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News & ArtsMonday, January 2, 2012
Chow / Life / The Weather It's January, and I'm Still Eating Garden Lettuce
Posted by Goldy on Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 9:00 AM
- Goldy | The Stranger
- Lettuce in January. Yum!
The good news is that it's January, and thanks to our mild winter, my daughter and I are still enjoying occasional pickings of fresh garden lettuce, from both inside and outside my small plastic cold frame. The bad news is that so are the slugs, and without a hard freeze sometime this winter to kill insects and eggs, my garden will produce a bumper crop of pests in the spring and summer.
In addition to lettuce we're still harvesting carrots, cilantro, dill, parsley, arugula, collards, kale, and mustard greens. We've also got some snow peas and broccoli over-wintering just fine, with the potential to produce an early spring crop. And yeah, while these short days don't fuel nearly enough plant growth to meet our salad consumption this time of year, the lettuce that does survive will start to take off as the days lengthen, filling in the gap between the time I direct sow my first crop in mid-February, and the time I'm ready to eat the first thinnings.
So I'm curious: What's growing in your garden this winter?
2
Don't got much of a garden going right now, but visiting San Francisco last week, I found that strawberries were still around in the farmer's markets. Strawberries in December!
3
"What's growing in your garden this winter?" Many of folks who frequent this blog will have to decline to answer that question on the grounds that what they say might incriminate them.
4
We inherited a beautiful raised bed with our new place that had tomatoes, green beans and lettuce going full force, so I'm thinking volunteer tomatoes will be sprouting up early this spring. Until then, all we have growing are ice crystals.
5
My lettuce and spinach were doing well in the P-Patch last I checked (no cold frame or cloche used). Broccoli and cabbage are thriving. Carrots, leeks and beets are doing their thing (hibernating?). The thing that gets me is that the shallots and garlic bulbs that I planted in mid-Oct. are sprouting. This is my first year gardening. Is that normal??
6
Another thing to pay attention to: last year the slugs in my cold frames were under control but I wasn't paying enough attention and aphids just swarmed in the relatively warm, moist environment. Devastated the lettuces in there eventually. Soon as Spring came around and the frame came off they had a head-start too, and I spent the entire season trying to get them back under control.
7
If you're having problems with slugs and snails, try using a bait that's iron based, which is non-toxic to humans but effective against the crawlers and won't affect the taste of your produce. We were very pleased with the results last year when the snail population was exploding after a relatively mild, very wet winter.
8
Slugs love beer! Try putting a tuna can full of cheap beer in a small hole in your soil, so that the top of the can is level with soil. Slug will crawl in to get a taste and drown.
I've sheet mulched my beds for the winter, so I'm growing dirt.
I've sheet mulched my beds for the winter, so I'm growing dirt.
10
We have one large Lacinato kale plant from a year ago that we trim infrequently, and one row of still small parsnips that we planted in September (no cloche). My efforts to construct a walk-in greenhouse with PVC & plastic were destroyed by successive strong winds, so I'll re-construct a shorter model here soon. Hopefully we'll have spring kale and arugula from seed coming up under that. First winter garden though, so some success there.
12
Nothing. I believe in mexican labor and the global supply chain. Vacuum packing and preservatives FTW!
13
Thanks for your updates, Goldy. Do you know of a site that's devoted to urban gardening in Seattle? I would like to follow that (your posts are great, but infrequent and buried in Slog).
I planted some lettuce starts I bought from Walt's in Sept or so, and it's growing really well still! I grab a handful to munch on a couple times a week, and it looks like I'll be doing that through Spring, at least. Otherwise, the spinach i planted (also in Sept) really isn't taking off, just limping along, as are the carrots. The chard is also going well, we just haven't eaten it yet.
I planted some lettuce starts I bought from Walt's in Sept or so, and it's growing really well still! I grab a handful to munch on a couple times a week, and it looks like I'll be doing that through Spring, at least. Otherwise, the spinach i planted (also in Sept) really isn't taking off, just limping along, as are the carrots. The chard is also going well, we just haven't eaten it yet.
14
totally cool!
here in the midwest we were still harvesting kale until a week or two ago. now that it's getting colder we're gonna let em keep the rest of their leaves so they make it through winter.
still need to bring in the parsnips, and we even have a little spinach out there!
here in the midwest we were still harvesting kale until a week or two ago. now that it's getting colder we're gonna let em keep the rest of their leaves so they make it through winter.
still need to bring in the parsnips, and we even have a little spinach out there!
15
@13: Seattle Tilth is a great resource for local, urban gardeners. I highly recommend their "Maritime Northwest Garden Guide."
They don't appear to have a blog, but they do have a Facebook page.
They don't appear to have a blog, but they do have a Facebook page.
