Dawn, I cook mine Southern Style, with the exception of the salt pork. Pretty much I boil them like potatoes and just mash with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Makes a nice change from potatoes. Or I'll bake them in foil with a little water in the pan and do them like baked potatoes. Both ways are yummy!

We're still getting rain here, and are forecast until Wednesday. I'm gonna rake my wood chip mulch around cause I'm starting to get moisture mushrooms. Not that this is bad, but I want all the wood to get damp and make sure I'm getting some good air circulation. Don't need any of my plants getting mushy at the mulch level. LOL, I babied them through too much drought to lose them to finally getting rain and high dew points.

Still keeping you and your area in my prayers for rain, Dawn :)

Kathy

Kathy,

I cook everything southern style! For a long time in the 1980s and 1990s, I cooked and ate really healthy. Then, along came Paula Deen and all her recipes, and I reverted to cooking like my southern aunts and grandmothers. Well, I do use turkey bacon, sometimes, and I guess that helps a little.

I'm glad you and your garden are getting rain, and I hope we all get more rain in the next few days.

My yard and garden are DELIRIOUSLY happy. You just wouldn't believe the difference that one inch of rain has made. Well, that, plus the fact that the temperatures are closer to 86 than 106! It wasn't just the lack of rain that caused me to stop watering the garden and leave it to fend for itself, but also the concurrent high heat, over 100 for days on end, and very low humidity (15-30 or 40%). Any one factor like that probably wouldn't have hurt the yard and garden that much, but having all of them in combination was just dreadful.

The biggest cracks in the ground have closed up a little, and are now only about 1.5" wide. I think it would take at least another 6" or so for the cracks to close noticeably, but I am optimistic and hoping for the best.

I have mushrooms sprouting in the front yard underneath a pecan tree, which is odd, but we always get a few in the summer after any rainstorm. The native rain lilies haven't bloomed yet, and I was hoping they would. Maybe they need a little more moisture, or just another day or two to sprout and bloom.

This morning, 5 deer visitors around 7 a.m.....the "older" 6 or 8 point buck, the younger doe, who I think was born last year and who didn't have any fawns (or at least any surviving ones) this year, the long-term resident mama doe and the two fawns. They came to eat sunflower seeds and henscratch and to drink at the wildlife puddles. I don't usually have deer eating in the yard at this time of the year....more often, they show up in December or so after it gets cold. I don't know what to think....almost wish they weren't here, because they will attract predators that we'd rather not have. I guess they must be really hungry. The cats continue to try to 'chase' them away from the yard, and they continue to ignore the cats.

I have been pulling up dead plants from the veggie garden and piling them on the compost pile and the deer visit the compost pile as well. They also visit the garden, but can only eat any plants foolish enough to grow beyond the fence...which would be mostly pumpkins and a few tomato plants.

Dawn

Rutabagas and Brussels sprouts were two veggies our kids didn't get while growing up in Mexico. Not only didn't they get them, but neither did they hear other kids talk about them. So, when we got back to the USA we fixed them without comment and served them to the kids. They all raved about them, asking for more!

Dawn, thanks for the recipes. I need to file them. We pretty much make them like the Southern style. Though sometimes we just cube, boil and serve with some butter and salt.

I got in two nice wide rows yesterday, one of rutabaga and the other of beets. Now I'm shooting for chard and carrots. The spring planting of beets did quite well.

George

Great recipes. But where do you get the seed? I've never seen it here locally. And what about parsnips? George, you grow parsnips don't you? Where do you get that seed? And when do you plant? My grandfather used to grow parsnips and I loved them.

George, I never tried growing brussels sprouts til this year. I have three granddaughters who love them, much to their friends' amazement. (But my daughter, who grew up on broccoli, knows that this veggie should be lightly steamed and served al dente to prevent bitterness.) Anyway this year I raised and picked them and gave all of them to my daughter. But I won't raise them again as the return wasn't that great for me, and I got them in really early in a wet year so doubt that they would ever do any better than this year. For me, broccoli and cabbage produce so much better that I will stick with them. Dorothy

George,

You're wecome. Ever had rutabaga pudding? I'll try to post that recipe later today.

Dorothy,

One of my favorite sources for ALL veggie seeds is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, based fairly close to us in Missouri. They are one of the few seed companies that seem to remember that rutabagas, parsnips and salsify still exist.

They ship really quickly too!

