Winter gardens and gardening

More leaves seems to be the theme for preparation for winter in our garden.

My gardening companion collected more leaves this morning from neighbors near our small house in the mountains (to add to our already thick layer in front and back of the house), then we returned home to the Piedmont to a second load of delivered city leaves. He spent more time this afternoon moving some of those.

Leaves are black gold, certainly, and enrich the soil in our woodland garden areas. Leaves transform clay-rich subsoil to something resembling real topsoil quite quickly. A good thing, although our soil in the Piedmont (covered by lawn for many years) isn't as difficult as what faces gardeners in much of our region.

I spent a bit of time harvesting and freezing lemon grass (we're expecting lower temperatures tonight than we've had so far), and then checked everything else. I've got a lovely flat of mache (corn salad) and I'll try to transplant a few plants into soil tomorrow along with some of the collards. I'll probably put the mache in the cold frame with the top propped up, and see what happens. The lettuces still look great, as do the young collards and mustards. None of my fall spinach germinated, probably because of warm soil temperatures and dry soil, so more spinach will need to wait until late winter.

I cooked fresh arugula as a stir-fry green with homegrown garlic for our dinner vegetable, quite delicious, along with the leftover smoked turkey (from 12 Bones in Asheville, yum) from Thanksgiving.

And, I'm planning to harvest more arugula and cilantro tomorrow - both are still looking great.

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Creating an attractive vegetable garden

I was totally bemused this morning listening to an episode (via podcast) of Ken Druse Real Dirt. Druse is a fabulous garden writer, photographer, and excellent plant person. His books about natural habitat gardening were some of the early celebratory books about the beauty found in native plants.

But he's never been a vegetable gardener to any great degree, nor had his guest on this podcast, Susan Harris, one of the bloggers on Garden Rant, a gardening coach, and a sustainable gardener.

Their conversation was excellent, touting the pluses of Michelle Obama's White House vegetable garden, and the People's Garden (a new, and expansive vegetable garden) next to the USDA building in Washington, DC, followed by a discussion about the extensive native and sustainable gardens planned to surround the USDA building. (I was an intern at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum almost thirty years ago and remember it then, as it has appeared on all my subsequent visits as a dreadfully depauperant landscape of scruffy lawn). Maybe there was a shrub or two, but basically it was pretty lame for our Dept. of Agriculture. So kudos for Secretary Vilsac for getting something different!)

But what amazed me was their discussion about whether a vegetable garden can be attractive. They did talk about Chanticleer, which apparently now has a wonderfully interesting vegetable garden.

I'm a great fan of our natural landscape plantings, but I'm also extremely fond of my vegetable garden, and I think it looks pretty darn nice year-round even in the middle of winter when it's only Tuscan kale, winter bor kale, and red bor kale, punctuated by garlic shoots.

Now admittedly, I live in Zone 7B, but really? Their excuse was that Rosalind Creasy, the wonderful gardener who started the Edible Landscape trend in the U.S. over 20 years ago lives in Southern California. (Her book Cooking from the Garden, was one of my early inspirations, way before I was a serious gardener, vegetable or otherwise; I guess I was a cook before I was a 'real' gardener).

Ken lives in Southern N.J. and Susan outside of Washington, D.C. There is no reason that a three-season vegetable garden in either of those places wouldn't look perfectly nice, at least if it's laid out attractively (not mini-farm rows, although those are good-looking, too, in summer).

I spent the morning volunteering in the kitchen garden next to our visitor center (at the botanical garden where I work). We've converted it to a four-season vegetable garden. It's lovely right now.

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Four seasons of gardening

A warm afternoon (more like an occasional late February day) encouraged moving leaf mulch, some light weeding and tidying of winter beds, and musings about planting time. In our climate, more of us should really think more about four seasons of gardening, from vegetables to landscape plants.

The winter honeysuckle is flowering now, prompted by the warm weather. It normally is in full swing by late January and February.


I think I'll sow some winter lettuce in the cold frame tomorrow and set up the heating pad and lights in the garden shed. I'm anxious to start some hardier transplants (kale, broccoli, collards, and mache) and sink my fingers into the damp earth again.

All the covered lettuce beds in Italy this time of year were amazing -- why not here? The hoop frames were simply providing a bit of protection and increased warmth (I think) -- no supplemental heat or light.

I ordered seed potatoes today from my favorite source, Wood Prairie Farm, and onion and leek sets from Dixondale Farms. If I'd kept better records (or had the patience to go back and dig up my notes), I'd know which potatoes did best here, and which varieties from my last year's experiments with onions were most successful, but basically, I love to experiment in the garden -- and every year is different, after all, even with tried-and-true varieties. I haven't yet sorted through my seeds (I'm sure I have plenty already, but maybe I'll find something new I need.... the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog is a wonderful inspiration).

I WILL be rotating more diligently this year (AND KEEPING AN ACCURATE MAP), hmm, is this a New Year's resolution? And, I'll be adding new beds to expand the rotations. Perhaps the trade-off for a mild winter climate is an abundance of potential problems, from fungal wilts to harmful nematodes.

But it's hard to complain about a mid-60° F day in late December, even if it's unusually warm.

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