Giving Thanks for My Winter Garden

Calendula is still flowering, providing a cheery spot in the garden and in the salad bowl.

Mixed salad greens, including arugula, bok choi, tatsoi, lettuce and Asian mustards are flourishing in this bed, and getting mowed down regularly for salads.

Tatsoi.

Sparrows, black-capped chickadees and a rosy finch (obscured, center) gather for a meal of bugs on my Lacinato/palm tree kale.

Cabbages and broccoli, with one cabbage covered.

I’m experimenting with winter growth of a cabbage under cover inside this giant water bottle. There’s another one uncovered right next to it.

Cauliflower setting its head.

This DeCiccio broccoli might yet put on some side shoots.

A purple sprouting broccoli and some winter radishes grow in front of a fleece-covered tunnel containing spinach.

Lacinato/palm tree kale plants grow against a bamboo trellis which held up cherry tomato plants last summer.

Giant walking stick collards are ready to eat.

A pot of spinach covered in garden fleece sits in front of an espaliered Akane apple tree that still has its leaves.

Red Kitten spinach grows with seedlings of parlsey and flowers in a pot.

New hybrids of Brussels sprouts and kale promise a harvest of budding florets along the stem.

The first florets coming from the Brussels sprouts/kale hybrid.

The last of the fall carrot crop sits in front of a cold frame made of two window sashes, wired together. The easy cold frame holds overwintering turnips.

Cover crop of clover, vetch and rye helps build soil on this bed over the winter.