(SALES) Season Extension

These 10 great crops will keep you selling and selling.

- LEAH SMITH

Continued interest in locavore eating means an increasing demand for produce availability beyond the traditional selling season. Though the term season extension might bring heated greenhouses to mind, continuing sales through the end of the calendar year can be a simpler matter of well-timed planting and proper storage conditions for carefully selected produce varieties.

PLANNING & PLANTING AFIELD

To extend your selling season, you can raise produce that will hold in the field in cool weather, surviving wholly unprotected or with modest protection such as a simple layer of straw mulch or a floating polyester cover. Protection may even be temporary, sheltering crops through an early frost. Just don’t forget it is not only air temperature but wind chills you have to watch.

With fast-growing crops, begin planting in early September and look for harvestable produce in roughly a month (though plants may require an additional week or two beyond their normal days-to-maturity as the cool temperatures and shortening daylight could slow them down). Such crops are salad radishes and a variety of greens including lettuce, spinach, chard, mizuna, endive and kale.

Other field-holding crops will require an additional month (or much more) in the ground. Beets, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, Chinese or napa cabbage, carrots, collards, kohlrabi, scallions, leeks, parsnips, rutabagas and turnips can all be timed for a late-season harvest.

CURING THE PRODUCE?

The other option for continued sales is to have produce harvested and in storage, ready to be brought out when needed. Whereas you need to pay close attention to the timing and protection of your plantings with the preceding crops, this group requires the greatest care with post-harvest handling and storage conditions.