A Little Winter Harvest From the Garden

Our garden is still producing cool season crops. Today, I went out to see what I could find, and discovered many lovely vegetables ready for harvesting and enjoying. Come with me as I poke around in the garden at the end of December in Garden Zone 8b.

Don't mind the mess...the garden is overgrown right now, mainly because it's hard for me to keep up with it in the late summer when everything is growing like crazy. At that time, it's too hot outside for me to weed and trim it all. Plus, the ground gets rather hard during the summer, so digging up weeds is a lot more work than if I were to simply wait until the rainy season starts again. I do my weeding when the ground is soft.

I've been working on weeding small sections at a time, now that the soil is much softer from all the rain we've had. As I work, I put down some type of mulch to protect the soil. This also helps me see where I've already weeded versus what still needs to be done.

Above, notice the garlic that is growing new green shoots. These garlic are from the heads that I missed harvesting in the summer. When garlic bulbs get left behind, they sprout again in the late fall and winter. I try to dig these up and separate them, then replant them, so they have more room to grow. Each of those green tops will be a whole head of garlic, so they do need more room to fully form. Separating them ensures that each clove has the space it needs to develop a big, full head of garlic. There are probably a thousand cloves like this scattered around the garden that need to be separated.

There is also parsley growing in wild abandon wherever it wants. All the parsley that grows in my garden is there because it wants to be. I planted parsley about 7 or 8 years ago, and have not planted it since. It simply continues on, reseeding itself or continuing to grow from the prior year if it had not bolted. Parsley is a cool season crop that you can harvest all winter long.

I'm happy to see that the artichokes are doing well. Above are four artichoke plants. Artichokes are biennials, meaning that they grow and produce for two years, and then they die. The above artichokes should provide for us again next summer.

Above is more of the parsley. In addition to enjoying it ourselves, I also like to feed some to our chickens. It is a very nutritious plant, providing vitamins A, C, and K, along with iron, calcium, magnesium, folate, and many antioxidants. Tonight, we are having very nice, wild-caught cod, cooked in a frying pan with olive oil, roasted garlic, and chopped parsley. I'll add the parsley at the end, after it has finished cooking. I plan to put a whole half-cup of chopped parsley on top, as it tastes so good with the olive oil, garlic, and fish, seasoned well with Himalayan salt and thyme.

One of the most amazing discoveries I had this past gardening season was related to leeks. Leeks will bolt and form a beautiful flower on top that the pollinators adore. Then, when the flower is done, you can cut it off and lay it on the ground. Laying the leek flower on the ground in the garden bed is the new technique I just learned by happenstance - it just occurred to me that maybe it would reseed.

Sure enough, after the leek's flower top has laid on the ground for a while, the seeds inside will fall out of it and go into the ground. Then, the rainy season starts. The flower that is now empty of seeds acts like a mulch, protecting the seeds and keeping them moist. Underneath the flower, all these little leek baby plants begin to grow.

If you lift up the spent leek flower, you'll expose the leek seedlings, so you can see that nature has done its thing, reproducing leeks with so little effort. Later, when these get a little bigger, I should dig them up and separate them, then plant them far enough apart so that they have room to grow into giant leeks.

Amazingly, a rose bud is forming on this rose bush that I put in the garden, here in the winter time. I didn't know roses could still put out new growth and flower in December. We've had a few semi-hard frosts (29-32 degrees F) over the past two months, but overall it has been an exceptionally mild fall and winter so far. This rose bush produces the most beautiful white roses with pink tips. I started it from a cutting off of a plant that was accidentally run into by the mower or the tractor (I forget which) - it was a giant rosebush that the deer kept eating, so we never saw its blooms. This past summer, we were so awed to see it has such glorious flowers, and I am thinking about taking more cuttings and starting them in the garden, where they are protected from the deer!

Above, I have a patch of beets still growing in the garden, along with some more of the Swiss chard. Beets are also a cool season crop, so they should be okay left out there for a while.

Every year, I intend to set up an area with lettuce in the late summer, so that I will have lettuce over the winter. I finally managed to succeed (somewhat, in a small way) this year, and above is my tiny lettuce patch. It's too dry here for me to ever do well with lettuce, since I don't tend to water things enough. I was able to harvest enough leaves today for a small salad.

We also have broccoli. Above is one of the two broccoli plants that are still doing well and producing. The flowers are more like broccolini, where you would pick them off down low on the stalk, and eat a long stock along with the flower and some leaves. They taste delicious.

Above is a row that I managed to clean up. I'm putting down some spent bedding from the chicken coop on this row.

In the above photo is some of the other plants that grow wild. Kale and daikon radish are crops that I started from seed many years ago. Every year, they reseed themselves, and after we've eaten our fill, they are left to flower and drop their seeds, which is how the next generation of plants then grows. I have not started these again from seed myself since the original planting years ago - so these are all gifts from nature. In fact, I was not successful in growing a daikon radish that was edible when I first planted them. It is only through the crops reseeding themselves and doing well enough over the rainy season this winter that nature finally gave us our first big daikon in December, as you can see below.

Swish chard also reseeds itself all around the garden, so I harvested some of this gift from nature as well. As you can see below, my two big bowls are now full, so I will take them inside and wash everything thoroughly.

Here is my little winter harvest. I washed everything really well to remove any dirt, doing a final wash with some vinegar to help remove any impurities. I picked the carrots a little early - there as a tiny patch of them next to the lettuce that I showed you earlier. One carrot in the patch looked like a critter had gotten to it, so I figured I better take them all now before that critter came back and ate or damaged them all (I've learned this lesson by experience). I also harvested some of the Swiss chard, broccoli, lettuce, parsley and radish.

While we don't get enough from our garden to sustain us entirely over the winter, it is fun to go outside every once in a while to pick a few things. I am grateful for each garden vegetable that I bring inside, and I learn so much about cool season crops this way.