New Potatoes

The earliest or "new" potatoes of the season are a treat not to be missed. They’re small, round, smooth and delicious. When you think you have early potatoes big enough to eat, reach into your early hills, feel for the best-sized spuds and ease them out. The plants keep right on growing and producing more.

During seasons when the soil has been quite moist (which makes hunting by hand tougher), dig up entire plants, harvest all the baby potatoes you can find and put the plants back in the earth. They’ll survive this rude transplant and produce quite a few more potatoes. But working fast is important; freshly dug potatoes shouldn’t stay in the sun very long.

The best tool for digging is a 5- or 6-pronged fork. Dig down under a hill, then lift up. The dirt falls between the prongs, and you’re left with a forkful of potatoes. There’s less bending this way, too.

Later Harvest

In the North, harvest the main storage crop in September, when the days are getting cool and frost isn’t far off. That’s when the plant tops are dying and sending the last of the vines’ energy underground to the tubers.

If you’ll be storing most of the late potatoes, wait for the best weather conditions possible before digging them up. Choose a warm, dry day after a period of little or no rain. Cloudy days are even better, since too much light turns newly dug potatoes green, changing their flavor.

After you dig a few hills, you’ll discover that all the potatoes in a hill are at pretty much the same level. Once you figure out how deep to dig your fork, you won’t injure as many potatoes. Of course, if you’ve got some beginners on the work crew, there’ll be a few spiked spuds. Put them aside for the evening meal; they won’t keep. A pointed shovel does a good job, too. You can dig deep enough next to a hill to raise the entire hill at one time.

Be gentle. Try not to rough up or bump the potatoes. Each bruise lowers the storage quality and appearance of the tuber.

After the Harvest

Leave the potatoes outdoors for an hour or so to dry. During that time most of the soil stuck on them should also drop off. There’s no real need to brush the tubers, although some people use a very soft brush gently to take off clumps of dirt. Don’t wash the potatoes; it’s hard to get them really dry afterward.

Put the potatoes in the dark after they’ve dried in the open for a short time. Don’t leave them in burlap bags or other containers where light can penetrate and start them greening.

If possible, storage potatoes should have a short drying or "curing" period of one to two weeks after the harvest. Curing allows any slight cuts or bruises on the potatoes to heal rapidly. Keep the tubers in a dark place with temperatures around 55^o to 60^oF with high humidity of up to 85 or 95 percent.

After a curing period, move the potatoes to a much cooler, dark place for winter storage. Experts recommend 35^o to 40^oF with moderate humidity and ventilation. If these standards are met in your basement or root cellar, you can expect mature potatoes to store for up to eight months. Higher temperatures will mean quicker sprouting and shriveling.

Because potatoes have to breathe in storage, a root cellar needs good air circulation The potatoes are still carrying on normal life processes, using oxygen to heal bruises and cracks and giving off carbon dioxide, heat and moisture. Good air circulation in the storage room helps this continuing process. A good way to store potatoes is in bins with slatted sides and bottoms; however, don’t pile them higher than 6- to 8-inches tall.

Occasionally, potatoes turn "sweet" during storage. This happens because potatoes convert a certain amount of starch to sugar, which is used up in the "breathing" process. When the tubers are stored in cool root cellars, the breathing slows down and they don’t use up all the sugar they produced. Occasionally, this extra sugar gives the potatoes a sweet taste if they’ve been taken directly from cool storage and cooked. However, this is rarely a problem. If your potatoes sweeten, just bring a week’s supply out of storage at one time and keep them in a warmer spot. The extra sugar will revert to starch — a process experts call "reconditioning".

A Note on Green Potatoes

When potatoes are exposed to light their skins start to turn green — a sign that a toxic substance called solanine is developing. This occurs if potatoes aren’t fully covered by soil while they’re growing, if you leave them in the sun for too long after the harvest, or if they aren’t stored in complete darkness. Potatoes you buy from the supermarket also turn green if they aren’t stored in a dark place.

Time to Eat!

Start harvesting beets and turnips early for their greens, and baby carrots when they’re the size of your little finger. This will give you a good start on a long harvesting period; the roots left in the row will have more room to grow; and you won’t be faced with an entire row of vegetables ready to be pulled on the same day. Besides, the smaller the root, the better it tastes!

For a few extra meals of beet or turnip greens, just go out and snip off the leaves you want. As long as you leave some greens on the plant, it will continue to grow more of

them — as well as growing a nice big root, too.

Pull the largest roots every time you harvest. People are tempted to leave the biggest ones, so they’ll grow even bigger. Don’t do it! By pulling the largest roots, you’re sure to have them before they’re so big they’re all woody and bitter. Again, this encourages the remaining plants to fill in and grow bigger, giving you what seems like an inexhaustible supply of medium-sized, savory roots.

Once some root crops get bigger, you may have to wiggle them back and forth (or loosen them with a trowel, pitchfork or spade) to get them out. If a top breaks off in your hand, don’t give up. Dig down into the soil and pull that root! If you water the soil before harvesting, the roots will pop out more easily.

Harvest whenever you need fresh roots, picking just enough. You should be able to enjoy all your spring-planted root crops in this fresh, garden-to-table fashion.

Where’s the Biggest Carrot?

Basil Types

There are many types of basil to choose from; the one offered by most garden supply stores and in mail order catalogs is bush or sweet basil, a compact plant growing to 18 inches or so during the season. There are a growing number of varieties of purple basil available. Their richly hued leaves add color and interest to an herb bed or even a flower garden. Use it like common basil, though expect it to be less sweet. When steeped in white vinegar, the leaves produce a lovely tint. Recently rediscovered by many cooks, lemon basil brings a citrus fragrance to both the garden and the kitchen. Thai basil adds a licorice flavor to typical basil leaves and tastes great in Asian cooking. You’ll also find cinnamon-flavored varieties, tiny-leaved, clump-forming types, and "lettuce leaf" basil, among others.

