It’s supposed to rain for most of this weekend, but I’ll be ducking out during the lighter portions to harvest what I can because winter officially begins for us next week. The nighttime temps will be consistently below 0ºC, the snow will fall, and the ground will be frozen solid after a few weeks. I’ve left more vegetables out later than I normally would this year and I must say that it’s worked out rather well! It’s given me a lot more time between harvesting each crop to prepare them for storage, which is just as important as growing them if they’re to be usable for the next six months.
1. The first time growing kohlrabi ‘Azur-Star’ has been a success. It was sharing a bed with golden beets and still produced a basketful of good-sized bulbs to use for the next couple of months. I’ve also really enjoyed using its leaves and stems in soups. I plan to give a whole bed to kohlrabi next year and grow both colors to see if there is any difference in flavor between them.
2. First time growing Hamburg parsley, which suffered a little from my mistakes. Which is a shame, because after nibbling on some of those tiny roots, I think I rather like the taste. The problem came when I didn’t thin them out and ended up with many tiny baby roots instead of bigger ones, much like what happens with carrots. I intercropped them in rows with radishes since those were pulled out much earlier on. Perhaps next year I will just mix the two seeds before sowing so that the spaces created when the radishes are harvested will be more uniform. I love that this is a twofer crop, providing fresh leaf parsley through the summer (which I also dehydrate for winter use after harvest) and nice mellow-tasting roots.
3. The salsify and scorzonera are still in their bed, being very cold-hardy. I put a thick fleece over them to keep the soil from freezing for as long as possible and will see how long I can harvest them this winter like that. I haven’t pulled any up, so don’t know how big they are yet. If they do get frozen in there, we might just have to wait until spring to taste them!
4. The baby lettuce bed with its plastic greenhouse cover is alive but doesn’t seem to have any interest in growing. I’m guessing the waning light is to blame. We’ll see how they do for the rest of the winter.
5. My biggest surprise this week came when I started harvesting my son’s carrot bed. I planted a bed of early Nantaise 2 carrots before the last frost and although it had a very healthy amount of green growth, the root harvest ended up being mediocre at best, perhaps because of the very dry spring conditions. We ended up with one large basket. The Berlicum 2 carrots that my son planted a month later had much less greenery, were growing in a shallower bed, and had been grazed on by local herbivores at some point, as you can see in the picture to the left. We figured that between the two beds, we’d have enough to last a couple of months, used sparingly. And yet.
So I went to pull them out this morning, mostly out of guilt because I had left his carrots too long last year and they’d all frozen to mush. And I kept pulling. And pulling. And pulling. There were tiny carrots and good-sized salad carrots and big old soup carrots and everything in between. I ended up having to turn over my stool and use it to carry carrots. Then went back and got another bucket to carry more carrots. It started raining heavier and I was. Still. Pulling. Carrots.
The moral of this story? I’m not sure, but this kid better not be lying about liking carrot salad.
6. Last of all, an update on the herb cuttings I took last month. The mints all rooted easily in water, as expected, and are now moved into their pots for growing out over the winter. The main plants are still in the garden, but these are backups because the ones outside don’t always survive. The three thymes also rooted amazingly fast and are now sitting around my olive tree like kindergartners at storytimethyme.
Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!
15 responses to “Six on Saturday | 11th November 2023”
Very impressed with all your seedlings and produce, you put me to shame!
Aw, thanks! I’m definitely still learning a lot with every season, especially when it comes to storage.
Well done to your son for his successful carrots, I hope he will eat them. I’ve never managed more than two or three small ones out of a whole packet of seeds, so that’s another crop I’m giving up on. I did grow salsify a couple of years ago. Pretty flowers but I didn’t like the tast of the roots. My lettuces aren’t growing either, and they’re inside on the kitchen windowsill where they get what morning sun there is.
Yes, I’ve told him to expect all sorts of carrot recipes this winter 😀 My own crop was definitely mediocre at best, but I suppose that’s how luck works. I don’t think we’ll have a chance to taste the salsify until spring, especially since we have to make our way through all the other root veg first. Hopefully they’ll be worth the work both in growing and preparing, but good to know that they have nice flowers if nothing else. I think I’m going to have to give up on the winter lettuce idea yes. Might be interesting to see if they’ll make it to spring and provide an early crop if I leave the covered, though…
the cold of the North requires protected or indoor crops now for you. Well done for all that! I love kohlrabi too. Diced kohlrabi with apples and chickpeas cider vinegar oil salt pepper and go 😋!
Alas, yes. I have ordered some perennial kale cuttings, so that will be my experiment in winter growing for the next few seasons.
Congratulations on your cool season garden. I only have some parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Yes, we still have those out in the garden too 🙂 Well, the parsley is all pulled up and dried now, but the sage and thymes are supposed to overwinter pretty well. It’s going to be 50/50 on the rosemary, but I gave it a good mulch and it’s hiding amongst its herby friends. If that doesn’t work out, at least I know to keep it in a pot to bring inside next year…
Fantastic harvest, well done!
Thank you! I’m pretty happy with it, though there is now the tough part of convincing the family to eat more veggies too…
I feel quite hungry now. Well done on your harvest, especially those carrots.
Thank you! Yes, I actually have enough to make carrot cake this year, which is pretty exciting.
Interesting to hear all about the veg you grow. I haven’t seen kohlrabi that colour before. We like them, but the battle against the caterpillars is always problematic! Hadn’t heard of Hamburg parsley either and will definitely look out for seed to try that. I love both parsley and parsnips, so this sounds like it may be kind of in between. 😃
That is why I planted the purple one 😀 It looked so pretty and unlike the supermarket ones. They grew so easily here that I will be doing an entire bed next year, and I’m going to try growing ‘Superschmelz’ to see just how big we can get them!
We had some caterpillars as well, but not nearly as bad as I thought it might be. I think keeping a large strip of nettles and wild plants behind the veg bed has helped, because it draws so many insects and their predators which have been keeping things balanced. I would say 2/3 of the leaves were still edible and the ones that grew after the colder temperatures came were pristine because it killed most of the bugs! In the summer they do tend to get eaten more by bugs, but we usually prefer eating the salad plants during those times anyway so it doesn’t hurt anybody.
And yes, definitely look for the parsley root, I think it tastes lovely. Get the halblange variety if you can, since they tend to grow fatter and are easier to dig up. I ordered from Magic Garden last year, but will probably get them from Bloomling this year because there’s a bigger selection of cultivars.
Thanks Angela. I must try and find a way to deter the cabbage white butterflies.