Today The Kale Chronicles features a guest post from Kuya Minogue of Creston, British Columbia, who shares what she has learned about winter gardening in her locale. Kuya and I met at a Natalie Goldberg writing retreat in New Mexico. When I saw a Facebook post of hers on harvesting greens from her winter garden I asked her to share her garden story with you. Although it is May and not winter in the northern hemisphere now, perhaps it will allow some of you cold-climate gardeners to plan next year’s winter garden. You can find more of Kuya at zenwords here.
When it’s twenty below Centigrade outside and the garden is buried under four feet of snow, it’s hard to imagine that under the plastic cloches and row covers in the greenhouse beds, the spinach, lettuce, chard and cilantro that I seeded in late August are lying dormant, waiting for a warm day to awaken them from their winter hibernation. But it only takes a few warm days in mid-winter to bring them out of sleep and into a delicious and completely alive salad.
Last year, we had a week of above zero sunshine in Creston, BC where my winter garden lives, and by the end of that week, when I removed the cloche from the spinach bed, I found salad ready greens. The leaves were thick and juicy. There’s nothing better than a garden fresh salad in January, and the amazing thing is that all it took was one plastic snow-covered cloche to keep the plants alive and a few warm days to make a salad. When the weather turned cold again, I recovered the spinach and it lived through another two months of frost.
In that January warm spell, when I looked at the lettuce under the row cover inside the greenhouse, the leaves were so withered that I thought that winter had taken them. But by the first week of March, the lettuce had revived, and by the second week of April, we were eating fresh spinach and lettuce salads straight out of the garden. I was afraid the lettuce would be bitter, but only the outside leaves had the taint of winter. The butterball at the centre of the plant was crisp and fresh, and tasted like summer.
I don’t like to mix my first collection of winter salad greens with store bought tomatoes, cucumbers or avocado. I prefer to sprinkle winter garden green onions and a handful of garden-fresh cilantro over the greens, and to make a lemon and olive oil dressing that has a squirt of liquid honey and tamari sauce, and a sprinkling of minced garlic from last year’s garden. From first bite to the last, I’m transported to the warm days of summer.
Hardy greens survive the winter too: chard, kale and a chinese vegetable whose name I don’t know are ready to eat by mid March. By mid April, they are so prolific that I invite anyone who comes to the Zen Centre to meditate or do some yoga to take a mixture of these greens and some winter garden onions home with them so they can clean them, cut them into bite size pieces and then stir fry them in sesame seed oil, lemon juice and tamari. The cooking greens are also delicious if I simply steam them and eat them with a little butter.
I learned about winter gardening when one of my Zen students, a horticulturalist, offered to give a Winter Gardening Class at the zendo. Having lived through many years of Canadian winters, I was skeptical when we seeded the beds in late August and then put them under cover in mid-October. It just seemed impossible that anything as delicate as spinach or lettuce could survive the winter. But I was wrong. Even in Canada, we can grow greens in the winter and eat garden-fresh salad in the spring. If we can do it here, you can do it anywhere.
thats a really informative post by kuya minogue. surely will be of help to folks who have winters most of the year around
Thank you, Dassana. I hope many people will benefit from it.
Great guest post. I too have a great harvest of spinach which seems to be one of the only things to grow in my dark back garden. it’s even survived floods and frosts! I’m attempting some spicy oriental leaves and lettuce in my little greenhouse too. we don’t get much sun at all so I think sowing for winter is my all year round gardening approach 🙂
Thanks, Lauren. Perhaps the cloche technique will help.
This was a fantastic guest post – there are lots of wonderful tips and ideas for winter gardening 🙂
Thank you!
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Thank you, CCU.
I think your friend’s climate is not as cold as ours here in Alberta.. but I’m going to investigate further.. it would be great to have fresh veggies here in mid-winter!
I’m sure Kuya could put you in touch with her student. I know that they do things with cloches, greenhouses and row covers in New England as well.
I vaguely remember winter… here in Central Texas the trick is keeping anything other than okra and basil happy during the summer!
I just read of someone’s tomato plants getting fried by her central heating in New York. We all have challenges, I guess. We had to make posole for lunch because it was chilly here and Mom wanted a hearty soup.
A post after my own heart! I know I don’t have the cold temps that some people do, but it’s still encouraging to read about what is possible. And this post is well timed, come July I need to be thinking about what to sow in the garden to keep me in fresh greens over winter, If others are interested Eliot Coleman’s book Salad Leaves For All Seasons is a great source of information
Thanks for the reference, Claire. Maybe I’ll move it up into the post proper so that more people see it.
I also want to comment on temperatures…I don’t have ANY of these restrictions, but I’m just encouraged to make better use of what I have as a distinctive warm climate advantage! I also thought Kuya’s perspective not to share lovely winter greens with store bought tomatoes and cucumbers was a really good direction. I enjoyed this…and great comments, too. I’m interested in Claire’s books suggestion, too. Good guest post, Sharyn! Debra
Thank you, Debra.
Lovely guest post! I love meeting new bloggers! Happy Monday to both of you!
Thank you, Tiffany.
I am also of a skeptical nature, it gets SO COLD here, the ground is frozen solid. But I will try it this year! if your ,lovely guest blogger can do it in canada then surely i can do it here..great post! c
Thank you, Celi.
Many gardeners are successful with your guest post method. I have not tried it, instead prefer to do kitchen gardening during the winter months by sproutitng beans.
It’s nice that there are a variety of methods for growing things in cold climates so that people can choose what works for them. Thank you for mentioning an alternative, Norma.
Great post – when I visit my wife’s family in the north of Sweden either in the winter or spring when there is still remnants of snow and I look at the grass and it’s just a dead, brown mess. It’s amazing how it can so easily come back to life and provide a verdant green carpet in seemingly no time at all. I guess growing greens at that time of year must be a tremendously rewarding hobby!
For people who want to eat locally and raise their own food, it’s good to know that there are ways to provide greens in winter.
While I don’t live in an area that experiences very cold winters, thus far my “winter garden” has been unplanned and usually consists of anything left from fall that could winter over. Reading this posts inspires me to think about a real winter garden and plan it this time!
Those of us who live in warmer climates have an easier time growing things except when (like you and I) we have little sun in our yards.
What a lovely post. It’s hard to imagine harvesting enough greens for a salad in the middle of winter. I’m growing a pot of salad greens that I’m hoping to get a few home grown salads from over the summer.
Thank you, Eva. I thought you might find it useful, although B.C. may be warmer than where you are.
Wonderful painting of Buddha with greens… lettuce instead of the Bo tree! Is it his birthday this month?
No. I think that is in December. You can see the original of this Buddha in Kuya’s lettuce photo if you look carefully on the left.
Fantastic guest post!
Thank you.