My finger tips are frozen into useless stumps, as I type this. There is black ice on the street in front of our house. And I had a 1-inch thick slab of ice to toss off of one of the garden row covers when I went out to harvest some kale. That is how cold an early January day can be, here in the Pacific Northwest.
Yet still, there are vegetables that I can harvest. They somehow have the gumption to outwit the freezes and snow that mother nature hands out to us here.
I harvested a full bucket of baby kale with which to make 2 quiches. I could have harvested more, but my fingers were fumbling in their numbness.
What else has survived? I saw Swiss chard, mustard greens, radish greens, sorrel, beet greens and watercress, all in edible condition. The cabbage, sadly, did not survive, even under a row cover. But we shall relish having fresh vegetables even in these short days of January.
It should be noted that not everything that survived was under a row cover. Some of the kale, the radish greens, beet greens, sorrel and watercress are all out in the open. The baby kale in the photo, above, came from a spot in the open.
Anyone in the maritime northwest contemplating trying a winter garden should be encouraged that many greens can be grown through winter, here.
