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

Cold Frame, Hot House

Well this could mean a tent you use for a wedding in the garden, and a wedding right now if you could depend on sunshine would be lovely. All the yellow and orange trees, I’m being repetitive I know, but I’m so fond of them. Yesterday I took a drive down Chuckanut Drive with my friend Peter and had a lovely dinner at The Oyster Bar. I actually had oysters, which I love and don’t eat often. On the side came a lovely potato and vegetable serving. The potatoes where mixed with hunks of parsnips, which brings me to the garden and growing parsnips. They’re big and robust and delicious in soup. They look like carrots only yellow. They have the flavor of carrot and celery mixed. Delicious in soup with leeks, parsnip leek soup, oh, sweet on a cold fall day.

As the sun went down over the water and we talked about politics, religion, and …. No we never got to the third thing folks usually argue about, we just chatted away, which seems to be easy between us. The sun going down, a fine wine, great food, and good friend, what could be better?

So my neighbor at the pea patch is putting in rows of tenting for her little lettuce plants and parsley. Which made me think I might do the same. Or at least butild a little lean-to. A little greenhouse thing. I’ve built many cold frames, a rectangle of 2x8s with a window over the top. This could actually work as well for winter as spring. I have kale up and chard growing, it could perk it enough to keep it going all winter—depending on how cold it gets. My cat is getting shaggy already, and he’s an inside cat. What the heck, he’s doing something in the kitchen—I better check.

Okay, he disappeared, which he’s good at. He hears me going and is like a shape-shifter gone from licking the butter, or getting into something on the counter. I hear him again, but guess I’ll let it rest. So, cold frames of bent stacks and plastic, or wood and windows, or even plastic tacked to a house and then draped down over the bed. There was more discussion about deer, and the prints were going through all the newly put-top-bed plots, and then there’s the cover crop: buckwheat will freeze, red clover spreads, seems like winter rye is a favorite. I may try that this year.

Okay, got the grandbaby to do, so I’m off.
Ta ta--Flower