today's harvest

This lettuce is Rouxai. I have no idea how to pronounce that, but I think this is my favorite lettuce. A beautiful deep red oakleaf with bright green interior. It tastes great and grows great in every season.

winter harvest

 

It seemed like a good day to open my winter tunnel. I was really curious how things looked after our cold snap down into the single digits last week. Surprisingly, it was not too bad. There were some areas on the edges, especially the north side, with mushy plants. And some plants are doing better than others. But lots of the plants look really good. The kale (Vates) and spinach (Kookaburra) look perfectly happy, romaine lettuce (Trucas) too. The leaf lettuce (Italienischer), escarole frissee, and the daikon radish looked frost bit.

I picked a whole bucket full of greens. I picked a lot of the greens at the edges that were having trouble, and most of the leaf lettuce. I picked the bok choy only because it looked so good and I though why risk it. I didn't pick any spinach. It's still small. I wish I'd planted more and earlier. That said, I wish I'd planted more of everything. We've been eating store bought greens the past month. But this tunnel is a good experiment. More next year!

I'll probably add a photo of cleaned up greens here later. I'm hoping they make a few nice salads. I pulled some salad turnips. These were something I was testing for timing for my app, but "are not to my taste"(yukk). I think my husband like them sauteed just a little. They do look pretty.

new winter harvest calendar

To improve on my timing for winter harvest crops, I've added a Winter Planting Calendar to my online planting calendar. I added a link on the sidebar and here too: Winter Planting Calendar.

I was reading on the Johnny's Seeds website:

Winter harvest crops are planted in late summer or early fall for harvest throughout the winter. ... for harvest before and during the "Persephone Period," when day length is less than 10 hours and plant growth essentially reaches a standstill.

You can look up when daylight falls below 10 hours in your town using this site: USNO Duration of Daylight Calculator. For me, its November 10.

I've tried for many years to get a cold frame full of greens to eat all winter. One winter I was successful with a good crop of spinach. Usually I plant too late; the crop holds over the winter and begins to grow again in spring for a nice spring harvest. This is good too. Some winters, its just too cold and the crops are killed.

Using my new calendar I now know that its definitely too late to plant lettuce for winter harvesting. I have some seedlings I planted several weeks ago that should be good. But maybe I could get away with sowing some spinach and arugula seeds this weekend. I'm working on putting together a cold frame or some covered hoops in my garden.