Winter Harvests

Last week's harvest (top to bottom): "Scarlet Ohno" Turnip, "Watermelon" Radish, "Scarlet Queen Red Stem" Turnip

There's a romantic notion out there that once winter cold sets in, we farmers are busy stoking a roaring fire with piles of seed catalogues at our feet. And I will admit that in the early years, we did just that, deliberately choosing to slow down and hibernate.

But our chefs want local, fresh produce year- round, and so last year we embraced the challenge of growing hardy root crops (turnips, winter radishes, parsnips) and greens (kale, collards, arugula, mustard, mache) outdoors, and microgreens indoors, with some success.

This year we planted even more, and we have been really pleased with how some of our crops have performed. The real key to having successful winter crops is planting the seed in mid- summer, when there are a hundred different things pulling us in every direction. The wonderful folks at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in nearby Louisa, Virginia, have put together a "Fall and Winter Vegetable Reference Guide" that has been very helpful to us. In it they list the cold hardiness of root and leafy crops, as well as the date of last planting in order to get a crop to mature in time before true winter sets in. There we found that spinach needed to be planted by late September, but that arugula could be sown up to mid- October. And the variety of tatsoi that they offer, bred by Brett Grohsgahl of Even' Star Organic Farm, is hardy to 6F! Definitely something we'll try next year.

We don't have any high tunnels (yet!) and so we're constantly experimenting with the cold- hardiness of different crops in open garden beds. Our root crops were direct sown in mid- September, later than we had wanted, so I'm pleased that they've matured and that we are continuing to harvest them. Our mache, spinach, kale and collards were direct sown at the same time.

"Scarlet Ohno" Turnip Bed

The mache and spinach are growing beautifully under the low tunnel that Phil and Christopher Croxton put up, and we will be covering them with floating row cover and greenhouse plastic soon.

"Lombardi" spinach and "D'Olanda" mache

There is real satisfaction in harvesting wheelbarrows full of rosy- skinned, sweet turnips in mid- December, and enjoying a salad of just- picked mache, spinach and arugula when nighttime temperatures are hovering around 20F. Time to light an fire and start dreaming over those seed catalogues.....

Thanks for reading.