A Summer Garden to Provide Winter Meals

My first big garden was beautiful but disappointing. I had gazed at seed catalogues over a long winter as the growing season approached. The astonishing array of vegetable photos made it look like a uniform bounty was just a furrow and some watering away. Just think! I could have a cellar full of potatoes! I could can tomatoes by the bushel and make sweet pickles the way I liked them. Instead of buying canned vegetables and fruits, I could preserve my own from the garden that was coming. Soup and casserole ingredients would be just a couple of steps away any time of the year. I couldn’t wait to get started.

Let’s see. Radishes are fast and easy. Check. Everybody likes tomatoes. Check. Zucchini, of course, and green beans like the ones my grandmother canned. Check. Potatoes, onions, plenty of flowers, peas, carrots, cabbage, Brussels sprouts. Check. Sweet corn. Check. I planted and I hoed a great deal, and I saw the bounty coming. Then it arrived with a thud. I had radishes by the bushel, but I rediscovered that I don’t really like radishes all that much. The peas failed. The carrots didn’t sprout. The Brussels sprouts looked good, but then didn’t make sprouts like they should. The potatoes made about half of what I expected with one variety, and very little of another. Bean beetles and Colorado potato beetles visited. The tomatoes made tremendous vines, then the hornworms visited, then there were so many tomatoes that I got sick of them. Sliced tomato on a burger or chopped in a salad was nice, but not seven nights a week. I didn’t have enough time during the week for canning. Four months after the bounty struck, I was out of most everything. In January. I knew I had to re-engineer my garden work. With that in mind, I’d like to offer a few ideas.

Over the years I began to plan gardens that would feed me in the winter time and in the spring, when gardens were dormant or yet to be planted. It’s a paradox that we must look to summer gardening to feed us when it’s not summer anymore. It’s hard to look at the catalogs while the snow flies but only concentrate on basic needs for a full year ahead when the snow flies again. When it’s summertime, everybody else’s garden is doing great as well as my own.

A more practical garden takes full advantage of the summer growing season for fresh summer vegetables. We have to eat in the summer time, too. Gradually over the years I have restrained my winter instincts and directed them in more prudent ways. I plant less for summer consumption than before, and somehow I still seem to have plenty of tomatoes, sweet corn, green beans, zucchini, and spinach.

I hope I’m better at all these things than I used to be. Learning the best varieties for my area helps, and that can take several years. I don’t plant summer vegetables for the apocalypse any more. When the weather is warm, I can still plant many things on short notice. But when it’s the end of January, I can’t plant anything. So my strategy has turned more toward producing vegetables I like to eat in the winter time. Whenever possible, I try to grow winter storage vegetables that will dry for keeping, or that do not require refrigeration or canning to preserve them. I always try to produce proteins first and then vitamins.

To my way of thinking, proteins from the garden means dry beans. Because I grew up thinking that ‘soup beans’ meant great northern or pea beans made into soup with a ham bone, I wasn’t enthusiastic about growing my own. My dad and my brothers liked that more than I did. Then I began to realize there were more than great northern beans to choose from. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I became aware of Swedish brown beans (from a cold climate!), discovering that they made superb home made baked beans, and also a very flavorful soup. An old friend introduced me to soldier beans, Jacob’s cattle, black beans, and yelloweye beans. I tried those bags of 15 bean soup beans, and performed plenty of experiments. Swedish brown beans became a regular crop for me, and I always liked to have another variety on hand, too. 

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Last year I planted a new bean. It’s called Peregion (Vermont Bean Seed Company), and it has two bean colors in the pods. One is nearly black, and the other is black striped with a creamy background. They produced well. I began to experiment with those and struck gold. Recently I made a tremendous soup with a cup of Peregion beans, chicken broth, and crumbled bacon. I could hardly believe it had just three ingredients. It’s better than any ‘soup beans’ I ever had, at least to me. Now it will be a perennial crop for me.

Dry beans require a longer growing season than green beans, which are picked when immature. Dry varieties need to fully mature in the pods. When the pods turn brown and begin to get rattly, they come in out of the rain to finish drying and curing. Then they have to be threshed, or separated from the dry pods. Early in the winter time I accomplish this task while watching a classic movie or three. Don’t forget the hand lotion! Some of what I grow will go back into the ground as seed. I will try others. In the winter time, I can have my protein with great flavor using beans and seasoning.

The second front in my winter vegetable plans focuses on easily stored vitamins and fibre. For this goal, there is nothing like winter squash. There are all kinds of winter squash, but I have come to the realization that for me, nothing beats butternut squash for yield, flavor, efficiency, and ease of storage. Butternut squash produce abundant foliage which stands above the developing fruit. It will usually prevent weeds with its shady leaf cover and only minimal cultivation. Each plant will produce 2-5 squash on average. A dozen three-seed hills will reward the gardener well. Butternuts can grow fairly large, but are still manageable.

 Three to five will go in a grocery bag. They are a kind of warm beige when mature, with bright orange flesh. They have small seed chambers and sturdy, longish necks. The necks are solid and seed-free. Being a winter squash, they have tough skins and relatively dry flesh which helps them keep. They must be cured in the garden to dry properly on those warm autumn days in the bright sun. Some people wipe them with a vinegar solution before storage. Then they must be stored in a dry space where they cannot freeze. In proper storage they will usually keep for six months and sometimes up to a year.

Butternut squash make tremendous soup and a better pie than pumpkin, in my estimation. With a good vegetable peeler and a sharp paring knife, they are easy to prepare. I like to dice them before starting them in a pan with some olive oil. After perhaps 15 minutes of heating in the oil, or when the sizzle starts, simply cover for another 15 minutes or so for perfect tenderness with no added water. I keep the cooked squash in the fridge for adding to breakfast eggs or for a side vegetable at dinner time.

There are other squash that keep well, like the sturdy Hubbard squash which usually requires an axe to cut open. Cushaw squash are good and keep pretty well, and they have long necks, but they are huge and not as good as a butternut, although they make great soup. I like acorn, Lakota, and kabocha squash, too, but pound for pound, butternuts are the way to go. If you decide to try winter squash, go for different varieties widely separated in the garden. Or go to the local farmers market and try what they grow locally. When you narrow your choices to a few favorites, try growing them yourself.

There are other ways to use a garden to extend your diet far into the winter and even into the spring. A dehydrator is a good place to start. Most vegetables, if dried properly, will reconstitute in just a little water, or as part of the cooking process. Tomatoes, summer squash, peppers, and a host of other vegetables dry well. Throw most any dried vegetable into soup. Simple dehydrators are widely available and may be had for $50 and up.

Another way is to extend the garden season into the fall. When frosts arrive, they hit us for a night or two or three before warmer weather returns. If protected properly with covers, many tender crops, like tomatoes, will continue producing. Row covers can protect tender crops like lettuce and onions and spinach sown late in the garden year. Sometimes there are three or four frost strikes before serious cold sets in. This can mean that the gardening season may be extended for 4-6 weeks and sometimes longer.

Even a modest green house or cold frames, with emphasis on length of row rather than height, can take production of cold-tolerant crops far beyond the first few frosts in the fall.

Lock in your favorites, but try a new variety or two of something every year. Rotate crops in your garden, whether large or small. Move things around. Monocropping will sooner or later result in every pest that thrives on a crop being present and ready for the next season even before we begin tillage.

I wish everyone a bountiful garden season and a plentiful supply of comfort food when the days are very short in the first months of the new year.

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