Craving fresh food in winter (Best ways to satisfy?)

[sylvie]

I am in Northern Ohio in the snow belt and have things in the garden all winter. My favorite are leeks, mulched with ground fall leaves and I pick a few whenever I want soup.
My cabbages stay fine in the winter in the ground. Cabbage has to be Late Flat Dutch because other varieties aren't freeze resistant. The heavy outer leaves protect them too.

I grow Mache, a delicious fresh salad green that keeps coming back by reseeding itself. I pick it from Oct- December and again in February- April.
I have straw baled swiss chard.
There are lots of root crops that I pull all winter from under the snow like carrots, parsnips, parsley root, rutabaga.
Been doing all this for 25 years.

 

[Cassandra]

What do leeks taste like?

Cassandra

 

[Beekissed]

There are cold hardy romaines that will grow in a cold frame but, for my family, it would take one heck of a cold frame to accomplish this. Next year I plan to have a small hoop-type row cover up and grow heads of romaine all winter. Supposed to be able to do this using heavy guage plastic and plenty of mulching. I would need to keep doing succession planting to keep up with my family but I really want to try this. I'm like the OP, there aren't many greens that I like that are cold hardy.

It's always next year, isn't it?......

 

[hoosier]

Sylvie - I have been thinking about trying to extend my gardening season. Since you have a climate similar to mine, I know where to find an expert when I have questions!

 

[sylvie]

What do leeks taste like?

Cassandra

A wonderfully flavored mild onion. Potato leek soup is popular. Leeks bake nicely, too.

 

[sylvie]

Sylvie - I have been thinking about trying to extend my gardening season. Since you have a climate similar to mine, I know where to find an expert when I have questions!

Ask away!

 

[Cassandra]

I got me some of those flat dutch cabbage seeds to plant this weekend and some bibb lettuce.

I asked the poor guy at the feed store what I could grow. And he said pretty much any of the greens.

I bought about a dollars worth of seeds of each kind and he said, "you know this is a lot of seeds because they are so small." and I said, "Well, I can plant a few now and plant a few later." He agreed yes I could do that. It looked like THOUSANDS of seeds. They had them in mason jars. The man had to measure them out into a glass beaker and pour them into generic manila seed packets.

So, I don't know how to plant them or anything... LOL

Monday at Piggly Wiggly (grocery store) I checked their bagged salad mixes, most of which were marked 2 for $6. But some were makred 3 for $3 or even 3 for $1! I made John go & check if those were marked correctly. They were! I got three bags for a dollar that still looked good. They were not brown and gross, like you'd expect. I opened them and put them into a green bag with a paper napkin (still no paper towels. lol) I just told everyone to eat them as fast as possible.

I'm feeling better already. yum!

Cassandra

 

[enjoy the ride]

Keeping a garden as later as possible and as early as possible is a fun and wonderful game.
Here is gets coldish - usually lowest is lower 20s or upper teens and that only for a short time but the wet gets a lot of plants. They get bruised because of the cold then rot starts because of the the unrelenting moisture.
This year I'm trying to overwinter artichokes (my favorite vegie) by making a bed right next to the cememnt porch- hopefully the retained warmth from the cememnt will allow them to get through the worst. A couple of miles down the road at a lower elevation they grow like weekis.

 

[homestead jenna]

I never realized how many veggies you can plant both spring and fall and also how many veggies will winter over in the garden until I read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recently. She takes you through her family's year of being "locavores" - eating only food that that is produced locally in SW Virginia.