The Winter Gardener

GOOD PLANNING NOW CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE IN NEXT SUMMER’S GARDEN
 

A basket full of beans, tomatoes and zucchini from a single day’s harvest from Celia’s yard. Contributed photo.

If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life but the same amount of snow,” someone said in one of those Internet memes that became especially popular after last April’s 30-inch snowstorm in Northeast Wisconsin.

For people who love to dig in the dirt and grow their own food for eating, canning and preserving, the joy to be found during the cold winter months comes from envisioning next year’s bounty.

Gardeners spend this time of year pouring through seed catalogs and planning for spring. Decisions made now can spell the difference between a plentiful harvest and a muddled semi (or total) disaster. What can the dedicated gardener be doing now to ensure a bountiful harvest next summer and fall?

“How do I plan for spring when there is still winter in our forecast?” Celia Sawicki rephrases the question with a twinkle in her eye. Armed with a degree in art history and art education from Purdue University, Sawicki has slowly built the small parcel surrounding her Victorian style home into an oasis of abundance and sustainability, utilizing literally everything she grows and using and reusing as much and as often as she can.

Sawicki is a bundle of energy and seemingly scattershot thoughts. Our conversation at the Green Bay Botanical Garden bounced at the drop of a hat from her collection of Gourmet magazines to canning, to the day she met Julia Child, and to her antiques. But through it all bubbles a surity of purpose and a commitment to locally sourced food, much of it grown in her own yard along Lake Winnebago where she has lived since 1976.

“Everything in my garden is native or something I can get value out of,” she said, using her abundant quince tree as an example: “Quince is a high source of pectin … it’s good for you, it’s good for making jams and jellies.”

Sawicki grew up cleaning petri dishes on Saturday mornings for her scientist father, and her mother was a 4-H leader, so her approach to gardening naturally follows the scientific method. She has been keeping a garden journal for more than 25 years, keeping track of what works and what doesn’t, what thrives in her little corner of the world and what doesn’t do so well.

She saves seeds and she buys seeds, and she has done her share of experimenting with hybrids and saving the plants that have the best quality. She is always researching – her Gourmet magazines since 1967 take up a whole front closet and she owns close to 2,000 cookbooks.

“That may put me in the category of ‘over the top,’ but I prefer to call it my ‘resource library,’” Sawicki said. “I also call it learning in retirement, even though I do not consider myself retired. There is so much to do and learn!”

As Sawicki looks ahead to spring and summer during the winter months, she said she starts with setting a goal for the year.

“Is it food, flowers or both, and how does it fit my needs to recycle, reuse, repurpose and practice thrifty, healthy living? Cheap is part of my persona and a nod to my heritage,” which is to follow a number of tried and true practices:

• Be flexible and try new items (“that is how we learn”) and discard what doesn’t work.
• Avoid GMO seeds.
• Practice organic methods.
• Plant flowers that encourage butterflies, bees and birds.
• Avoid chemically-laden items at all costs.
• Save money and eat healthier food.
• “Enjoy just being out there with the sun, moon and stars to nurture my well-being.”

Like many gardeners, Sawicki starts many of her plants indoors, later transplanting them into the garden when we’ve cleared our last frostfree days of the year. There is pre-planning to do even before purchasing seeds and planting.

Between December and February she is cleaning the freezer and doing inventory, taking inventory of the canned goods and stored crops in her fruit cellar, checking her seed supply (including a check of the seeds’ age and viability), and stocking up on seed starter mix.

Before she starts planting she cleans and sterilizes all flats, pots and trays; cleans the areas where plants will be growing; and checks her grow lights and heat mats to repair or replace as necessary.

She’ll be starting the plants in late March for the most part, using some of the heirloom seeds she’s been stewarding for 20 or more years but also going through seed catalogs for what strikes her fancy.

“I have preserved my heritage plants that connect me to the land and my roots – my Grandma Dahl’s petunias, Mother’s small plum tomatoes, Dutch Golden Plum tomatoes …” she said. “It will vary from year to year as my interests and needs change.”

One of her rituals to brighten the darkest winter months is to travel to the Wisconsin Public Radio Garden & Landscape Expo, scheduled this year for Feb. 8-10 in Exhibition Hall of the Alliant Energy Center in Madison.

And she’s always sharing ideas and plants with gardening friends, including seminars she has presented over the years at places like Paine Art Center in Oshkosh and The Artful Path, a business she operated for a number of years.

“I think of myself as an educator,” Sawicki said. “The connection between gardening and cooking is my passion.”

Celia Sawicki’s quince tree was unusually productive this fall. Contributed photo

“I don’t see gardening as work, but rather fun and a learning, growing experience.” — Celia Sawicki

ADVICE FROM UW-EXTENSION

Annie Deutsch, agricultural educator for the University of Wisconsin- Extension office in Door County, says in selecting seeds, “One thing for gardeners to look for is plants that have some level of disease resistance, especially if a certain disease has been a problem for them in the past.” In an article Deutsch wrote for the Peninsula Pulse about starting seeds, she said the basic needs of a plant are soil or some type of growth media, water, light and fertilizer.

“The ideal time to start seeds varies by the plant being grown and the average frost-free date of the location where the plants will be transplanted,” Deutsch wrote. “In Door County, the average frost-free date is around May 12, so that date should be used when you determine how far in advance you should start seeds. Even though May 12 is the average time, the last frost can be well before or after that date, but use extreme caution if you plant much before that time.”

One key before transplanting the seedlings is to acclimate them to outdoor conditions by putting the trays outside for increasing amounts of time during the week or two before transplanting, she said.

Deutsch also recommended a UW-Extension publication called “Vegetable cultivars and planning guide for Wisconsin gardens” by A.J. Bussan, Judy Reith-Rozelle and Karen Delahaut, pamphlet No. A1653. It contains such recommendations as “Don’t be penny-wise and poundfoolish when purchasing seeds. Selecting high quality seeds is a good investment that will more than reward you for their initial costs” and “Have seeds on hand by mid-February, especially those for growing early transplants.”

Seed Savers Exchange offers a network for persons collecting and/or trying to locate older cultivars, the authors said. Many other seed companies also carry heirloom selections.

All of this work now pays off as a harvest of fruits and vegetables that can continue well into the fall.

“That’s one of the reasons why I do what I do,” Sawicki says: “So I can have what I want.”