Growing Your Own Food During COVID-19 Isolation

The spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and the effects that it’s having on our everyday lives is going to be an opportunity for gardeners.

The fear of community spread of the virus should make us think of ways we can minimize some of our social contacts but not eliminate them. You can do this via your garden, and with some prudent planning your gardening skills will be able to save you trips to the supermarket and greengrocer while still making sure you have plenty of fresh produce, simply by growing your own. It’s simple, it’s inexpensive and it can certainly result in reducing your risk of social contact in large, crowded markets and stores. Opportunity is knocking for both the sprouting green thumb as well as those more experienced.

You can start right now. Some of the earliest and fastest growing produce we can grow in our gardens are the leafy greens that many of us use in our salads. I know that, just between my wife and me, we go through at least four plastic containers of mixed greens, baby spinach, arugula and others every week. This means at least two stops a week to the produce department, which can easily be eliminated. Also, by planning for later in the season you can have your own carrots, beets, cabbage, peppers, tomatoes and much more. But, you need the seeds or the plants, many of which will show up at local garden centers early due to the early spring.

Some practical things to consider, though. You may not want to show up at your local garden center on a Saturday when everyone else is there. If you’re going to shop locally for veggie starts for the garden, do it when the garden centers aren’t crowded and stay away from the big box stores where you may have to wait in line or use self-service checkout counters that everyone else had touched. Plan ahead.

Mondays won’t be a good time to hit the garden center. They’ll have little left after everyone else has been there. But much of their inventory arrives on Wednesday and Thursday. A late Thursday visit will avoid the crowds and may still give you the best selections. You can also call ahead to see what’s in stock.

The real story here is that you can grow virtually all your vegetables from seed, but you need to order the seed now, like today, so you can start your long-season plants like melons, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants so they’re ready for planting out on time. You can probably plant your greens within the next two weeks or even sooner using row covers. Plant shorter rows, then as we get warmer toward early April, do seedings every week to 10 days. Many salad green mixes that you can get from Renee’s and Johnny’s can be harvested in just two to three weeks from planting and they can also be cut and allowed to regrow instead of pulling them out of the ground. The seed mix descriptions in the catalogs and online will tell you how to plant and how much to plant.

For those of you who want to take this a step further, you can “put up” a number of vegetables by canning them. (Actually, they go in jars like Mason jars.) Recipes abound for tomato sauces, and don’t forget you can pickle green tomatoes at the end of the season if they don’t ripen. There are even vegetables that will self store as long as you harvest them and store them correctly. This includes all the winter squashes including acorn squash and spaghetti squash, which will last well into next winter. Many vegetables can also be frozen but when freezing or canning make sure you have good directions or a friend or neighbor that can help or guide. You can also get tons of information from the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County in Riverhead either by calling 631-853-6155 or going to ccesuffolk.org.

Have a plan, stick to it and help your neighbors and friends. Order the seeds you need and don’t forget you can reseed most greens and several other crops like peas, radishes and beets later in the summer for a fall harvest. Seeds at garden centers may go fast. If you go directly to the sources noted above, they usually get the seeds to you within a week. Need a book to help? Keep in mind also that pots and containers are great for veggies and a number of varieties have been bred for container “culture.”

See if you can find a copy of “Crockett’s Victory Garden” from 1977. It’s still relevant, will take you through the process month by month and it makes a great reference. When planning your garden center trips, it’s also going to be a good idea to buy as much of your growing season supplies at one time as possible. This includes stakes, fertilizers and insecticides. Don’t panic but be ready. At the very least you’ll have great veggies, and what a chance to learn and share what you know. Reach out.

The good news is that we’re going to be able to plant early and harvest early. In the early 1980s the National Phenology Network (NPN) began amassing records on the spring emergence of plants and insects and their database gives us an insight into how our growing seasons compare to earlier years. This year the spring “leaf out” is 24 days earlier in New York City and 30 days ahead in Nantucket. This is a window and not a prediction of what’s going to happen later in the season, but it does give us a tool to help in our planting and predictions of when insects will show up in our gardens. As I’ve noted in other columns, early insect inspection, detection and control will reduce your problems dramatically later in the season. You can see the NPN work here: usanpn.org/news/spring. It’s a critical tool for farmers and arborists, and you can use it as well.

While doing research for a column later this year I found a website that’s pretty amazing. It’s a site set up by the Sag Harbor Partnership where they’ve established a virtual tour of 25 of Sag Harbor’s remarkable and notable trees. It’s a pretty amazing work produced with funds from the Sag Harbor Tree Fund, and it’s replete with wonderful pictures and pages of descriptive text, tree histories and folklore. There’s also a map for those of you that want to see the trees up close and in person. You can find the site here: sagharborpartnership.org/remarkable-trees-of-sag-harbor.html. It’s great for those of you wanting to know what can be grown out here and what these trees look like when mature and in some cases, in bloom.

There are two other great tools I became reacquainted with. One is the Suffolk Cooperative Extension’s plant trials. For over a decade they have been doing trials on garden annuals and you can see the results here: ccesuffolk.org/agriculture/floriculture/long-island-trial-gardens. You can also visit the trials during the summer starting in June at the Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center (LIHREC) in Riverhead. There are also perennial trials.

The second program from the Suffolk Cooperative Extension is the Long Island Gold Medal Plant Program. These trials go back 20 years and have revealed many of the trees and shrubs that do well on Long Island, are widely available locally and are “easily grown by those of any skill level.” What a great group of resources when you’re wondering what will do well out here with objective, scientific evaluations that stand the test of time. You can find the Gold Medal winners with descriptions and pictures here: ccesuffolk.org/gardening/l-i-gold-medal-plant-program.

Ticks are active and have been out for weeks in very high numbers. The last thing I want to have to deal with is a tick bite and COVID-19. I have no problem using repellents with DEET every time I go out where I know ticks will be present (including walking through the beach dunes) and I spray my work clothes with permethrin once a month for added protection. It’s time to be safe, be calm, be helpful and of course, keep growing.