Fall and Winter Garden

FALL and WINTER pics

It is Feb 8th and there is not a lot of gardening to be done. The winter in Kansas can be bitter cold and frustratingly long. The garden is covered in ice and the ground is frozen solid such that I can't even get a shovel into it.

But there is still gardening to be done. The parsnips and the jeruselum artichokes are still underground in the backyard and any time there is a few days above freezing they can be dug up. The parsnips especially get better the longer they stay in the frozen ground. Something about them changes with the freeze so they are sweeter. We probably have over 20 lbs of jeruselum artichokes. I don't know how we would ever eat that much of them. I should remember never to plant too many of them again.

We are also eating a lot of stored garden food still. Most meals we eat have a good percentage of garden food. Canned tomatoes, salsas, pickled beans and beets, applesauce, jams, frozen greens and corn and okra, and beans, and sweet potatoes in the cold cellar with squash.

Anyways, here is some pics

First the depressing snow covered garden from inside our kitchen

Here are some of the delicious parsnips. Best way to cook them is to roast then with dried marjarom and a little salt

Here is the sweet potato harvest. We have eaten about 1/2 of this by now (over 4 months). There was probably about 80 lbs of sweet potatoes in total. I probably will grow less of these next year. They are great and very versatile for cooking but we only have 4 people eating them so we physically can't eat them quick enough. I am afriad some of the crop will rot. They are storing really well this year. I think that the root cellar being extra cold is helping with their shelf life.


Some more butternut squash and spagetti squash. I am going to try some new varietys next year. I still wish I did not have to deal with the squash vine borer. Then I could grow all kinds of table squash and winter melons. As is, I only grow the vareities with natural resistance.

Luffa Gourds! You lets them dry, peel the skin off and you got a Luffa Sponge. You can grow your own natural sponges.

When the first freeze was about to hit in the fall, I harvested all the peppers still left on the plants. Most of them were frozen for long term storage.

Ellen displaying our late fall harvest of brussel sprouts. This was a trail year to see how they grew here with the summer heat and the bugs. They did really well, and I think that I will plant more for 2007. Same variety - Diablo

Brussel sprouts up close. They taste really good with some butter and pepper.