I'll link their website for you. I know they carry Purple Top and Laurentian rutabagas and 2 kinds of parsnips as well. While you're there, or later when you have time, check out ALL their heirloom veggies--they have an amazing variety at very reasonable prices and, based on past experience, I'd say they usually over-pack their seed packets with far more seed than the amount they guarantee per packet.

Plant your rutabagas at the same time you'd plant turnips or beets.

Both rutabagas and turnips (and beets and several other cold season crops) winter over here well for me, but I'm pretty far south, so I can plant them pretty late. Our first killing freeze usually doesn't arrive until November in our part of the state, although it has come as early as Sept. 30th and as late as mid-Dec., so I can plant REALLY late most years and get away with it. I think that your rutabagas would do well as long as you get them planted by at least mid-September for a fall crop. If you had seed now, though, you could plant right now too.

As for brussels sprouts, they are strictly a fall crop for me here....and were in Texas as well. In the spring, it gets too hot too early and they hardly produce anything at all, and what they do produce tastes bitter. (People in northern Oklahoma in zone 6 might have better spring results that I have in 7B.)

Fall-planted brussels sprouts are ENTIRELY different, and I think you would have better success with them as a fall crop than a spring crop where you live too. I think home-grown brussels sprouts are a million times better than any you buy in a store. The first time I grew them in Texas and they actually made sprouts, I was delighted. DS thought they looked like "alien plants", and the first year I grew them, I grew purple kohlrabi, which looked to him like "space ships", so it was a "spacey" year in our garden! (Kids make gardening more fun, don't they?)

George grows salsify more than I do, and he is in a cooler climate, and I THINK he plants it in early spring. Because our winters are so warm here, I can plant it in late summer, overwinter it, and harvest it in early to mid-spring. It takes FOREVER....maybe 5 or 6 months, it seems like. I do think parsnip is one of those veggies that tastes better if exposed to freezing temps. In cooler parts of the country, they plant parsnips in the spring and don't harvest until after the first fall frost, but I don't know if our extreme heat in the summer interferes with that type of growing process here, so I use it as a fall/winter crop. Parsnips are hard to germinate....kinda slow and finicky like beets, so soaking and pre-sprouting is recommended (by me!).

Salsify, by the way, grows much the same as parsnips for me.....best overwintered.

All this talk of cold-season crops makes me want to plant a fall garden now......but I REALLY need for more rain to fall first. One inch of rain (sadly) does not end a moderate drought.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Baker Creek

I have 3/4 quart of parsnip seed in the freezer, from the 2007 seed crop. In 2006 I planted parsnips, but in late March. They hardly amounted to anything. In fact, I only got about 6 plants. So, I left them alone and they over wintered. In 2007 those plants got really large and produced a BIG shopping bag of seed heads! I kept the seeds in the freezer, as parsnip seed is notoriously short lived. I planted again in January 08, and had a great germination rate.

In 2009 I will plant from that same seed. But hopefully, by next summer I'll have another good seed crop. I'll leave about 10 roots to go to seed. For most biennial root crops I believe one is fairly safe if they keep at least six plants for cross pollination.

Next year I also hope to produce my own rutabaga seed. It's done the same way as for parsnips or beets, for that matter. One does need to remember that these seed producing plants will take up a good deal of room in their second year. They shouldn't be too close together. Once, while living in a high cool rain forest, in the hills of Mexico, I produced my own beet seed. EACH PLANT made nearly a quart of seed!

I'm not the one growing salsify. Haven't tried that since about 1975.

Dawn, I asked in one of the fall planting threads, can one really start parsnips this time of year? Seems like it would be a real pain, and they'd surely have to overwinter and be harvested the following fall, after frost.

George

George,

I'm not surprised your second-year parsnips made such a nice seed harvest since, as you point out, they are biennial. Sometimes I leave carrots to overwinter and make seed the second year too. Come to think of it, parsnips and carrots aren't that different, are they?

I don't know if parsnips would make a good fall crop for you although they do better for me in the fall than in the spring. Here's why:

Although you and I are both growing gardens in Oklahoma, only a couple of hundred miles and 1 zone apart, we have really, really different weather conditions most years. For example, y'all always have a lot more moisture there than we have here, even when we are having a good rain year (about 3 or 4 years out of 10) in Love County. Y'all always have more humidity than we do, too, and most plants like that better.

