Herb Inventory

Thinking on the herbs I am growing and that I have dried, here goes:

Grown for fresh harvest:
Basil
Sweet bay
Fennel
Dill
Rosemary
Sage
Thyme
Oregano
Parsley
Chives
Oriental garlic
Mint

Dried:
Basil
Sweet bay
Rosemary
Sage
Thyme
Oregano
Fennel (seed)
Mint
Holy basil
Dill (seed)
Chives
Tuscan herb salt (rosemary, sage, garlic, salt)
Basil herb salt
Chive herb salt

Reward

Fall-Winter gardening is a lot of reward for a little work. It feels a little wrong, in a good way. 😎

Here's the update:
Carrots: Lots of big beautiful carrots this year.
Broccoli: All gone but it sure was good.
Mustard: Keeps on coming.
Cabbage: Forming heads.
Rutabagas: They are nearing harvest.
Lettuce: Lots. All kinds.
Radishes: Slow and steady.
Herbs: All are good.
Leeks and garlic are up and growing nicely.
Kale: Those grown from seeds are slowly maturing. The bought Lacinto is giving us a steady supply, thanks.
Butternut squash needs to be eaten. So I'll make a soup here soon!
The canned green beans and potatoes give us a break from the brassicas. Yay!

2018

Apple Cider Vinegar

So there you are thinking, "Well, this fall/winter gardening gig is boring." No bugs, no hurricanes, no thunderstorms with hail, no water, no extreme heat. Nope. The further down the rabbit hole I go the more interesting it gets.
A few years back my son tried to make vinegar. I don't know if it worked but the idea stuck in my brain. Fast forward to now. Our daughter moved to Charlottesville, VA. There, grow many apple trees. I took a ride out to an orchard, picked way too many apples and made my way home. It's a long ride and I had plenty of time to think about the many bags of apples. Back home, a pile of cores and peels on the cutting board, the vinegar experiment wafted through my brain. So I searched how to make it and ta-da. Now, about a month later, I have my very own, very tasty, very pretty apple cider vinegar.
This, gentle reader, may be the beginning of a fermentation binge.
P.S. I have tried it and, two days later, I am still alive.

A Little Seed Saving

A little goes a long way! 

I started seed saving when gifted field pea seeds a few years ago. The seed, Celia's Peas, has been lovingly kept for generations by a Robeson County woman. I have had them a about a decade, the woman who gave them to me was in her 70's. Celia was her grandmother. I'm guessing they have been grown locally for at least 100 years. I read once that plants adapt to their local ecological system when grown there for a long period. Wonder if that is true? They grow upward climbing an old 9 foot wooden ladder beyond it's top. Covered with flowers that change from butter yellow buds to two toned lavender they then produce long pods with up to thirteen peas. Easy peasy to shell, I love them.

A pretty little flower! 

Okra, mustard, lettuce, parsley, fennel, Contender Beans, marigolds and zinnia's are among those I save-and do my best to give them away because Nature is quite generous. An example: just a few okra pods will yield enough seeds to grow enough for our entire county.
Seed saving has the added benefit of adding flowers for bees in the garden. Bees especially love simple (not frilly) flowers It seems that herbs are especially attractive to them. So save some seeds and help the bees. Remember, unless you buy organically grown seeds all seeds have been treated with pesticides and those pesticides persist in the flowers and the soil. No bueno for the insects.

Summer's Over

With the harvest of the last few peppers, the summer garden season came to a close today. Imagine a door slowly, quietly, clicking to. Of course I have regrets. I wish I had planted more, more often, and more varieties. Laughable. Our small kitchen beds put out lots of food, all of it interesting and truly good. More? Is it me or is it all gardeners?
The next sunny day, I will pull out the broccoli because freeze is predicted.  Lettuce, cabbage and carrots will get covered to protect from the cold, cold night temperatures. The temperature change will be abrupt, one of those "Who left the fridge door open?" events so best to play it safe. We somehow manage to eat from our kitchen garden every day, still. Here are pictures of where we are now...

Savoy cabbages are starting to form heads. Ah, the sweet sound of the crunch when sliced open. Now that's something to look forward to on tacos! 

Last of the broccoli on the chopping block. Ready to be steamed with a squeeze of lemon. 

Roasted Red Core Chantenay were for supper last night. Tres bon! 

Bush Beans and Mustard Greens

A pretty pot of beans! 

