More winter harvest time

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red pontiac potatoes on 123013Today is December 30th and was able to harvest red pontiac potatoes along with some delicious carrots. I’ve already begun to add leaves and finished compost to some of my garden in preparation for an early spring harvest. I don’t have a cold storage in our home. This is the best way for me to do it with things like potatoes. First, dig down into one of your squares about 8 inches. Put your potatoes in the hole. Add leaves you’ve collected this fall, then add your soil back on top. I have a covered hoop house so I’ve been able to not have the ground freeze under the hoops. Then when you want some potatoes, just push over some dirt, dig down, and pull out what you want. There is nothing as great as a potato just pulled out of the ground on on to your dinner table. It’s so much different than what you buy at even the best vegetable aisles! For the square foot gardener, you can count on 6 pounds of potatoes per square. I’ve got about 20 pounds left.

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A highlight of the winter garden

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claytonia 110113I’ve had a lot of fun harvesting salad greens this far into December. Combining all the different crops to make dinner salads this year has been a real treat. A snip of this, another of that, etc. has left us bewildered at how great these cold hardy crops really are. At last count I have 24 different crops still growing under the greenhouse. And we’ve had a lot of snow and freezing weather to go along with it. With the exception of some lettuce that I let get to big before harvesting, everything is alive and doing well. After a freeze or two those larger leaves of lettuce just turn to mush. I should have started harvesting these lettuce leaves at the smaller stages. Right now my garden is a refrigerator-keeping our food in a cool climate until we’re ready to eat it. One of the biggest and best tasting of the new cool weather crops is pictured here-claytonia. Also known as miners lettuce, it’s a prolific and heavy crop. We’ve been able to not only add this to the regular mesclun salad mixes that I put together, but I’ve also been able to cut some of it and lay it on top of a fancy chicken dish for a garnish. Nobody knew what it was but they all loved it. They also couldn’t believe that I cut it a few minutes before dinner. If you’ve never tried this, keep it in mind for next fall and winter as it will not grow in the warmer weather.

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Almost 8 inches of snow

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greenhouse after the big storm3-120513It was a pretty good snow storm that came through Utah 2 nights ago. I had a problem with the snow load on the greenhouse and had to do some last minute fixing. I also had to change the shape of the greenhouse to the rounded instead of the Gothic arch. The Gothic arch added another foot and a half of height so the wind was really blowing it around. My only concern now it this shape of greenhouse and it being able to handle the snow load. I’ve tried to do this on a major budget but have learned that you’ll need to do some critical things to make it more solid than the simple Eliot Coleman PVC and rope greenhouse. That’s simply not going to work when you have the kind of weather that we have. But he’s in Maine so it should be a little similar I would think. At any rate, it was 8 or 9 degrees two nights ago and underneath the greenhouse it was 34. I’ll post soon to show what it looks like under the greenhouse. It’s great under there. I was able to go out into the garden and effortlessly harvest loose leaf lettuce, mizuna, tatsoi, mache, spinach, and arugula. More snow on the way and single digit temperatures at night for many days to come.

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Arugula and radicchio with a Honey-lime viniagrette and carmelized pecans

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arugula and radicchio saladI have many hobbies-in fact my wife calls me the “hobby king.” To this day I’m not convinced she says that in a good way. But when you have a garden that produces such tasty things as this, how could you not develop a cooking hobby? That’s the case with me. Tonight I harvested arugula and radicchio from the garden. It’s been grown in cold weather so the arugula doesn’t have that overpowering peppery taste that usually comes with it, and the radicchio is no longer bitter. Slice some Granny Smith apples, make some carmelized pecans and a honey-lime dressing, and top it with blue cheese. I promise-you’ll have people asking you for the recipe. The winter harvest-the absolute best.

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My late November garden

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TWE 110813 south viewThe weather has really changed this week.  Today it was 28 when I woke up with temperatures around that for the rest of the week.  Winter is arriving quickly.  My greenhouse plastic has finally arrived and it’s now up.  I’ve had a lot of success growing all winter in northern Utah for years with my basic setup as shown.  I just thought I would put up a greenhouse so that I can garden and harvest without getting snowed or rained upon.  I definitely did it for less than $100.  There is no heat involved-other than the sun-but it doesn’t matter with the crops I’m growing as they all love this cold weather.  Plants have certainly slowed in their normal growing pattern, but now it’s time for the winter harvest.  There’s no work out there to do at this time.  No watering needed, and no pest problems to speak of.  Hopefully we’ll get another snow so that I can post a picture of the greenhouse and what’s growing underneath it.  Fun stuff.

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