This Week's Harvest - Reanimated Winter Veggies

This week's harvest is pretty light (by choice). Friday evening, after landing in Boston from Tallahassee, I took a detour before heading home and stopped by the Super 88 Market, which is a chain of Asian grocery stores in the Greater Boston area. I hadn't been to one since we moved into our new home so I was very excited to stock up on dried staples, sauces and Asian greens. Our refrigerator is filled right now with Napa cabbage, snow peas, long beans, water spinach, etc.


This weekend, I harvested more of my Tango lettuce. I must say that this is by far my favorite lettuce grown this year. This variety produces mini heads of crisp and frilly green leaf lettuce. The texture holds up well in a salad and the flavor is unbelievable. Whereas my lettuce mix is beginning to show strain from the frigid nightly temperatures, Tango is extremely resilient. In fact, it does not seem phased by the weather at all. I had to harvest this batch pretty quickly as the garden fabric began to freeze 5 minutes after I lifted the hoop house.


I'm now harvesting both varieties of carrots I have growing this winter (Nantes and Napoli), which are coming in all shapes and sizes. Both varieties are super sweet and I will undoubtedly be growing them again. Up until now, we've been munching on them raw. Maybe this week, we'll be able to restrain ourselves and I can actually find out how they taste cooked.


I love the feeling of being able to harvest fresh veggies even when there is 6 inches of snow on the ground.

Winter Gardening Update - As I mentioned earlier, we had a few nights last week during which the temperature dropped down into the teens. Saturday morning at dawn, I inspected my hoops houses for the first since the prior weekend. I did not like what I saw. The inner layer of garden fabric was frozen stiff and all of my winter greens appeared to be frozen solid. I thought for sure that my winter gardening adventure had come to an abrupt end. I wish I had taken pictures of it all...next time, I definitely will.

Then by 10:30 AM, the frost and frozen droplets of water clinging to the inside of my hoop houses had begun to melt and I decided to take another look. The inner fabric felt heavy and wet, and beads of water fell to the ground as I lifted it. Amazingly, most of my greens showed no signs of having been frozen a few hours before. I was completely surprised and ecstatic. This is plant reanimation in it's purest form. The only veggie showing any signs of damage is my lettuce mix (and only around the edges of the bed). I love these little gardening victories. We'll see how they do later in the week when temperatures are expected to drop down into the single digits. I will be keeping my fingered crossed.

Winter greens under cover.

If you'd like to see what other folks are harvesting or would like to show off your own, visit Harvest Mondays at Daphne's Dandelions.