A White Christmas

written by Yvonne

A white Christmas makes for a lovely seasonal song and cozy gift opening inside, but doesn't help a garden a darn bit. We came back from a family visit in Florida to a beautiful, but somewhat damaging (in terms of our garden) blanket of snow.

Although Tom "winterized" the garden by putting down layers of leaves and cover cloths, I have doubts about what will survive under this chilly snow covering. One thing we know for sure, the peas definitely didn't make it. My money says any root vegetable growing under the soil will be fine; namely the garlic, leeks, turnips, carrots, beets and maybe broccoli.  Gone will be the spinach, collards, parsley, all lettuce, kale and peas (which we know for sure is done).  Tom, on the other hand, believes it will all bounce back in the Spring.  Only time will tell. Stay tuned and we'll all find out together.

Here are a few other pictures of our place in the snow.

There likely won't be much garden new for a while, but we will have bee news as Tom works his way through Bee School.  Wonder if he'll keep at least a "B" average.  (I crack myself up sometimes.)

A Brief Update

written by Yvonne

Tom and I have been quite busy the last few weeks, although not with the garden.  Luckily there hasn't been much to tend to - just mindful watering in the dark mornings, waiting for the seeds to germinate and watch what happens.  Here's a brief showing of what things look like at the moment.

Tom planted five different varieties of lettuce.  Here is one itty bitty seed that has broken ground.

This is another variety of lettuce popping up as well.

Collards are doing well.  Tom thinned them out this weekend so they aren't so clumped together.

 

Sweet peas working their way up the cages.

Spinach!

We planted a bunch of kale, but only 3 or 4 have come up so far. Tom bought some NC kale seed from Asheville over the weekend, so maybe we'll have more than these few throughout the winter.

Garlic, which will take its time over the fall and winter, and (according to our sources) be ready to yield in late spring.

Leeks (or possibly grass). No, it's leeks.

Carrots. We have two big ones, and Tom's replanting under the mulch was successful, so little baby carrots can be seen coming up in the background.

Collards close-up!

Bull's blood beets (an heirloom variety).

Turnip patch #2, ready to be thinned out!

Parsley left over from this summer.

Turnip patch numero uno.  Boy are these guys fast growing.  These are in box #3 and we planted about this many more at a later time in box #1.

Here is the actually turnip peeking out of the ground.  It's a good thing Food Network Magazine had several recipes that included turnips this month! This variety is a small, smooth all-white Japanese variety that's quite delicious.

Here I'm cutting some turnip greens to cook for dinner last Friday night.  Back in the Spring I bought a cook book called "Greens, Glorious Greens!" After consulting it, Tom found a recipe for turnip greens and potatoes. You start by blanching the turnip greens to get rid of the bitterness, then toss them with cooked, diced potatoes and garlic in olive oil and let all that cook for about 20 minutes.  Neither of us had ever eaten turnip greens so we didn't know what to expect.  We thought they would be bitter but boy were we wrong.  They are DELICIOUS!  The closest thing to compare them to is spinach. Yum.