Winterizine the Garden

written by Tom

 If nothing else, the seasons will teach you. That's what they did to us this past week. A ridiculously harsh Arctic blast came through, sending temperatures into the 'teens and the plants into freeze mode. We were lucky to have anything survive. Fortunately, so far everything has. There were nights scurrying about putting down the two frost cloths we have, but I hadn't made time to properly over-winter the garden. I remedied that this weekend with the help of our good neighbors who continue to spend hours sucking up their leaves and putting them into cinch-tied clear plastic bags for me on their curb.

I put the leaves down and dressed the top of EVERY thing in all the beds, save for one. I used two empty leaf bags as make-shift greenhouses for the sweet pea trellises. I secured the bags to the metal trellises with a few twisty-ties and added holes all over to allow for wind to pass through.

I decided to use our two frost cloths to cover just one bed. In that bed we will eat all winter long. It contains two different lettuce varieties, an amazing spread of collards, a spread of spinach, about 40 transplanted beets and a row of fresh flat-leaf parsley (yes, THAT parsley left over from summer ... we took care of it and it keeps coming back, hallelujah!). The past week of temps into the low 'teens took its toll on everything, but this bed fared the best of all. Lucky for us it's still putting out great food. The rest can overwinter under the cover of oak leaves until late winter/early spring.

Yes, everything, including the turnips have been covered. The turnips really took the BEST the 12-degree record-setting days could dish out. They hung on, but lost about half of their tops in the past week. Yes, it was time (PAST TIME) to prep the beds for winter with a lush coating of leaves. Forget the frost cloths. We'll use those for beds that we're still harvesting from in the winter. Everything else will be leaf-covered until spring says "hello" to an early bounty.

The forecast this week is for temps in the mid-30s and lows again in the teens. Fortunately the leaf-cover will spare everything the brutal touch of Jack Frost.

Turnip greens peek out from underneath the leaf cover (thanks, neighbors across the street!). We'll see if this plan actually works. Only time, and season, will tell. It's been an education all along, that's for sure!

What's Better Than a Fresh Salad from Your Garden?

written by Yvonne

You've read about one addition to the Brown-Davidson family; our new dog Olive. The same weekend we got Olive there was another addition to the family; a 5-Qt Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer. Because of the great pricing, we were also able to get the pasta maker attachments.

Fresh pasta is some good eats, let me tell you.  We made one batch of dough and split it into two parts.  Half we ate that night for dinner and the other half we dried in "nests" and tossed into the freezer for another time.

But even more exciting than that was dinner last night. I cut two varieties of lettuce and spinach from the garden - enough to make four big salads. Pictured below are: Cimmaron Romaine (bottom left), Four Seasons (upper middle), and Spinach (right).

Once everything was cleaned and weighed, I mixed them all together for a super scrumptious salad!

Fall Update and Olive Bonus

written by Yvonne

Still not much going on in the garden but things are growing. Here's a look at the peas and turnips.

Spinach is looking great.  My mouth waters when I think of sauteing this with garlic!

Kale finally came up, but only about three plants.

Broccoli struggling but not giving up yet.

Still need to thin out these carrots.

Some Four Season lettuce in the foreground, some red lettuce in the front middle ground, a second turnip patch in the back, middle ground, and Olive in the background.  More about Olive at the end of the garden blog.

She blends in with the dead grass and leaves.

Awww.....

Beets coming along.

Tom set up four more compost bins and filled them with leaves.  He waits for our neighbors to bag up the leaves from their yard then snags the bags for our use.

Eight compost bins in all.

A now for a bonus feature on TY VeggiePatch about Olive.  No, not the kind you eat; the dog.

For those of you who might not know, we got a dog from the pound two weekends ago. We named her Olive and she's just what we were looking for.

I had lots to do in the kitchen and Tom, Olive and Maizie thought they'd come in and "help" me.

Here Tom is showing Olive how to do her business outside.

We got a stake to put in the ground so Olive can be outside in the garden with us and we don't have to tie her up to the garden hose anymore.

This next series of photos is Olive's first play date with Bobo from next door.  For those of you who know dogs, as you might imagine, Bobo has little dog syndrome and was quite aggressive to. Olive was submissive and a very good girl.  Bobo has a mate that Olive hasn't met yet.  This coming weekend we'll see how the three of them do together.  You can even see Milton (Bobo's owner) scolding him in a few photos.

And to round out the weekend, I did some sewing (see tired dog?)

 

and Tom did some drawing (see same tired dog).

Greens, greens and more greens

written by Yvonne

Not much to do in the garden these days except to sit back and let things grow.  This is a good thing because we have been exceptionally busy this fall with more on the calendar.  So here's an update on how the Fall/Winter veggie patch is looking:

Plot 2 of 2 of spinach.

Plot 2 of 2 of turnips.

Beets.  This weekend we have to thin these out quite a bit because there are multiple seeds growing very close together.

Collards.

Lettuce.  I can't WAIT to eat my first salad!

Another lettuce.

Parsley.  This was left over from this summer and is growing like crazy.  It won't last much longer with the weather turning colder so this weekend we will harvest it all and dry it in the dehydrator.

Garlic.

Kale.  Not too much of this came up but we certainly have plenty of other greens to keep us going for the Fall. Tom thinks these suckers will be getting really big.

Plot 1 of 2 of spinach. You can see that this plot is further along than plot 2.  We staggered the plantings so the crops would be ready at different times.

Plot 1 of 1 of turnips. Same principle as the spinach - staggered planting so that once we pull all of these out, we'll have another plot ready to go.  Thus far we've harvested, cooked and eaten three batches of greens (almost 4 pounds, and that's not counting the stems!).

The turnips themselves are busting out of the ground! We planted a smooth, white Japanese variety.

The first signs that peas may be coming soon - a flower. The pods grow directly out of the flowers.

The peas are doing well growing up the cage.

Broccoli. We're going to thin and space these out too. Soon we'll be over-wintering things, and what's not ready for harvest will lie dormant until the early spring, at which point we should have a real bounty of these cool-weathered crops.

Carrots.  These will get thinned out this weekend too.

Tonight's dinner!  Roasted veggies is on the menu which will include these turnips and peppers from the garden.  The final dish will be topped with fresh parsley (from the garden, of course).