Haucatay (otherwise known as “Nematocidal Marigold”, “Mexican Marigold”, or “Peruvian Black Mint”) is a plant that serves many purposes. At Patterson’s field in Wayland, we initially began growing it from seed in the 2021 season as a companion for our tomato plants.
A handful of Huacatay leaves freshly harvested from the tall plant in the background
As many home gardeners know, marigolds, in general, have many advantageous properties as companion plants, including attracting beneficial insects, repelling tomato hornworms, and protecting against root-knot nematodes. This particular species (Tagetes minuta) grows quite tall — on average about 7 feet, but I’ve also seen it grow higher than 10 feet in my personal community garden plot. Huacatay reseeds readily and transplants easily. In the Spring, we dig up self-seeded plants and relocate them to where we need them — usually amongst the tomatoes, where their tall stature is a good match for our large tomato plants.
In 2022, we learned that Huacatay is also a culturally important food for Latin American people who comprise the primary clientele base for our food pantry partner, La Colaborativa. It has a wonderful scent and a flavor that can be described as a combination of basil, spearmint, and citrus with hints of tarragon. It’s full of antioxidants and essential fatty acids and is used in both medicinal preparations and culinarily to flavor tea, soup, and sauces or pastes for meats, rice, and potatoes. La Colaborativa especially appreciates our harvests of this herb, which can be difficult to find fresh locally. This year we also packaged our final harvest as a dried herb that will be included in the Thanksgiving distribution.
Volunteer Farmer Loring packaging freshly harvested Huacatay for distribution to food pantry partner La ColaborativaCamilo and David from La Colaborativa admiring our Huacatay during a recent visit to Patterson’s fieldHuacatay in a bouquet with Hannah and CamiloHuacatay dried for pantry distribution by Hannah
At Aurelia’s Garden in Medway, we were unaware this could be done, until Hannah Traggis, our horticulturist and fearless leader, advised us of this fact. We had discussed planting garlic in fall, as one of our food pantries had mentioned how much their clients had enjoyed a shipment of garlic, but when Hannah heard our plans, she gave us a bag of unplanted garlic cloves, and told us how to plant it.
Hardneck garlic needs a period of cold in order to divide and form into bulbs, so it’s best to plant it as early as possible in spring. We spent a snowy day in March in the greenhouse dividing garlic bulbs, sorting out any damaged or moldy ones, and then planting them in shallow trays of soil to get the bulb growth started.
We then left the planted up garlic in the greenhouse for a few days to kick start its growth. According to Todd Sandstrum, the farmer at Medway Community Farm, it is primarily heat that stimulates their growth and causes them to ‘pop’, as opposed to light.
A week and a half after planting, almost all of the garlic had sprouted, and it was time to plant it in the field!
The few days in the greenhouse had given it a nice head start on root development.
Our team of volunteers planted it in a prepared bed, 6” apart. Now all there is to do is keep our bed weeded and watered, and let most of the magic happen underground.
We might end up with smaller bulbs than if they had been planted last fall, but we are looking forward to a great harvest of our spring-planted garlic!
Garlic is a wonderful crop that supplies many households with a staple seasoning year-round. Its pungent flavor is the foundation of many cuisines around the globe. Garlic is a comparatively easy crop to grow, with few pest and disease problems. Originating in the Caucasus Mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, garlic has spread through the world and there are hundreds of named garlic varieties that are the result of breeding for local taste, weather, and farming conditions. We are pleased to be growing so many varieties for our friends at Open Table and look forward to more garlic harvests in years to come.
There are two broad categories of garlic plants- Hardneck and softneck. Hardneck garlic has a hard central stalk that grows tall and stiff. This hard central stem produces garlic scapes in the early spring, or garlic bulbils in the summer if the scape is not harvested. Typically hardneck garlics have only a few very large cloves surrounding the core plant stem. The cloves have loose paper skins, making them easy to peel. However, the ease of peeling makes them have a shorter lifespan in storage.
Softneck garlic doesn’t produce a scape, and has lots of smaller cloves clustered together. The soft stems allow this type of garlic to be braided into the classic garlic braids often seen in restaurants and at farmers markets. Softneck garlic cloves have more papery skins that do not peel as easily as hardneck garlic. While more inconvenient in the kitchen, the tight skins allow for more prolonged storage life.
Growing garlic is unique in that the seed cloves are planted in the fall the year before harvesting. In a garden succession plan, garlic can be conveniently planted after many of the heat-loving summer crops have been removed. At Aurelia’s garden, we aim to plant in early November, allowing several weeks for the garlic to set roots before the ground freezes for the winter. The garden bed to be planted should be well amended with compost before planting as garlic plants are heavy feeders. Seed cloves should be placed 6” apart in rows that are 6-12” apart, and buried 2-4” deep with the pointed end up. After planting, a thick layer of mulch such as hay or dry shredded leaves. In the spring, mulch can gently be pulled away from the young garlic to give it ample room to grow. For hardneck varieties, scapes can be harvested when they begin to curl over and form a flower head.
