Still Harvesting
On Monday I harvested that last of the vegetables from the garden, it was a mess of lettuce that I had under a plastic low-tunnel with an additional layer of remay on top of the lettuce itself.
The ground inside the low tunnel isn’t frozen at all, in fact it’s still soft. We’ve had a lot of nights in the teens and a few nights that were only 3 degrees, which means this lettuce did a great job surviving such cold temperatures.
I ended up with quite a harvest, at least a week of salad for dinner. Some varieties did better than others, I didn’t specifically plant cold tolerant varieties for this experiment, I just used seed I had on hand. The variety that performed the best was ‘Alkindus’ from Johnny’s Seeds. Next winter I’ll most likely try to find a cold tolerant variety or grow mostly the one variety that did really well in my garden.
Are you attempting any winter gardening?
Setting up a cold frame has been on my garden to-do list for ages. Seeing the kind of yield that you’re able to harvest in December is inspiring — I plan to ID an area for a cold frame to put in place next spring.
to JJ's comment
Susy, every year about this time I get all fired up to grow micro salad greens in my basement under grow lights but it just never seems to happen. Maybe this year will be the year that I actually do it. It has been a year of leafy salad contamination. The only way to assure a clean healthy salad in today’s food culture is to grow my own. The threat of bad salad greens perhaps will inspire me to actually start growing the micro greens.
Have a great Maine salad green day.
Nebraska Dave
P.S. Fourteen inches of snow and counting. Nine inches above normal for this time of the year in Nebraska. I see you rolling your eyes and scoffing. I know Maine gets a lot more but it’s an unusual year for here in Nebraska.
to Nebraska Dave's comment