16
We, or rather Mrs. Fnarf while I watch, isn't growing much right now, but we have bees visiting our hellebores, and flies too. Our neighbors a block away still have lettuce and some herbs outside, not even in a cold frame. Unlike Goldy, this fills me with dread, as I desperately want the rains to come and cover the mountains with snow so we can take showers next summer.
17
Over here in Santa Cruz, CA, I have all sorts of onions growing, plus leeks. Arugula, lettuce, carrots, broccoli just got "ripe" enough to pick. Tons of radishes, some beets are growing, and chard too. Lots of herbs of all sorts. Fava beans are super happy and growing, but the potato plants' leaves just froze. : ( We are about to build a cold frame to get better greens all winter long!
18
6' x 8' greenhouse: a bit pricy, but a good choice if you're not much of a carpenter or if you don't have access to a lot of recycled materials to build one from scratch.
Small cold frame if you don't have much space—good for starting things early because the walls are double-thickness.
Small cold frame if you don't have much space—good for starting things early because the walls are double-thickness.
19
Winter salads (frisee and escarole) in cold frames and kale. Winter salads last all winter under frames in colder climate than that of coastal PNW but yours look like regular red leaf lettuce.
20
the snails, slugs and insects are far tastier and healthier than the greens you mentioned. It's like we're living on a beach and refuse to eat the clams, prawns and oysters in favor of the seaweed [which is also good; but far less tasty/healthy] Everyone could easily have a portable meat producing kit the size of a suitcase.
22
@5: Garlic sends up stalks a month or so after they're planted, so that's fine. It will be many months before they're ready (they have to grow leaves, then suck them dry to form the heads). I assume shallots are the same.
To answer the original question, I just did my first harvest in a while yesterday, after neglecting the garden for a while (I love winter in that regard). A dozen carrots (like your lettuce slugs, I'm noticing grubs on the carrots that in a normal year would have been frozen by now), a few radishes, 1 kohlrabi, arugula thinnings and a lot of collards to go with the New Years black-eyed peas (not from the garden).
There's still kale and chard out there growing strong, rutabagas and parsnips that we really ought to start using, overwintering broccoli waiting for February to take off, garlic and onions waiting for much later, and lettuce that's way too small now but I'm hoping will last until February so that we can get lots of good leaves early in the spring before the spinach takes off. And miner's lettuce and sorrel we can have any time we feel like it.
To answer the original question, I just did my first harvest in a while yesterday, after neglecting the garden for a while (I love winter in that regard). A dozen carrots (like your lettuce slugs, I'm noticing grubs on the carrots that in a normal year would have been frozen by now), a few radishes, 1 kohlrabi, arugula thinnings and a lot of collards to go with the New Years black-eyed peas (not from the garden).
There's still kale and chard out there growing strong, rutabagas and parsnips that we really ought to start using, overwintering broccoli waiting for February to take off, garlic and onions waiting for much later, and lettuce that's way too small now but I'm hoping will last until February so that we can get lots of good leaves early in the spring before the spinach takes off. And miner's lettuce and sorrel we can have any time we feel like it.
23
@13 A great local blog to follow is http://www.nwedible.com/. She's based in Edmonds and is out in the garden all year round, including tending animals and fruit trees.
I was out in the garden yesterday for the first time in a while, just like @22 Greg, and found some sprouting broccoli, yum! Harvested a bag full of Red Russian Kale, plus mustard greens, arugula, and leeks.
Tonight's dinner was a combo of pickings from yesterday plus summer-grown veggies (frozen, fermented, cellared, dried, etc.): roasted pumpkin with leeks, garlic, sage and lemon thyme; pasta (ok, I bought it from the store) with basil pesto; fermented asparagus (kind of like dilly beans, but better!), and Italian prune plum puree from the freezer.
I was out in the garden yesterday for the first time in a while, just like @22 Greg, and found some sprouting broccoli, yum! Harvested a bag full of Red Russian Kale, plus mustard greens, arugula, and leeks.
Tonight's dinner was a combo of pickings from yesterday plus summer-grown veggies (frozen, fermented, cellared, dried, etc.): roasted pumpkin with leeks, garlic, sage and lemon thyme; pasta (ok, I bought it from the store) with basil pesto; fermented asparagus (kind of like dilly beans, but better!), and Italian prune plum puree from the freezer.
24
A chopped up hooker and Santa Claus' genitals. Makes for good fertilizer. I have a sick sense of humor but love to garden and fuck whores and Santa needed to be punished.
25
Um. Thank you Stevema.
Anyway, still have lettuce, no cold frame. And some demented zinnias. Glad to hear cilantro will grow in winter, when maybe it won't bolt as soon as it has a dozen leaves.
Anyway, still have lettuce, no cold frame. And some demented zinnias. Glad to hear cilantro will grow in winter, when maybe it won't bolt as soon as it has a dozen leaves.
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