Dec. 8, Last Garden Greens Harvested

Even though the garden has been buried by two big snow storms and chilled by temps in the low twenties, we are still harvesting fresh spinach, chard, and broccoli. Our parsnips can be dug any time the ground is soft enough. After the winter snow melts and the ground thaws, parsnips will be our first harvest from the garden.

Most people till their garden at the end September to make it look neater in their yard. We have no yard and spend all fall and early winter scrounging fresh greens and herbs. Many times during this period one of us will announce this "is probably the last harvest," only to have the garden prove us wrong. October used to be the month we would start to doubt the gardens ability to squeeze out another bit of food. Now, we are less apt to start this until late November.

We had a ten inch snow storm in October and as it melted away, Kris was harvesting broccoli. When enough was melted, she harvested chard and spinach. The same was true after the large storm at the end of November. It really is amazing.

Part of the success has to do with her harvesting technique. She never pulls a plant or cuts it completely off. Instead, she goes from plant to plant, taking leaves and leaving the plant to keep growing. Being a bit of a gardening know-it-all, I thought this to be a waste of time and, of course, said so. Now that we are eating greens in December, I have quietly re-evaluated my original position. Now, I leave harvesting decisions to Kris who has a lot more faith in a plants will to produce and seems to be able to coax harvest after harvest out of a plant that clearly should have been dead along time ago.

The latest growing technique in the northland is to grow greens in unheated green houses all winter. I can see that plants like chard and spinach which can be frozen so hard the leaves snap, only to return to lush green growth after the sun thaws their leaves, can provide greens all winter. I really need to find the time to get a small green house up. The hold up has been a lack of lumber of the right dimension. It has to be milled thin enough to bend and then be made into curved trusses. I need to get an old stove for heat in the late spring when we can use it for starting seedlings. Late march is soon enough to start most plants and that leaves only a month of heating on a few nights to keep the temps from freezing. Peppers and Tomatoes can come inside at night. Everything else will do very nicely outside in the green house. Maybe next fall I'll get one up. I hesitate to predict when anything will be built now. The more we get going, the less time we have to make improvements. Still, it is on the list and near the top.