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| Winter greens |
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| a collard relative |
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| purple kale |
In the Southeastern U.S, we have ample sunshine (over 10 hours a day, except for about a week and half around the winter solstice) for growing vegetables year-round.
Coming back from winter break, I've been amazed with the productivity of our winter vegetable gardening experiment in the unheated teaching greenhouse (the Sprouting Wings Greenhouse).
Wow.
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| Kales, lettuces, and spinach |
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| a flourishing mesclun mix |
I have more than enough vegetable seeds already, I'm sure, both for my own use, and to donate to grow as transplants for Garden Fest, a South Carolina Botanical Garden event in April that encourages folks to grow their own vegetables.
And thanks to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Renee's Garden Seeds, with their policies of distributing extra seeds from last year's packaging for non-profit use, I should be set for my outreach activities, both in classes and in our demonstration gardens.
Hmm, so why am I still looking at seed catalogs? It's fun, of course. Fortunately, ordering potatoes, leeks, and onion sets helps satisfy the urge to order more seeds....
Next year, I'm going to have low hoops covering some of my vegetable beds (in the mountains and the Piedmont) -- then, even with snowy conditions, I'll be able to harvest kale, collards, and other hardy winter greens. And, there's an unheated hoophouse at the middle school around the corner in the mountains sponsored by a great program called Winter Green. The soil has been worked up, but there's currently nothing growing in there. Hmm. It'll be time to plant soon for early spring harvest.
I sowed more seeds today (mache and red mustard) in our unheated teaching greenhouse (at the garden where I work). It's an experiment in growing winter greens for the first time, following Elliot Coleman's inspiration in the Winter Harvest Handbook and Four-Seasons Harvest.
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| 'bags' of spinach and greens: note the water barrels providing transferred heat |
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.
A seed order last June included French sorrel, among other interesting seeds (I think it must have been the Dyna kohlrabi that produced so well in containers for Garden Fest!)
French sorrel (Rumex scutatus) is kin to garden sorrel (Rumex acetosa), a European species that's made a home in acidic disturbed areas in many places.
I sowed some seed in containers, then transplanted 3 plants to the main vegetable garden, not expecting too much. But after a mild showing in fall, these plants have been producing large succulent leaves all spring. And, they grow fast.
So I've been investigating what the heck you do with an abundance of sorrel leaves -- hmm, sorrel soup sounds good, but the recipe that calls for a 1/2 cup of heavy cream isn't going to happen. Small leaves in salads are delicious, certainly (sorrel is quite tart, because of the oxalic acid in the leaves). A pesto made with sorrel was quite tasty this evening, although a bit bland (more garlic next time, perhaps, and sharper cheese). A sorrel tart quiche sounds good (but doesn't use enough leaves).
Perhaps I'll try my all-purpose solution to an abundance of leafy greens - a LARGE stir-fry of leaves in olive oil and garlic with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Yum. And left-over greens are always good, too.
A blogging friend in England mentioned that storing food is a bit of a lost art; I'm certainly guilty about not thinking (and doing) more about food security and self-sufficiency.
I've been promoting vegetable gardening as a fun, creative activity in my work; laudable, to be sure, but maybe there's more that I should focus on.
My two vegetable garden areas produce enough fresh vegetables for us to eat for six months of the year, but I'm also buying things at the supermarket, now in winter. There are greens to be harvested, to be sure, so that's good. But I'm buying potatoes, lettuce, spinach, and broccoli.
But I avoid any (long-traveled, or excessively fossil-fuel enriched) tomatoes or peppers, but I get demerits because my gardening companions loves bananas, and I buy them for him (and eat a few myself).
Even though it's been January weather for us this past November, with more freezing days than we'd had in the fall for some time, it's amazing how well the winter greens in our sheltered vegetable garden next to the Garden's visitor center have done.
This photo is earlier in the fall.
The small garden is sheltered by a low brick wall, and it's in full sun; apparently enough heat is stored in the brick to temper the overnight temperatures.
The snow peas have been frosted, and the purple mustards show signs of frost damage, but fresh leaves continue to appear in both the mustards. The turnip greens, kale, broccoli, and collards are fine, as I'd expect, but the spinach also looks wonderful, and amazingly, the arugula in the mesclun mix is looking fine. Ditto, the lettuces, which must get enough warmth from the wall to be sheltered from frost damage.
Perhaps I need to build a wall around some of my beds at home to extend the season!
A recent comment had me thinking about winter greens and their response to the lengthening and warmer days to come in spring. Hardy kales, cabbages, and collards are able to withstand the frosts and freezes of winter because of their leaf chemistry and built-in ability to produce natural 'antifreeze.' But they don't have the ability (nor does much else) to grow very vigorously at low temperatures. So our winter vegetable gardens are basically in suspension, until warmer temperatures support the physiological functions that convert sunlight to sugars and drive cell division and expansion.
So collards or hardy lettuces in an unheated greenhouse can be harvested all winter, but won't start new growth until it's warm enough again.
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