Because the organic. Yeah. And frankly, it's a psychological boost if you're eating, if you've ever made a bunch of meals from your prep food, which we noticed the whole Yeah, we practice that too. You notice the whole can dehydrated the groove can be a little uninteresting, but adding some fresh sprouts on top really does wonders to make that feel much less deprived for the same food content. Basically,
Salty:it helps one the morale does underestimate the value of morale. morale is kind of a big deal,
Spice:winter garden to boost your greens into early winter. And then you can sprout for as you can sprout all year long if you want to
Salty:sprout sprout sprout sprouts, huge, huge fan of sprouts even though I don't eat them nearly as much as she does. I put them on some of my stuff. You know, you can use those lettuce on a burger. Seriously. They work just fine. Okay, sprouts.
Spice:There we are. There we are. Happy growing.
Salty:Thank you for listening and we'll catch you on the next podcast.