We are really pleased with the way our fall beans turned out. The beans (Contender and Cherokee wax) planted late July are almost finished bearing, the ones planted early August are just coming on. Contender beans take 50 days from germination to harvest and are perfect for short bean seasons. Our season is short on both ends. Self pollinating, bean pollen becomes sterile at about 85-87 degrees and are obviously not cold hardy. Mustard came on strong too.
The broccoli I planted in August is forming heads! The savoy cabbage I grew from seed will do the same. Because I grew it and it did well we are going to have a lot of cabbage this year...Lettuce planted a week ago is up! Rutabagas planted from seeds look great and we are beginning to pull turnips. The beets are a mess. Just pitiful. But I persist. We planted leeks and are hoping they will be as good as last year. Tuscan kale looks great. Russian kale has not taken off. We are still getting peppers! Yay! Carrots look strong and all herbs are on go. A regret: I still haven't planted sun chokes. What is that about. Gotta make that happen next year. TTFN gardening friends!

W and L' s

There's no denying gardening is work. I like to think of it as my daily work-out not requiring treadmills and such. This past week I took down field peas which is major. Bending, pulling, lifting, carrying, raking-all motor planning tasks that took a few hours. Scott joined in and dug in compost. Then I finished off with new seed beds of lettuce, beets, and carrots. Succession planting works here in the South. I have become more skilled at planning for ongoing lettuce and such with time and experience. It just happened but the key to success is to plant before you think you should. This is a win.

Now that Summer crops are out (mostly), a review of wins and losses. I have theories on why the beans failed, lima and green. Limas failed because the person in charge of watering does not get that lots of water, more than you think is required for a big plant producing a big crop. They flowered but never produced. Green beans suffered from poor advisement. After Hurricane Matthew all the rules about fertilizer were wrong. Fifteen inches of rain with epic rains leading up to the storm washed away the rules and all the nutrients out of the soil. I am guessing microorganisms were absent also. Round two of all peas and beans were paired with good amounts of fertilizer and pea/bean inoculant. It worked. This fall I will get a new soil test even though it's only been a little over a year.

Okra is standing tall with pods maturing for seed harvesting, one lone tomato has fruit and sweet potatoes are fattening in the ground. The rest of the garden is devoted to Fall and Winter crops. Carry on, Y'all!

Late Summer - 2017

Summer, Southern Summer, is so long here that it seems to be three seasons, kinda like daffodils coming on early, mid and late. Crickets and cicadas sing their loudest late summer here in the coastal plains of Southeastern NC. It is satisfying bedtime music going on into early morning To cut okra to their accompaniment is quite nice. The okra will be cooked with onions and green peppers for supper tonight.
The past few days have been devoted to cleaning up and clearing out for Fall planting. In went cabbage (Savoy grown from seed), broccoli, lettuce seed, rutabaga, and radish. The beets are up and have been thinned. Carrots are just starting to show. Butternut squashes are starting to harden off. From just one plant we got six nice-enough ones.
Field peas are good this year. Okra carries on no matter the heat or dry weather. It is a generous, easy to care for plant. Roasted it's a great substitute for french fries. Peppers are steady producers this year and after the last hard rain sweet potatoes were exposed. We have a least two.
We planted Contender green beans at home and in the community garden. They are up! It's time to plant turnips, mustard and kale. Whew. That's it for now. Gotta go plant some seeds, right now!

It took about a month for these Contenders to bloom. 

Transitioning to Fall

July was hot and dry. The twin evils of summer gardening. We watered a lot. Tomatoes crashed. Squash succumbed to borers. But, life persists. Peppers chugged along, all of them. Lima beans, taking forever to mature, are finally forming tags. Tags? Farmer term for emerging fruit of beans and peas. Okra is fabulous. About fifteen plants feeds us every other day. The first planting of field peas has started to bear enough to cook a small pot for dinner. Following the bell curve we'll have more than enough next week. The second planting, about three weeks behind, will carry us on into the first frost. I hope.
🍅Tomatoes. The hardest vegetable a Southern grows excepting squash. I pinch off suckers and keep planting in different spots. As Fall approaches we may get one that makes it. Nematodes and wilt diseases are the death of tomatoes.
Savoy cabbages are almost ready to transplant. Broccoli seed didn't germinate well so I'm giving them another go.
Today we will plant root vegetables. Some of each. We are still eating beets, rutabagas and carrots harvested in June.
Have I said it? I enjoy everything about growing our food from seed to plate. Except watering.
So it goes. Down South. There is no end. An unbroken circle of gardening hope.

These babies do not often require watering. 💖

Seeds and Germination

Three days ago I planted two year old field peas. I hoped for the best as I watered them in. Today they are almost all up with true leaves about to unfold! What?!

