Winter Veges

I've told you about wintering over your carrots and chard and kale, now cabbage and bok choy and chinese cabbage also will last in the fall for awhile, but it will get eaten by slugs. I love the way a tattered cabbage looks, but if you want to eat it, you may want to keep those baby slugs away. How to do this? Especially in a rainy climate? And if you have pets and don't want to pollute the watershed, perhaps give up the idea of chemical slug bait entirely. Iron, well it is a chemical too, but not the kind that hurts the birds and fish and cats and dogs, is good to use. And it works. I have found that when it rains, you have to reapply--which means in our area, that's lots of iron. I don't know if there are long term studies about iron in the garden. You could look it up on the internet

A lovely dish in the fall is chard and lentil soup. It's warming and flavorful and great with hunks of winter bread, that hard crusty bread you have to work for. Last night I ate dinner with my daughter and son-in-law and grandbaby. We didn't have winter soup, we had meatloaf and chicken--both store made. Once I wouldn't have eaten something store boughten--all my food had to come from my garden, or something I made. Yesterday I talked to a woman who makes all her own food and grows all her own vegetables. She said her guy buys vegetables at the store--she was appalled. She grows her own and eats her kale from the garden.

There's a good book about winter gardening that can be had for a not much coin. Try it, winter gardening that is, you'll be surprised at how much you can grow, easily. Be sure to cover the carrots with leaves's if you haven't already. Four Season Harvest
Ciao! Flower