Our temperatures tend to heat up much earlier here in the springtime than yours do. It is not at all uncommon to have daytime highs in the 80s and 90s every now and then in Feb. and Mar. here in southern Oklahoma. Well, the cool-season crops don't like those hot days and they get stressed, and often that stress leads to bolting or just a lack of vigor. An occasional "hot" day like that in the midst of cooler ones can really confuse cool-season crops like parsnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, broccoli, brussels sprouts, lettuce, cabbage, etc. And, some years, our winter nights pretty much stay above 40 or 45 for very long stretches, and that can mess with the performance of cool-season crops.

So, in my part of the state, almost all the cool season crops perform better if planted in mid- to late-summer for a late autumn to early winter harvest. (And, yes, getting them to germinate and getting them off to a good start is a pain!) In the spring, they all tend to bolt too early, but in the fall they usually do quite well. Our fall temperatures don't seem to vary as much as the spring ones....they slowly cool over the weeks, but in a more consistent manner, so the crops kind of roll along at an even keel. Some years (and this wasn't one of them) we are so hot in April and May that crops like broccoli and lettuce tend to bolt really early. So, for best results, the cool-season crops that you plant in spring, I have to plant in the fall.

And, it goes without saying, that y'all cool off both earlier in the fall than we do, and your cooler temperaturs go lower. There are years I still have a thriving garden of warm-season crops in December! Sometimes we do have one early hard freeze, often in October but, if I cover up plants and they survive that, they may have another 4 to 10 weeks of good weather.

So, for me, parnsips are a great fall crop. For you, I just don't know. I guess it would depend on how early your nights get "cold" and how cold they get.

Rutabagas and turnips are similar. Many years, I can grow them all fall and virtually all winter and it doesn't even get cold enough to slow down their growth. Of course, some years it does get too cold too early and stunts them. If I have them well-mulched, though, they tend to do great all winter.

Spinach and other greens often grow all winter here, although sometimes they need a frost blamket to get them through a really cold night or two.

And, I am in the really, really warm southernmost part of Love County, so even though I am zone 7B, many winters we absolutely have zone 8a or even zone 8b weather conditions. Of course, that's not always good. A lot of people here get lulled into a false sense of security and plant zone 8 plants like Texas Mountain Laurel, dwarf ornamental pomegranate, various jasmines or gardenias and Mexican bush sage. And, while those plants may survive for 2, 3, or 4 years here, the occasional winter when we actually have true zone 7 winter low temperatures gets them every time.

So, for me, fall parsnips--yes. For Dorothy? Probably. For you? Maybe? Maybe Not? For both you and Dorothy, I think a lot of the decision would involve if your garden is in a slightly warmer or slightly cooler microclimate too. If only we all could know in advance if the first fall freeze would be early or late, and if cold nights will come early and linger, or come late and be milder. I wish we had a crystal ball. And, if you had a great spring crop of parnsips, the question too then becomes, how many do you need? (smile)

Dawn (from COOL and RAINY Marietta, where we are getting reacquainted with the wet, squishy sound the ground makes when moisture falls)

Thanks George and Dawn. You two have inspired me to try more heirloom veggies and to save my own seed--which in 40 years of gardening I have never done. For now, I have already been to the Baker Seed web site and placed an order for more fall stuff. We got over 7" of rain last week and if I'd had more seed, it would already be in the ground. Still have time though so here goes. Dorothy

Dorothy,

Now we'll all cross our fingers and hope your first hard freeze doesn't arrive until January or so....wouldn't that be nice?

I love heirlooms.....so many of them have superior flavor, and a lot of them yield as much or more than highly touted hybrids. A lot of the modern-day hybrids seem to be bred more for appearance or disease resistance. Personally, I don't care about appearance--I care about flavor! As for disease-resistance, I don't think it is all it is cracked up to be. First of all, disease-resistance is ONLY resistance to or tolerance of disease, and the hybrids seem to only withstand disease a little, but not a lot, longer than hybrids. Secondly, it doesn't matter to me HOW disease-resistant a given plant is if the fruits or veggies it produces are not flavorful.

With the heirlooms, I basically started out with heirloom tomatoes and then branched into other types of veggies. THEN, I discovered, much to my amusement, that many of the veggies we raised when I was a kid are considered heirlooms (and many of them were heirlooms back then, but we didn't know it or at least didn't talk about it).

Some of my dad's favorites, like Moon and Stars Watermelon, Pike muskmelon, and cowhorn okra, for example, were heirlooms even when we grew them in the 1960s and 1970s.

WOW! Seven inches of rain. I won't even try to figure out how many months it has taken us this year to accumulate 7" of rain. LOL

Dawn