All garlic should be pulled in the spring or early summer when the bottom leaves begin to dry and brown. The freshly harvested garlic can be enjoyed immediately, but for long term storage the garlic should be dried in a warm, well-ventilated space out of direct sunlight. Do not remove the long, leafy stalks until after the garlic is cured. When the outer wrappings have thoroughly dried and the roots are completely dessicated, the garlic stems can be trimmed away and the loose outer paper can be brushed away. Garlic should be stored in a cool, dry location and checked regularly for quality.
When choosing a variety of garlic to grow, it is important to know how cold and harsh your winters can be. Typically, hardneck garlics can withstand harsher winters than softneck garlic varieties. Aurelia’s Garden, in growing zone 5, has successfully grown both hard and softneck garlic. Knowing the disease pressure is also useful. While a fairly hardy crop, garlic is still susceptible to various rots, and good management practices can prevent the loss of a crop ( see Diseases of Garlic: Various Pests for more details).
We recently moved our 2400 square foot silage tarp from the location where we had it anchored all spring to a new location in the north corner of Patterson’s field. In doing so, we uncovered a large family of garter snakes who had been nesting under the tarp.
Silage tarps are used to eliminate weeds and create a stale seed bed. The weed seeds germinate due to the moist heat under the tarp, but then the seedlings die due to lack of light. The decaying matter feeds the earthworms, creating fertile weed-free soil to grow crops in.
We are fortunate to have an abundance of snakes in our field! They eat voles (which also like to hide under tarps) and thus provide a valuable service to our farming efforts.
Cover cropping is an amazing way to build soil health while keeping weeds at a minimum. Crimson clover is a fast-growing nitrogen fixing crop that also adds a good source of nectar for local pollinators.
President Hannah Traggis discusses the benefits of crimson clover in the fallow parts of our field, where it will add nitrogen, biomass, reduce weed pressure, and contribute to pollinators in the early spring.
Everyone has a favorite tool to work in Aurelia’s Garden. From the @mantistillers tiller for tilthing, a trusty weedwacker to keep the electric fence running, a new wire hoe for getting those baby weeds, or just our own pair of hands for the delicate jobs, everyone’s favorite tool is welcome and needed in Aurelia’s Garden! What is your favorite tool?
Spring greens are in peak season at Aurelia’s Garden. Our volunteer grown seedlings are taking off in the field and should provide many weeks of fresh and nutritious donations to Open Table of Maynard.
Our volunteers have been hard at work growing seedlings for Aurelia’s Garden. With our goal to grow over 2000 pounds of produce this year, we need hundreds of plants to fill the fields, and numerous volunteers to nurture the plants from seed to field and beyond. Many thanks to the Aurelia’s Garden Clerk, Nancy, for her gorgeous tray of seedlings.
Whether raw in a salad, a stir-fry, gently braised, or steamed to perfection, baby greens are the perfect source of a multitude of vitamins and minerals. And with so many different varieties with flavors ranging from sweet to spicy, tangy to bitter, there is a perfect spring green for every meal.
A few of us met in the field on this beautiful sunny day to check on our winter crops in the hoop house. The young plants look healthy, but they have been waiting during the past month for longer daylight hours before they can resume growing.
Checking on the winter spinach and tatsoi in our hoop house
We have tried several strategies for making winterized windproof caterpillar tunnels, and found that we had to make a few repairs to some of our tunnels. Fortunately, they must have blown off during a windstorm that occurred in recent warmer weather, as the plants under them were not damaged by frosts. We are still learning a lot about this land, it’s challenges, and how to make use of limited supplies.
Our main task for the day was to put a small dent in our eradication effort of invasive bittersweet, which is strangling some of the large trees at the edge of the field. It will likely be a multi-year project to fully remove the bittersweet, but for our first efforts, we focused on freeing the trees from their strangulation by cutting the vines to the ground, and carefully gathering and bagging any berries from the brush that had been freed. Many of the berries were way too high in the trees for us to access at the moment, so we will likely have to pull seedlings again as they sprout in the Spring.
Asiatic bittersweet in the trees along our Wayland field
We are excited about a big box of donated seeds we received in the mail this week. They were sent to us from Diane Blazek at All America Selections (AAS).
It is always exciting to open a new box of seeds and think about all the plants they will produce. It is one of our favorite things! Donations are even more special. They are often unexpected and always make us very happy.
The AAS sent us wonderful seeds that will produce food for donations. The seed packets included corn, squashes, shallots, melons, and lots of tomatoes.
