Harvesting Tasty Delights in 30 Degree Weather!

Dec 30, 2009

I totally enjoy being a four-season gardener or receiver you might say.

I just harvested a tub of fresh lettuces, spicy greens, spinach, kale, and mustard from our garden for a very delicious salad mix and the bush peas are blooming! What a way to start off the new year.

It’s Libby’s fault that we have all these tasty goodies coming from the garden. Following the suggestions in Eliot Coleman’s “Four Season Harvest”, she planted two 75 foot beds this fall to supply us all with these morsels all winter long. Yep, that’s right, we will be harvesting from these beds till spring in spite of already experiencing 23 degree nights.

It has been really simple for me because this is Libby’s project, I have done little except eat it. She planted during the fall, Sept to October, and got all the plants up and growing. Once cold weather arrived, she hooped the beds using 1/2″ pex plastic pipe that is cut into about 6 foot long pieces. Placing the hoops every 10′ by pushing one end in the ground along the bed edge and then pushing the other end on the opposite edge of the bed to create an arch across the bed. This plastic pex pipe (available in the plumbing dept.) bends very easily. To anchor the floating row cover, she gathered our garden rocks and placed one at each end and at each hoop. Pulling the floating row cover down the bed and then up and over the hoops. Best to anchor the ends first, pulling it not skin tight, but not drooping. Then place the rocks along the sides. This little mini-greenhouse took our snowstorm earlier this month and held up.

To harvest, just move the rocks aside and pull the cover off in that section. In areas that receive snow loads, a more protective cover can be easily put together, all instructions in the book.

Just about everyone can enjoy a winter garden. Eliot Coleman lives in Maine where it is long cold winter which gets serious snow and he harvests all winter.

You don’t have to have a greenhouse or be a professional farmer to enjoy fresh, delicious bounty from your garden all winter. Planting the right plants at the right time and then with a few very inexpensive items- pipe and row cover, anyone can have fresh produce from the garden all winter.  Eliot’s book gives the easy-to-follow steps to do just that.

I am off to my annual friends weekend. It is always a challenge to give gifts to women how to have everything–this year the gift includes fresh salad mix from Libby’s garden. I think they will be thrilled and a little impressed also…

Happy New Year!

Lisa Z