Winter garden

I am serious this year, about growing a winter garden. Last year I kind of dabbled by putting in some kale and broccoli and covering the plants with winter blanket when it froze, and was amazed that plants survived hard freezes.

Scaling down the size of the summer garden helped. Rather than planting all the beds, I left 5 of them empty and amended the soil as time permitted, so there was no agonizing over having to pull still producing plants in our long (compared to PNW) growing season. There still is plenty of growing and eating of summer vegetables.

I was inspired by Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest and did my best doing succession planting for both the summer and winter garden. This resulted in having cantaloupes from July until now and having beans (just enough for a meal a week), with plants still producing.

Here are the winter beds. Most of the veggies are leafy: Asian greens, lettuces, spinach, various kale varieties, cabbages and escarole, but also green onions and carrots. Everything is well protected but still some mice managed to get in and nibble the growing tip from some plants, and I had to reseed. Currently all appears quiet on the rodent front now. Knock on wood.