February garden update
I've
been a bit quiet on the garden front lately because now is really the
time for dreaming, not for growing. But the garden is actually in
much better shape than any previous winter garden I've been in charge
of, so I thought I'd take you on a quick tour.
It's quite possible to
have some greens and lettuce even in the dead of winter around here as
long as you start them in the early fall and the deer don't get
them. In previous years, the deer have always eaten my greens to
the ground, but Mark's deer deterrents are worth their weight in
gold! This year we still have some kale and mustard hanging on
--- just enough to put half a cup in potstickers every week or two. (No
lettuce because I planted it late and didn't get it up to speed in
time.)
I've
always read that you can eat parsley all winter, but the deer adore it
so I've never had it later than August. As a result, I've never
even bothered to plant it in the sunny half of the garden (where I put
the plants which will grow on warm winter days.) Nevertheless, my
small bed emerged from the snow a week or so ago green and
beautiful! The plants tend to have short stalks in the cold, but
the leaves are delicious --- perfect for adding a bit of freshness to
tuna or egg salad or soups.
Of course, no winter
garden is complete without scads of Egyptian
onions. I
planted a couple of beds of them, and then tried to compost the extras,
which meant I instead spread volunteer onions all over the yard.
You can never have too many, though --- I put the fresh green tops into
omelets and egg salad and cut up the entire onions into soups.
Meanwhile, inside, we
still have enough sweet potatoes and garlic for several months, though
the carrots are beginning to reach the bottom quarter of the drawer and
we've only got three butternut squash left. The freezer is still
full of the bounty of the summer, and the only vegetables we buy in the
store are potatoes and onions (because our crops were disappointing
this year.) And now it's February, and time to plant the first
lettuce bed!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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This is a traditional Dutch winter dish called "boerenkool stamppot" (lit. farmer's cabbage mashpot).
It is traditionally eaten with "rookworst" (smoked sausage?) and gravy. In the Netherlands, the kale is considered best when there's been frost on the ground before it's harvested.
If you replace the kale with 1/2 the amount of sliced onions, and 1/2 the amount of sliced carrots, you have "hutspot".
Both are very good winter food. If you've eaten a big plate of either, you won't feel hungry for a while.
You can save the leftovers and heat them up another day. Actually, both tend to taste better after they've stood for a day.