The most cold hardy greens
Last year at this time, we were chowing down on kale and lettuce leaves that survived the winter under quick hoops
and started rebounding as the weather warmed up. Not so in
2014. I was able to find a handful of brussels sprouts that had
been protected under the mulch for dinner Wednesday, but otherwise it's a
waiting game right now. The new lettuce I planted a few weeks ago
has sprouted and some of the kale plants survived and are sending out
new leaves, both of which we'll be eating in a few weeks.
In the meantime, Mark is pouting because we're down to butternut squash,
carrots, sweet potatoes, and frozen green beans from last year, and
both of us are used to a more rounded vegetable diet. I'd rather
wait and eat real food than expand the selection out with grocery store
offerings, though.
The
positive side of the cold winter is that it helped me get a more solid
handle on the cold hardiness of various greens. Last winter, Fordhook Giant Swiss chard
survived the winter with no protection, so I thought the Swiss chard
might be just as hardy as our kale. Not so. Swiss chard I
protected with quick hoops this winter completely perished, along with
the Laciniato kale, but my troopers (Red Russian and Dwarf Siberian kale) survived the subzero temperatures under their quick hoops.
I used to think of Red
Russian as the more delicate of my two dependable kale varieties, but it
turns out that the smaller variety did better during this excessively
cold winter. Those of you in the true north should take note and
plant accordingly, although I'll admit that if we started having winters
like this one more regularly, I'd follow Eliot Coleman's advice and erect a high tunnel over my quick hoops.
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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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Mom --- I've been keeping my eyes open for dandelion greens popping up, but there don't seem to be any here yet. The grass is only barely starting to grow, so maybe the dandelions need another week or two.
I know we don't have the species of ferns that people usually eat the fiddleheads of on our farm, but it's possible Christmas ferns are edible. They won't be coming up for several weeks yet, though.
More traditionally for our area, creses should be coming in soon. I noticed a few that came up as weeds under the quick hoops that I plan to consume shortly.