Mid Summer Transition

Summer can be divided into thirds here in Zone 8. First the crops planted in the Fall and late winter come out (beets, rutabagas, potatoes, carrots) while early summer vegetables like green beans come on great guns a'firin'. Second the tomatoes, squash, Swiss chard, peppers and corn come on. Third, at least in my case, the okra, field peas, and lima beans produce. As plants wax and wane there are beets, rutabagas, carrots and potatoes in storage waiting to be finished off. Seasonal eating is a good gig in our Southern kitchen garden.

The potatoes wanted equal time. 

We have had enough surplus of some things to can and freeze this year. Just enough for that transitional time time late summer early fall and also late winter. Check out the potatoes and green beans, will ya!

You're so pretty!

Time Off

I took some time off for a trip and came home to dried up beans. Perfect. Just what I wanted. Yesterday I pulled them out of the ground, picked off the bean pods and they are inside drying on newspaper. The best of these Contenders will be next season's crop of green beans. As the British say, I'm chuffed.
Heirlooms, they will produce genetically true plants and become specialized to our particular place in the world over time. I also saved mustard seed this season for Fall and have Saison de Quatre heirloom lettuce setting seed in the garden.
Seeds marketed as heirloom cost more on the premise that one will save seeds. But there are many hiding in plain site that are heirloom, like mustard, okra ,many of the lettuces and the Contender beans. The sure way to know is search the name of the plant, check the year of it's pedigree and ta-da! you will know. Example: a seed bred in the early 1900's or before is heirloom.

It is nice if they dry on the plant but it is not required. 

Reliable Swiss Chard

We had creamed chard for dinner last night and I realized I mention this stalwart performer often but never really praise it. So, in honor of this humble but reliable leafy green here goes:
1. Planted and established in the spring Southern garden it will produce all summer long. Waning a bit during the hottest days it rewards again come Fall.
2. It is a great stand in for spinach in every case. In fact, I like it better than spinach.
3. Blanched and frozen it can be used like frozen spinach.
4. Chard is a fine substitute for lettuce on a cool summer sandwich.
5. It is beautiful.

It is beautiful.

May Into June

Late May and early June are always busy. Vegetables are coming out of the garden great guns, plants coming out, seeds going in. Water! Water! Water! Truth: June always has a dry spell any more in Southeastern NC.
We have had so many green beans this year I canned some, ate more and gave away plenty. The term "slammed" comes to mind. There are more coming though they are slowing down as it heats up. Green beans do not self-pollinate when temps go up into 90's. Timing is everything with green beans.  Feast or famine? We feast.
In the spirit of ,"A picture says it all.". Here goes!

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Red Sails Lettuce 

Broccoli, turnips and oak leaf lettuce.

Ready for roasting. (The white veg is rutabagas not potatoes.)

Green beans about to climb.  

Strawberries picked for jam. 

Garlic. Ooo baby, you purdy! 

Contender green beans

Heirloom tomato. Lucky me. 

Detroit Red beets

Soon there will be corn, okra, lima beans and watermelon. Squash, we have squash. I will reveal the secret later.

Disaster Averted!

I forgot, not for the first time, about cutworms. They are the scourge of sprouting seeds and seedlings. How could I? How many times have we had a seed germination "fail' only to discover they had been cut off just below the ground? Uh, duh!

This time it was okra. At first I declared it was my saved seed. Then, looking closely, there was the amputated stem of a seedling. Then another. Digging, I found more. Curses!

Pre-emptive strike includes wood ashes or diatomaceous earth (DE) dug into and sprinkled on the seed bed. Sow the seeds and put tiny twigs, three or four, around the seed before covering with soil. Look for them when digging the bed. The are 1/2 inch long, brown little caterpillar looking critters. Smush with your fingers. 

I sowed generously because they were saved seed and I had not tested for germination rate. Good thing. There were enough survivors to fill in to make for a good crop. And yes, I stuck in twigs to thwart the cutworms. This evening I'll sprinkle the whole area with DE. 

Okra seeds anyone? The germination rate is fine.

itty bitty sticks all around seedlings...it's organic...it's a pain...wood ash and diatomaceous earth work too...

Potato Time!

