Cool-season vegetable gardening (and moving forward)

I really like to promote 4-season vegetable gardening here in the Carolinas.

There's no reason not to grow winter-hardy vegetables (kale, collards, and the like) through the winter, if you like greens.   The last two winters, though, have not been kind to even normally hardy (without any protection) winter vegetables.

So I've started from "scratch" two years in a row now.  Hmm...

I do have a decent patch of creasy greens in the Piedmont (it can freeze solid and bounce back) along with a similar, but less robust patch in the mountains.  The mache is coming back in one of my flats, too.  It's a tough plant.

The perennial leeks, although frosted, are fine, too.  And the chives are emerging, woo-hoo!

I'm cleaning up the main vegetable garden beds here in the Piedmont, readying them to plant.  I won't be planting them, simply keeping them ready for the next gardener who will come.

This image of the main vegetable garden and shed is one of my favorites - our real estate agent loved it.  The garden shed has been cleaned up.  It's ready for the next gardener, too.

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A warmer day (and vegetable musings)

Finally, the last bit of accumulated ice has melted and it was a "normal" temperature day, with highs ~ 58°F.

I'm itching to plant cool-season greens - I've missed having homegrown greens (kale, collards, mustard, etc.) over the last two winters, even though I've felt we've eaten nothing but homegrown greens in years past.

So, we're enjoying broccoli, collards, red cabbage, and kale from the grocery store -- cooked with garlic, red onions, and a bit of balsamic vinegar -- they're quite nice.

But a restaurant meal out at a local Mexican place yesterday evening was telling -- the "vegetables" were shredded carrots, broccoli bits, and some onions, clearly from a regional veggie warehouse somewhere, and delivered through the commercial food system.  They all tasted the same.

Geez, I sound like a total food snob, but homegrown veggies are really good. Vegetables from local markets, ditto.

Freshly-harvested vegetables, even if industrial, quickly frozen, are good, too, as are their organic equivalents.

I don't like to buy fruits and vegetables with a super long distance pedigree, so certainly "fresh" fruits and vegetables from the Southern Hemisphere this time of year are not normally in my cart  (berries, peaches and nectarines, grapes, asparagus, and the like).

The exception --bananas -- my hubbie's breakfast staple fruit. And coffee. And broccoli and lettuce from California, well, I suppose so, too...So I'm hardly a purist.

Hmm, soon it will be warm enough to sow at least a quick crop of cool-season greens, I hope.

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Finally, time to sow!

It's taken forever this winter to finally be time to sow.  It could have been last weekend, but I was busy doing other things, and I knew soil temperatures were still low.

"blank" raised beds --now sown with peas, beets, lettuce, and greens

But a beautiful weekend and signs of spring popping out (from the piedmont to the mountains)  -- it was wonderful to get seeds of sugar snap peas, spinach, lettuce, beets, chard, mustards, kale, arugula, etc. into raised beds and flats.

I put out some spinach transplants in the mountains, and radicchio and kale in the piedmont (woodchuck issues).... we'll see.

flats and pots sown with lettuce mix, arugula, spinach, and kales

kale and radicchio transplants (I KNOW the woodchuck won't like radicchio!)

Lovely to clean out all the dead perennial herbs from pots for a clean slate!

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Cool vs. warm season vegetables and herbs

In an herb-gardening class this morning, I had a lovely participant that had recently moved to South Carolina from upstate NY. 

It was a great reminder (for me) of what a wonderfully benign climate that we have in the Carolinas for growing herbs and vegetables!

Our average last spring frost date ("historically" April 15) is really more like April 8 (or earlier) now.  And we've moved from Zone 7b to Zone 8, in the Piedmont of South Carolina.

In the mountains of Western North Carolina, where I spend time in the summer and on weekends, in the Asheville basin (where our small house is), we're now Zone 7 b, instead of Zone 6, and I'm sure the 'heat island effect' along with the stone raised beds that I have, bump that up!

Needless to say, even as we're moving into true spring, I'm harvesting the last overwintered arugula (it's starting to bolt) as I'm planting spring cool-season seeds, too, and thinking about transplants of warm-season vegetables to come.

Amending vegetable beds in the satellite garden (a couple of years ago)

A Master Gardener volunteer, who enjoyed the Hawaiian Pineapple tomatoes last year (that I did, too) asked via email today if we would have transplants for them at our spring sale.  Well, no, I replied, as we've rearranged how we grow transplants, but I then ordered seeds, and will share, for sure!

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Warm weather

It's been warm this week - unseasonably so.  And the weekend ahead is downright balmy for January.  I've been sitting on my hands in terms of vegetable garden planting, but I've been ordering seeds, woo-hoo!)

This weekend, I'm planning to free the woodland perennials of their winter overcoat of leaves (not necessarily a good thing when they're water oak), cut back the main perennial border, and get the satellite garden and main vegetable garden ready for early planting (I've already put in garlic, onion sets are on their way, and I've got perennial leeks to move around, as well).

No sign of deer lately, but I'm totally mindful that they could appear at any time and yum up anything that's not too herbal or spicy (hmm, I won't be planting lettuce or mild cole crops without some sort of barrier here in the Piedmont, that's for sure).

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Even more seeds...

Hmm, I'm on a roll, even as the weather turned grey and rainy today.  I ordered more seeds this morning (unusual ones), along with some gratis ones from Renee's Seeds (I'd just placed a paid order yesterday, so I'm not feeling too guilty about accepting the media freebies).  They're (Renee's, that is) are the best!  I love her seed choices.

I'm itching to start seeds under lights and on a heating pad out in my garden shed, even though I KNOW it's way too early. I'll just content myself by cleaning up and tidying beds (from lots of winter annuals), until I can plant snow peas and sugar snap peas later this month (depending on soil temps).  But then I'll start some cool-season veggies for transplant!  I do need to barricade my Piedmont garden against deer, however -- they're probably still out there, waiting for the nice gardener to offer up something tasty.

It's been quite mild so far this winter, at least in the Piedmont, so I should be able to coax some hardy lettuce and spinach seeds to germinate with a bit of warmth first, before setting them out.  First, however, I'll be transplanting leek "babies" from my perennial leeks, which have produced lots of small offsets ready to move to new spots.

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