A Love for All Seasons
Prime Pickings for Georgia Produce
March/April 2007
By Melissa Libby
“Every day is a fresh beginning,” wrote author Susan Coolidge. Sure, we all say that when the New Year rolls around and resolutions are abundant. Thanks to Georgia’s mild climates and year-round growing conditions, a resolution for eating local is getting easier to keep.
Buying fresh, local, and sustainably grown produce during peak harvest times delivers the best flavor and nutrients from your food. Contrary to the global food business that erases seasonality and delivers summer berries grown in the Southern Hemisphere in the deep of our winter, the type of local produce available varies with the seasons throughout the year.
To assist chefs and consumers in making the most of our regional, seasonal bounty, Georgia Organics’ Local Food Guide includes a Georgia harvest calendar that serves as a handy guide to when local fruits and vegetables are prime for the picking. The Local Food Guide offers a statewide listing of farms, markets, restaurants and other businesses that support sustainable food and farms in Georgia, and can be found at www.georgiaorganics.org.
So, with a tip of the hat to those farmers using season-mitigating hoop and greenhouses, here’s a quick overview of what you can expect from Georgia’s growers throughout 2007.
January – March
During the first quarter’s harvest, root crops such as carrots, parsnips and turnips are at their peak. The larger root crops are tough and tolerate cold weather well, waiting until fall before they start putting on bulb growth.
Jonathan Szecsey of A&J Farms in Winston, Georgia, pulls his parsnips out of the ground in mid-January, where they have been since last May. “All root vegetables are planted in fall or winter and harvested the following season,” he says. “Keeping them in the ground longer is the key.”
Winter harvest of these larger root crops has benefits. “When the ground freezes here, the coldness brings out more sweetness in root vegetables,” says Szecsey. “Root crops are very starchy at first, but after a frost, they become sweeter. For example, the frost won’t kill a carrot if it’s mulched with leaves, it will only make the carrot sweeter. If you eat a carrot that was grown in the spring, it will taste much different,” Szecsey explains.
Szecsey also works at Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta, which gets many vegetables and even some fruit from Szecsey’s farm. One of his favorite root vegetables is kohlrabi, a bulb with a taste and texture similar to cabbage. Kohlrabi is technically a root crop even though its bulb grows more above ground, and is often roasted and used in soups.
Hearty dark greens, a natural source of calcium, also thrive in the mild Southern winters. Collards, all varieties of kale, and heartier mustard greens will tolerate heavy frost and put on leafy growth during the winter months.
Looking for locally grown Mesclun greens in the middle of winter? You’ll need to find a farmer growing them in a hoop or greenhouse. These season-extenders are the ticket for growing spring and some summer crops regardless of how low the mercury dips.
From rutabagas and sweet potatoes to parsley and kale: a quick tour of the local producers’ market quickly displays what local farmers are bringing in during the winter, greenhouse or no. More than a few markets now operate year-round, including Atlanta’s Morningside Market and the Decatur Organic Farmers Market.
April – May
The air warms in the Spring, and soil temperatures slowly catch up. The cool, wet weather favors tender, leafy crops. English peas, crisp lettuces, tangy arugula, quick-growing radishes and later on, beets and fennel, rule the local produce roost. Plants of the onion family, including Vidalia onions and garlic, mature now after waiting largely dormant throughout the winter. The star fruit of the season is the strawberry; it wastes no time before blossoming with a fruit that ripens quickly during the April’s longer daylight hours and still-cool nights.As the spring matures, it’s the season’s first heirloom tomatoes that growers, consumers, and chefs alike crane their necks in search of. An intricate calculus that considers anticipated weather patterns, micro-climates, growing conditions, and a good deal of luck dictates farmers’ planting-and therefore, harvesting-schedules. The risk is high; plant outdoors too early and one late frost will knock the young plants out. Generally, the farmers who grow their tomato plants in frost-sheltered spaces reap the first harvest.
June – September
Most leafy green crops call it quits in Georgia’s hot, long summer days, but not to worry, there’s harvest galore in this time of plenty. What to look for now? Potatoes mature and are joined by all things fruity: melons, okra, sweet corn, beans, field peas, edamame, cabbages, cucumbers, tomatoes, figs, peppers, summer squashes, and among others, blueberries.
Most plants tire of summer’s heat come August. Summer crop yields tail off and the fall crops slowly start to appear, winter squashes like spaghetti and butternut among the first to make their appearance.
October – December
Autumn’s cooler temperatures up the amperages of squashes, usher in sweet potatoes, and welcome back the greens including lettuces-if the weather stays mild. Turnips and the larger root veggies start to reappear, but unless they’re the mild, sweet, white-bulbed Hakurei turnips, count on apples to provide the season’s sweetest note.Executive Chef Dean Dupuis of South City Kitchen, uses Fuji and Little Lady apples from local farmer Dan Moore to create salads, entrees and desserts. Because these apples are so sweet and tasty during the fall and winter months, simply serving them raw with something to accent their flavor is often a winning approach, advises Dupuis.
Locally grown produce complements the contemporary Southern aspect of South City Kitchen’s menu. “I think that people really get into eating things that were growing or living just around the corner from where they live,” says Dupuis. “I try to use local products whenever possible-not only to help sustain local farmers, but because we get items that are harvested so close to the time that we are serving them. We can sell guests a great grilled local Fuji apple salad with hydroponic watercress, Sweet Grass Dairy’s goat cheese, salted pecans and cane syrup vinaigrette with apples that were hanging on the trees a day or two ago.”
Dining patrons often notice the use of organic produce in dishes and restaurants are capitalizing on this. According to Dupuis, guests are always excited when the restaurant talks about using organic produce, which for South City Kitchen and many other Georgia restaurants, is usually the local produce.
Becoming acquainted with peak harvest times for local produce is one of the most enriching ways to support area farmers while appreciating our unique bounty of regional foodstuffs. Local produce has become a vital part of the Georgia’s culinary scene, a trend we hope the Georgia Organics Local Food Guide will make easier than ever to support.
Georgia Organics, a nonprofit organization working to integrate healthy, sustainable, and locally grown food into the lives of all Georgians provided this article. To learn more, visit www.georgiaorganics.org, or call 678.702.0400. Melissa Libby is the co-founder, along with Kristina Hjelsand, of the Red Clay Collective, an Atlanta marketing and public relations partnership founded in 2006 that represents Southeastern food artisans.