Along about mid-May here in Southeastern NC, in the great state of Robeson, we begin poaching potatoes. It is fun until harvest time and one is perplexed by the paucity of tubers. No matter. I will do it today and add them to a pot of green beans for one of my favorite vegetable combos. Another local combo is cabbage and potatoes. Our cabbage is not quite ready for harvest but is forming heads. These dishes friends, you will never find in a restaurant, not even the ones that declare themselves to be Southern. But, these regional combos are as Southern as Southern gets. Beware. They both involve bacon. You may leave out the bacon but it's just not the same. I add, not much, just enough to season the pot and enjoy!

Ciao bella!

2017 Garlic Harvest

By way of explanation, I had a crop failure one year and have over planted garlic every year since. Not necessarily a bad thing. But golly, eighty means I'm gonna have to step up my garlic salt game and maybe make more roasted garlic this year.
Green beans are starting to come off. If they follow the Bell Curve Principle, which most summer vegetables do, we will be canning them and giving them away soon.
Last night's dinner was a combo of spring vegetables cooked into a yummy stir fry. We have reached the who-needs-meat stage of late spring/early summer already.
Let the good times roll...

All but the mushrooms were home grown! Never did I think this would happen when I started.

Reprieve

Following a week of temperatures in the mid eighties to 90 degrees, we got a break last night with lower temperatures accompanied by rain. Relief. Most of our plants will do better with lower temperatures. Whew.
Peas are forming in pods and soon we will have a bumper crop. Broccoli has formed beautiful heads. Turnips are being harvested daily with some to be the bed on which our whole roasted chicken will bake for supper tonight. Spring onions harvested this morning will go in with garlic scapes and a few store bought potatoes. I'll sprinkle it all with herb salt and we eat like royalty.
Lettuce had started to bolt and was also looking parched so this rain saves it.  Garlic will soon be separating into cloves and will be coming out of the garden. All plants including weeds were doubling in size over night.
Beans are up everywhere! Um. What was I thinking? Where to plant corn? In the front yard? Maybe. I've had worse ideas and acted on them. We are good to the neighbors, so I really might be able to get away with it. And then there is amaranth and okra. What's a gardener to do?!?

Merveilles de Quartre Saisons
A most delicate, mild lettuce of French heritage.
You are so pretty on my plate! 

Green Beans

Green Beans! Planted three weeks ago, they are making flowers! And the seeds planted a week ago are already up! What! Warm soil is a magic elixir.
I have two pot experiments. One carrots, the other Swiss Chard. There is a control of the Swiss Chard. The control is in a 4x4 bed. The pot is next to the same bed ensuring the same sun and water. I have harvested from the bed twice. Not at all from the pot. Which is not to say the pot is not thriving, but the plants are different. I am going to attribute it to close, crowded plantings. The carrots are a very much a wait and see.
We have had very warm days here. Midwesterners call it summer. It is the way of our springs. In the next few days the temps will be in the mid 80's. Spinach and lettuce will bolt, some has already. Bolt is a funny word for the send up a flower shoot over night, like a colt of the the barn. Bye, bye spinach. Toodles lettuce. Make way for a pepper!
This little tidbit I learned on my Master Gardner trip to the NC State soil lab: marigolds really do kill nematodes, the bane of tomato plants. They really do. Also, we all have nematodes to some degree so our goal is to control the population. So...plant marigolds. I bought many from St Pauls High School plant sale. They are interspersed throughout the garden beds. Biology at it's finest, right there.

Swiss Chard can take the heat and is a great stand in for spinach. 

Watering and radishes

Every day is planting and watering day now that the weather has warmed. Seeds, especially small ones, need to be watered often so they will germinate and not wither in dry soil below the surface. Seedlings also need to be cared for or they will evaporate on hot days. We've had 85 degree afternoons so I've been out giving lettuce and spinach a cool watering to keep them from bolting. Speaking of leafy greens, we had Swiss Chard and leek frittata for supper with radishes on the side for supper last night. Quick, easy and pretty.

Speaking of radishes. It all started with seed inventory back in February. I had a lot of radish seeds that were a few years old. Time to plant or compost. So we planted a looong row in our community garden bed. They all germinated. All twelve feet of them. They grew into lovely red, mild tasting orbs. (We ate the last of them with supper last night.) I sowed the remaining seeds in a home bed a few weeks later. They will be ready in about a week. The key to radishes that aren't firecracker hot is to plant early and often because they really do best in cool weather. Because they mature quickly sequential planting ensures a long Spring season to brighten ones plate and palate.

Alas. No photo for your viewing pleasure. Too busy noshing.

Inventory

Leeks planted June 2016. Harvested April 5, 2017

In our beds here on Chestnut Street:
Contender green beans are just emerging. They are not climbing beans but they are heirloom and their reputation is that of heavy yielders. Hello yellow beans, just peeping out!

