Wk 34 The Backside of Summer

The Backside of summer brings the onrush of shorter daylight hours as we approach the Autumn equinox on Sept. 22nd/wk 38. Mid Aug. deceives the salad grower in believing these endless dog days are only for frantically keeping up with the summer restaurant sales in Newport. Not so. Much planning and preparation must begin now if salad production is to continue through the next three seasons. Little if any seeding is possible after Mid Oct./ wk 42 when soil temperatures dip into the 50s and daylight hours begin to diminish to the 10 hr/day mark. All seeding done between mid Aug and early Oct. will provide continuous harvests through mid. Mar. and on to Mother's Day when all cold season salad is finished. Now is the time to seed cold tolerant greens such as spinach, mustard, cutting celery, chervil, beet greens, upland cress, claytonia, wild arugula, and endive. Most of the lettuces that dominate the warm season blend will fall away as the season of ice advances. By Thanksgiving/wk 48 all salad is growing slowly in unheated greenhouses under row covers to keep the soil from freezing. Phew, lets not thing too much of that now, we finally have our tomatoe avalanche.