Getting Started

Start seeds indoors 6 weeks before the last frost date, and keep the temperatures around 70F for good germination. You can also sow seed directly in the garden (about 1/4 inch deep) after the last frost date when soil is warm. Set transplants or thin seedlings to stand at least 10 to 12 inches apart; more room (16 to 24 inches apart) will encourage low, bushy plants to develop.

Basil Care

Plant in full sun. Pinch the tip from the center shoot of basil after it has grown for 6 weeks to force side growth and prevent early flowering. If flower stalks do develop, cut them off. Mulch is recommended in hot areas since basil likes a steady moisture supply. Basil is generally pest-free. Frost-tender basil is easily nipped by early fall frost, so be sure to harvest if temperatures threaten to dip into the 30s.

Picking Basil

Basil is at its most flavorful when fresh. The best time to harvest is just as the plant starts to set flower buds, well before flowers bloom. Snip leaves or branches at this time and pinch off flower stalks to keep plants productive. You can also cut entire plants about 6 to 8 inches above ground, leaving at least one node with two young shoots intact. The plant should produce a second, but smaller harvest several weeks later.

Preserving the Harvest

Getting Them to Turn Red

The red color of tomatoes won’t form when temperatures are above 86^oF. So, if you live where the summers get quite hot, leaving tomatoes on the vine may give them a yellowish orange look. It’s probably better to pick them in the pink stage and let them ripen indoors in cooler temperatures.

Tomatoes need warmth, not light, to ripen, so there’s no need to put them on a sunny windowsill. Place them out of direct sunlight – even in a dark cupboard – where the temperature is 65 to 70^oF.

Frost-Time Harvest

Tomatoes succumb to frost, but don’t panic when the weatherman predicts the first one and your tomato vines are still loaded with green fruit. If it’s going to be a light frost, you can protect the plants overnight by covering them with old sheets, plastic, burlap bags or big boxes. It’s usually worth the effort because the second frost is often two or three weeks after the first one.

If a heavy freeze is on its way, go out and pick all the tomatoes. Green tomatoes that have reached about 3/4 of their full size and show some color will eventually ripen, and smaller, immature green ones can be pickled or cooked green.

Some people like to pull up the whole tomato plant and hang it upside down in a dark basement room and let the tomatoes ripen gradually. If you try this system, check them regularly to prevent very ripe fruits from falling onto the floor – splaat!

The Shelf Method

Another method is to put unripe tomatoes on a shelf and cover them with sheets of newspaper. Every few days check under the newspaper and remove ripe fruits or any that have begun to rot. The newspaper covering helps trap a natural ethylene gas that tomatoes give off, which hastens ripening. Some people wrap each tomato individually, but this causes a lot of work when you want to check for ripe tomatoes: You have to open each one! You can also place tomatoes in a paper bag with an apple or banana. The fruits give off ethylene gas, which helps to speed the tomatoes’ ripening process.

Fall Tomatoes

In parts of the southern and southwestern states you can grow an abundant crop of fall tomatoes. However, finding young tomato plants to buy in the middle of summer may be hard.

An easy way to solve this problem is to cut small suckers from spring-planted tomatoes and let them grow to full-sized plants. Instead of pinching out most of the suckers on your tomato plants, allow some to grow four or five inches. Then in mid- or late summer, cut the suckers from the plant, remove the lowest set of leaves and place the suckers in a jar of water or moistened sand or vermiculite. This will start the rooting process. Once roots begin to form, plant them in pots or directly in the garden. Firm the soil around the suckers and water them heavily for two or three days.

If you want additional stems to develop besides the main stem, allow the suckers closest to the bottom of the plant to grow. These will have more flower blossoms and are easier to train to the outside of the plant than suckers that sprout higher up.

Tomato plants really grow fast when the weather warms up, and new suckers form all the time, so you should go on "sucker patrol" at least twice a week during the heavy growing season.

If you live in a very hot, sunny area, you can let some of the suckers put out a couple of leaves and then pinch out the tips to stop their growth. The sucker provides a little more foliage to help the plant manufacture food and also to help shade tomatoes from the sun.

Pruning Unstaked Plants

Unstaked plants can also be pruned, although it’s not as necessary as it is for staked or trellised plants. Pruning improves ventilation, which can help to prevent disease problems. Pruning branches late in the season opens the plant up to more sunlight. Then on cooler days the plants are a little warmer, which is good for ripening tomatoes.

If you’re growing determinate varieties of tomatoes, go easy on any pruning. Because these plants are smaller and don’t continue to set new fruits throughout the season, heavy pruning may reduce your yield drastically. Also, be careful not to overprune in hot parts of the country. Tomato fruits need protection from the bright sun or they may develop sunscald. Tomatoes ripen better if they’re shaded some by foliage.

Pruning Tops of Plants

You can pinch off the tip of the main stem above the top blossom of indeterminate tomato varieties to keep a flourishing plant from getting any higher. This type of pruning can be helpful when a plant is outgrowing its support, or toward the end of the growing season when a taller plant won’t help much in terms of increased production. At that point, you’d prefer to see the plant put its energy into ripening the tomatoes already on the vine.

Pruning Roots

Root pruning is a special trick you can use to speed up the ripening of early tomatoes. It simply involves cutting some of the roots of a plant when it has three or four clusters of tomatoes on it. By cutting the roots, you put quite a bit of stress on the plant, which causes it to mature more quickly. It’s as if the plant were worried that it might not have time to complete its life cycle, so it rushes to mature some fruit and seed. The plant won’t die if you root-prune it correctly; the growth process is simply interrupted. But after a little rest, the plant is ready to start producing again.