Potatoes are ready to mulch. I'll let the soil dry a bit first.

Radishes are a big winner in our salads. The rains have kept them mild.

Peas are flowering!

I keep checking the broccoli for heads. Not yet.

Beets are up.

Herbs are thriving.

Drum roll, please. Carrots in the pot are up!

In our community garden beds:
Do we really like turnips so much?

Carrots, you know I love you, right? Looking good, you do.

Radishes are gorgeous and tasty.

Garlic is coming on strong.

Onions, not my strong suit, look good.

Rutabagas look great! Big surprise because they took a hit from mid-March cold. Same with the peas. (The wind blows across football and soccer fields before blasting the garden plants in winter there.)

Beets are up.

Herbs are thriving.

Spring is Bustin' Out All Over

Our little town is prettiest in Spring. Azaleas, dogwoods, camellias and such are as pretty as they have ever been in our neighborhood. I go out each morning for a walk about and enjoy the just right air, birds singing, green leaves and flowers that are everywhere. It soothes the mind and soul.

In our vegetable garden all things are chugging right along. The potatoes and other root crops have rebounded from the cold of mid-March. Garlic is taking on new growth with the longer days. Peas and beans are good. Lettuce growing in different stages is delicious on our dinner plates. Broccoli in both the community and home gardens looks great.

I watch a You Tube show called Homegrown Veg. This man has developed a method for growing root crops in 10 inch pots. For details watch his show. The most important thing is to plant seed that grows carrots 6" or less. Cleaning up the potting bench I found a few and decided to give carrots a go in a pot. I planted Red Core Chantenay. I love experiments. I love carrots. I am, as always, hopeful. Stay tuned...

The last of the kale harvested 3/27/2017. It made a great kale salad! Time for summer crops baby! 

Brrrrrr

We had the coldest three nights of the winter this week. Twenties at night and cold blowing wind during the days. Out came the Agribon (spun fabric for agricultural use), down went the hoop tunnels made of fencing, and cover we did, again. I just peeked in to check on the Red Sails lettuce seedlings not yet possessing true leaves, and there they are, all neatly lined up in a row. I am truly amazed that tiny seedlings handle the cold better than mature plants.
Inventory of the unprotected winter vegetables revealed they did fine. What a relief! Azaleas already blooming are fried by the cold but the unopened buds may be OK.  Daffodil flowers are unfazed and  there are more pushing up. Turns out we didn't completely lose out on Spring after all.

Swiss Chard. After the cold. Must have antifreeze in them.

Gifts

Gill feather rutabagas (heirloom)

Son Jonathan gifted the seeds for the gillfeather rutabagas to us for Christmas 2015. What a nice surprise! The greens are as good as the roots. These were planted in a raised bed September 20th. I remember thinking I should plant things I wanted to do well in raised beds because of the rains of October 2015 when all our brassicas died from rot. Who knew it would be North Carolina, not South Carolina, that would be the recipient of so much rain this time? For the record, we measured 15 inches of rain October 8, 2016 here on Chestnut Street. I recorded in my nature journal, "At times the rain blows sideways and the trees look like they would twirl around if not rooted in the ground...I will be glad when it is over."  Six months later it is astonishing that these plants, small seedlings then, survived the pounding rains of Hurricane Matthew. Surely I paid them no mind in the weeks that followed...they are, gifts.

Small Is Good

We are getting one last, I hope, cold snap this weekend. I will cover the lettuce. Green beans imprudently, defiantly, planted 2-21-17 were covered a few days ago. Tonight's the big night with the low predicted to be 30 degrees. However, the ground is warm, very. We live in town surrounded by big heat sinks aka parking lots, streets and big buildings. Here's to Lady Luck!

Spinach on the other hand can take the cold! 

Community Gardening

We participate in a sweet little community garden in St Pauls, NC. Our winter that isn't a winter had us out seeding turnips, beets, rutabagas, carrots and radishes. Six days later, all are up except carrots.  Tiny seed leaves are just above the ground. We protected one bed of our three 4'x12'  beds with Agribon for a few days because we had some cold nights and didn't want the broccoli plants to get hurt. Our only difficulty there is that we have to transport water until the threat of frost passes. It is a pain in the main but so far our experiement worked. I'll try to post more about our participation there. Stay tuned, folks!                                                          

Potatoes

Ours has been a warm winter with a few very cold days. The ground is warm. The ground is dry. So in went the chitted potatoes on Valentine's Day. We planted Pontiac Red, Yukon Gold and a generic white varieties. Nothing fancy but awfully good when newly dug. Looking forward weather reports show  unseasonably warm days ahead. Perfect weather for potatoes to begin putting down roots and sending up shoots. When the new shoots are six inches high we'll start piling on wheat straw to keep the ground cool, potatoes like that. They also like to be spaced 12 to 15 inches apart 3 to 5 inches deep. Do it. Resist the urge to plant closely. They will make more tubers.

