This Week's Harvest - Garden Update

It's been two weeks since I've peaked inside my hoop houses. By the look of things, the garden is indeed in a state of transition. Among the healthy plants (spinach, carrots, kale, chard and wild greens) lay the dead and/or inedible ones (lettuce and wild arugula). Pretty soon, I will dig up the last of my carrots and turn over sections in each bed to make way for early spring sowings. Yesterday, the temperature underneath the garden fabric reached 70 degrees F for the first time in many weeks. Has the January Thaw actually arrived?

I made the mistake of not harvesting all of my Tango lettuce by Christmas this year. This variety has proven to be very cold hardy. In fact, it still looks pretty healthy. Unfortunately, the constant freezing and thawing have rendered it much too bitter to eat. I will just have to accept the fact that unless I can find a way to maintain a minimum temperature of 32 degrees F inside my hoop houses, winter lettuce is just not an option. And wild greens should be grown in its place. I'm wondering if the bitterness will diminish as the weather warms up or should I just pull them up? Any advice?

Seemingly unfazed by the weather is the mache...

and minutina. I sowed these wild greens way too late last fall, a mistake I will not repeat this year. My guess is that they won't truly take off until either next month or March.

The narrow leaves on this wild plant are succulent and very interesting to look at.

Off topic a bit, the chard in this pot is not doing nearly as well as the ones I have planted in the ground. However, it does look like it will stick around for me to transplant in a couple of months.

This week, I ended up harvesting 1.71 lbs of carrots and 0.16 lbs of greens for a total of 1.87 lbs. This will be my first (albeit slight) taste of these wild greens. I hope I like them.


Finally, I'm finding it interesting that my winter carrots continue to size up even in the frozen ground. They are still tasting very good and showing no signs of pest damage. I can't imagine a winter without these carrots now. If you'd like to see what others are harvesting or show off your own, visit Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.

Welcoming the Winter Garden

It's official. The winter garden is finally here. When I broke ground in late July, I really had no idea what to expect from my garden when December rolled around. All in all, I'm really happy with how things have turned out and I'm glad that my crops have made it this far. The real test for them, however, will come during the next three months. I've done a few things this week to further winterize my garden, which I will get into in another post. But for now, I thought I'd mention a few random observations from this past weekend. In no particular order:


I decided to pull up my pea plants finally. The vines were still relatively healthy with only minor signs of mildew, but I figured at this point, they weren't going to be doing much of anything anymore. What I've learned from my fall peas this year is that in all likelihood, I chose the wrong variety to grow. Next year, I will aim for one with a shorter maturity date. Also I noticed that I may have set them back a bit by direct-sowing them in early August when the weather was really too hot to support them. I think next year, I'll start them either indoors or in a cooler/shadier spot and transplant them into the garden in early September. Also, I noticed that by harvesting the main shoot, the plants responded by focusing most of their energy into maturing the existing flowers and pods. The plants also started to produce multiple side shoots. I think I'll do some research on whether pinching the main shoot produces side shoots that will provide a larger pea harvest in the spring.


All cleaned up, the radishes now look a bit lonely in this bed.


I planted out my rosemary this past weekend in a south-facing raised bed behind our garage. It has spent the last year and a half in this pot and was so root-bound that it was nearly impossible to get it out without breaking the pot or ripping the main stem from the roots. I am not hopeful that it will survive the winter unprotected, but who knows, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.


The supermarket softneck garlic I planted in mid-October is really reaching for the sun. Still no signs of the hardneck ones I purchased from Seed Savers Exchange.


My first sowing of minutina is really starting to take off now. I love the look of their thin jagged leaves.


My first sowing of mache is growing pretty irregularly. Germination was about 60% and some plants are really lagging behind the others in their growth rate.


I spaced my second sowing of mache 1 inch apart instead of 2 and germination was a bit better - about 75%.


The leaves on my cranberry vines are now completely burgundy. I had underestimated their ornamental value when I purchased them last summer.

Finally, I've only posted about my starfruit tree once before. It had spent most of the summer outdoors and really suffered when I brought it inside earlier this fall. In fact, it has lost more than half of its leaves. However, I think it's finally starting to adjust to the diminished light indoors and is growing again. I think I'll re-pot and fertilize it soon. The flowers of the starfruit tree are really quite striking. Here is my earlier post on this plant.