No Garleek?
Don’t forget turnips & beets! Yum!
This will come in handy if things go to pot.
Weekly Garden Ping!
That is nice at a lower latitude. It is time for fall harvest here, and that includes the root crops.
I’ve been studying up on hydroponics and have taken the first steps in building a small 10 pot ebb and flow and 2x4 NFS tray for outdoors next spring. I intended on growing Tomatoes, Zuchinni, yellow squash and Eggplant in the 10 pot system and butter leaf lettuce and spinach in the NFS tray.
The equipment is very expensive if you buy it already made, but cheap if you build it yourself out of buckets and PVC pipes — which are perfectly suitable for hydroponics. So that’s what I’m doing. There are plenty of Web Resources and booklets.
However I haven’t looked into growing anything this winter where I’m at. I guess I just assumed you don’t farm anything in winter. I’m in SC Upstate, so the winter is definitely mild.
I grew these yummy snack peppers in Florida in the spring and they are still growing. Very tasty too!
http://bonnieplants.com/products/vegetables/peppers/yummy-snacking-pepper
Clark Howard lives in Georgia so he’s talking about a Zone 7 or 8 type of winter. YMMV if you live north of that.
The two required items in my fall/winter garden are purple top turnips and kale. Both will typically survive through the winter all the way to spring. Both are cold hardy for our southern climate although kale is a lot hardier. Snow and ice may knock our turnip greens and kale down for a couple of weeks, but a week or so of sunshine and 40-50 degree highs and the kale pops right back up ready to pick. Fresh turnips and greens in January and February is a real treat with a pot beans and cornbread.
I grew some dwarf bok choy 2 or 3 falls ago and I was surprised that they grew well in low 30’s to mid 20’s lows at night as long as I covered them with a sheet each evening. The sheet would have frost on it each morning, but the plants would still be good as new. They lasted into mid-January until I forgot to cover them one night. If I hadn’t forgotten to cover them it makes me wonder just how much longer they would have lasted. Based on that experience, I bet bok choy would make a great greenhouse winter crop.
Collards ya’ll, collards.
Zone 6b.
Have lettuce, turnip, cabbage and fava beans growing.
Planting cos lettuce every two weeks for continuos crop.
read fava beans go bad after a year so I planted my leftover seeds.
It’s reccommended as a winter cover crop because it ‘fixes’ nitrogen into the soil so if I don’t get a crop at least it will be good fertilizer. But they’re growing like gang busters. They’re also reccommended as a side dish for one food source likely to be abundant in apocolyptic economic scenarios.
Wish I’d planted broccolli and carrots but didn’t think of it until too late for growing from seed.
Sure is nice to walk 30 feet to the garden for fresh free vegs instead of driving 20 miles to get wilted expensive vegs at the store.
The good news is Chard grows like a weed around here!
The bad news is, it’s CHARD!!!
;-[
Peas can take a light freeze without blinking.
Carrots dug in February here in Michigan are truly a delight, they get sweeter the longer they’re in the ground (until they don’t).
Kale’s not on this list, but it’s another one that will grow.
And biennials like parsley are under the snow, as are evergreens like sage.
Also, garlic should be planted (though not harvested) in the fall; short-day onions (Granex variety, which is marketed under that famous trademarked name starting with V) can be planted where the plants won’t freeze out in order to get that sweet flavor.