You may be wondering, 'What is chitting?" It is pictured below. A month or so before you plant seed potatoes bought, not a the grocery store, put them in an egg container in a room with bright sunlight and they will begin to sprout. The sprouting is said to give the potatoes a head start. Is is true? I don't know but I do it. Read up on this.

Some people cut and divide seed potatoes leaving three "eyes" on each piece for planting. The pieces are left to air dry and dry out the cut. I do not  because if we get lots of rain it increases the changes of rot. It's a personal preference thing. Also, all my seed potatoes are small this year. Not enough eyes on each to make it worth it.

As always, I hope for a nice yield. Happy gardening, y'all!

Chitted potatoes planted on Valentine's Day 2017

Warm days to cold

     We had a weeklong spell of warm days so I  planted more mesclun lettuce and peas. The first row of "Alaska" shelling peas have germinated! Yay! I planted another row of "Alaska" and a row of "Wando" yesterday because more is more and can always be shared. The timing was perfect. We had rain last night and more is predicted for the coming days. I did not grow up eating these peas, Scott did, but I sure do love them. A poem:

PEAS

Raw they are,

 Sweet candy.

Cooked they are, 

 Sweet candy.

After a long winter,

 Eating bitter greens.

Peas, 

They are,

 Just dandy.

     A compost update: There are fire ants in my compost. I reached in to reposition some of the dry leaves on top of kitchen waste and had three almost simultaneous impressions.
A. Gosh, it's warm in there.
 B. Why would my compost make my hand tingle?
 C. Fire ants!
Getting rid of them is so much trouble. Diatomaceous earth and Neem oil applied several times, paired with some really cold nights to come that should do it. I hope.
   

Did I mention the carrots? This year I think I planted enough. 

     In other news, I picked side shoots off broccoli this week and it is time to harvest kale again. Row covers work for both. Swiss chard seed planted 1/24 germinated by 1/27 and are about to push out true leaves. I'll separate and plant individually then. Altogether it has been a great winter to garden.
     Oh! One last delight to pass on. I gave rutabagas a second chance. I pulled a few and am now a great fan of them. Sweet, nutty and a nice crunch raw, I forgive them for making me gag when I was a child. The cook, not they, are to blame.
The End.
Peas out!

Spinach

One of the hardest things to get right is spinach germination in my down South garden. My planting guide does not recommend planting spinach in January. Breaking the rules however  I went outside with my packet of spinach seeds, found a sunny spot, and sprinkled away. Date of sprinkling 1/15/17. Date of seed leaf appearance 1/23/17. What?! It worked. They are now doubled covered with Agribon19 until it warms up a bit. Incubating.

Spinach, left, on March 1, 2017. They all germinated! Now what?  

The Big Reveal! Elliot Rocks!

Ye of little faith! Me of little faith! Elliot was right! All double covered plants survived! I peeled back the covers expecting mushy, collapsed plants. Instead, all is well! One happy winter gardener, I am! One thing I learned: lettuce seedlings handle extreme cold better than mature plants. I have also learned I can eat broccoli everyday. Steam in the microwave for three minutes then squeeze half a lemon when uncovered, it is the best ever!

Tiny lettuces survived under their double layer of Agribon19

Windy And Cold

My favorite! Windy AND cold! It is really cold down South. In the teens at night. This bright, sunny, Carolina-blue-skied, Sunday morning it is 23 degrees Fahrenheit AND it is so blowy I can here every note of my windchimes when it gusts. We were slatted for inches and inches of snow but got a not generous dusting of powder. It's not as cold as predicted but cold enough that I am glad I double covered my broccoli, cabbage and new lettuces. I'm hoping the kale, rutabagas and carrots are warm enough under a single layer. We left the garlic and onions to fend for themselves. Ahead of this cold front I harvested all the broccoli, mustard, kale and mature lettuce I could. The fridge is full. Now there is nothing to do but wait and see if Elliot Coleman's method works in my modified row covered structures. In a few days, we'll see...

Pulled 1/19/2017 they were magnificent roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper.